"conjugate" poems
Last week I was taught that
no matter how complex an expression may seem
if you multiply it by its conjugate pair
you will always end up with a non-negative real solution.
That is a metaphor for how we have learned to love.
I used to like mathematics, as strange as it may sound,
because memorising the value of pi was
somehow easier than forgetting the notion of you
and I thought maybe comprehending the mechanics of the universe
would lead me one step closer to cracking the combination.
In a world that spins at the rate of 27,900m per minute, a constant can prove tricky to find.
Hence, there is solace to be felt in knowing that even when it is all said and done –
when the final bullet has slipped from our tongues and we are left trembling
upon nothing but the rubble of our own destruction,
two plus three will still be equal to five.
In an attempt to clarify a theory to the class, my teacher analogised
that mathematics is like one big giant jigsaw puzzle:
everything always fits together perfectly in the end
Since then I have learned it is the method without the madness,
the passion for the predictable; it is everything - that love is not.
Not even the greatest mathematician in the world
has been able to measure how much a heart can hold.
There is no algorithm for how to make you come back;
I cannot draw a line graph on the speed at which love left
and even if I could, our gradients would never be the same.
I may have both halves of the bed,
but there is never enough space to fill it with.
If a task takes four hours for ten people to complete
and the same job takes five people twice that time,
how long will it take for a human to feel whole again?
Sometimes I think we are nothing more
than two parallel lines that accidentally crossed paths.
Jan 14, 2015
Jan 14, 2015 at 5:47 PM UTC
School days in winter
Were such fun
Without a care,
When we were young.
At recess we'd slide
On ice,
Build our forts,
Duck and fight.
The firemen
Beneath starlight,
Would flood our schoolyard,
Whet appetites
For hockey games
Between senior classes;
We'd skate and shoot,
Fall on our *****
Such joy and fun,
And no one lost.
The bell would sound,
Then we'd toss
Our wet socks
On school room
Rads.
His and hers
Like banners waving,
Drying, hissing,
Choking, aging.
Impatiently we'd sit and wait,
Do our math
And conjugate;
The clock's hands,
Frozen,
Watched from
The wall,
At last the lunchtime
Bell would ring,
And we'd get bundled
Once again.
Before heading home
We're enticed
To slide once more
On hard, grey ice.
Nov 26, 2014
Nov 26, 2014 at 3:01 PM UTC
The conjugate of idolatry,
The alchemy of flame,
The Astarte of pure harlotry-
And nomenclature'd name.
The lode-stone of sly coquetry,
The compass-stone of hearth,
The balanced stoichiometry-
Broken waters of birth.
The Vestal of impurity,
The perfidy of shame-
My blood in you runs truer red;
This craving never tames.
Oct 5, 2011
Oct 5, 2011 at 8:03 PM UTC
Sapiosexual
mating game of mind
Intellectual foreplay so
intertwined
Twisted together
by mysterious fate
Destined collision
darkened hearts conjugate
Melded souls tango and sway
lost wildly enraptured
Intoxicated on passions
never before captured
Embracing uncharted taction
of tantalizing tongue
Licking fantasy to
reality of song unsung.
Aug 19, 2015
Aug 19, 2015 at 2:53 AM UTC
A bullfrog serenades his mate
With a booming baritone in anticipation to conjugate
Whilst the wind hums softly
Dry leaves rustling incessantly.
Within the vicinity, bees buzz
The air abuzz
With beautiful chirpings from birds
Visiting colorful flowers and buds
For nectaries
Nature’s nitty gritty pleasantries
The wind croons in a haphazard harmony
A bearable monotony
Of sorts
All these are exclusive happenings in exotic resorts.
Oct 30, 2013
Oct 30, 2013 at 3:12 AM UTC
We met over 40 years ago. Floating buttocky halves
spooned into pastel fruit bowls, even drowned in
Del Monte syrup, love at first taste. Your flesh
a luminous hue, hovering on the border of cream
and August skies; your flavor pure as dreamed pleasure
grazing my waking tongue, a melting sweetness
streaming down my throat; your name, a single syllable
promising delight: pear, barely sound, mere parting of lips,
and hint of breath, apple-green p, the sweetest
diphthong ea, all the air in the world, closed in rounded rr‘d
finality. A perfect word, reducing your rumpled, pinnacled
self, to one gorgeous, Old English syllable: per.
Right now, six of you sit ripening on my windowsill.
A sky-blue towel shields bottoms against further bruising
from the wood even at birth you instinctively flee, hanging
off trees in swelling green-gold tears, yearning for earth,
or growing to maturity in bottled, olive-green light, your dying
breath suffusing aging liqueurs like the oldest I ever drank,
the summer I was 19, a century-old brandy served in snifters
the likes of which this working-class boy had never seen.
I tilted the giant crystal bowl; the fragrant liquid elongated
in mimicry of its remembered self and seeped into my mouth: a pear’s
ghost enveloped in flame lay down to rest on my tongue. We both
were saved, at least for that night. Pear. Look of women I love
but don’t lust after, I want to conjugate you: I pear, you pear,
we pear. Like raspberries, Mozart and love, for me, sufficient proof
of God’s existence. I trust you. Lead me by the tongue to heaven.
Feb 1, 2015
Feb 1, 2015 at 12:19 PM UTC
811
The Veins of other Flowers
The Scarlet Flowers are
Till Nature leisure has for Terms
As “Branch,” and “Jugular.”
We pass, and she abides.
We conjugate Her Skill
While She creates and federates
Without a syllable.
1.7k
“You are a cynosure and I a modest demure man,
I cannot be accordant with the crowd you have,
You a cynosure beauty of elegance and wonders,
A woman of higher standards and I very simplistic,
Can such a person take interest in me what may it be,
Is she mindlessly judging me as an equitable man?
By sweet emotions thoughts reflected as irises burgeon,
From her head to toes I kept on admiring this divinity,
Is her heart for love that like a thorn with no rose?
Or mitotically lovely when in love as seen before all,
She would not be able to conform to me it would be I,
Could my simplistically standards sway her to me,
But why do I blame myself that she took a liking to me,
I imagine her hands touch the earth and the roots dilate,
Sprite knows deep quintessence of water and the earth,
We then conjugate together like an equation of loam”
By A. Guzaldo 07/21/2018 ©
Jul 21, 2018
Jul 21, 2018 at 5:12 PM UTC
I liked him; he liked me.
That’s the big problem: it’s all in the past
and nothing can be done
to conjugate the verbs
or change us at the present.
Jan 9, 2018
Jan 9, 2018 at 6:34 PM UTC
The flooding puddles of your eyes
reflect nothing but the skies and
trees with leaves as dead as skin
on elbows in winter.
Your two-toned heart won't separate
the simple verbs to conjugate from be
to am to are to is--
the peeling of our action.
I'll wait for sunlight, blue skies, and stars
I can wait for spring!
Wait for your words to mean what a dictionary describes.
Grey does nothing for your eyes.
They still twinkle with delight
soggy grass and slippery walks
like soggy emotions in your slippery thoughts.
You're winter now.
I'm spring.
You're dead--I'm thriving.
your plea for surviving, what hope!
What loss! What cost!
God shouldn't have trusted you with that smile.
Your rat-like grim untrustworthy guile.
That duplicitous manner in which you speak
Oh how you out shine your ***
Your failed promises,
attempts to leave me.
to please me.
Oh! How you leave me pleased!
Your tokens broken, torn and stored
In wires above my bed
slip visions of you in my dreams.
A morning sight, such sweet delightful
beginnings to long dragging days.
Even through your thunder storm
Your vexation brings me joy.
Jun 28, 2010
Jun 28, 2010 at 5:57 PM UTC
August 22, 2003
Contractions
retractions
regrets
every twenty seconds apart
now counting ten
write them down
lets retrace these steps again
he is bustin' to get out
and needs more room to stretch
I know you are in pain
just take a deep breath
we already made it this far
we need to finish this race
because you are a cradle of life
and a vessel that holds my own
it was only nine months ago
that we decided to conceive
flesh and blood
that binds you and me
and ties us like a rope
in a sweet afternoon
on a nest without a tree
we ceased to be two
and went on to be three.
Now that we finally made it here
just breathe easy my dear
the worst is almost done
and the best is yet to come
I'll watch you like an angel
while God delivers our son
while my princess tries to sleep
and my little devil is to be born.
"is he crowning yet?"
She would ask
time and time again
I try not to be terrified
at the sight of what's taking place
liquids steps
careful measures
not enough space
push until you brake
as you turn into a grape
still beautiful as the day we met
when I came to your table
and waited for something you would say
so I could conjugate your name
in adjectives and verbs
words of love
sonnets of grace
when our puzzle fell into place
and it spelled:
I
will
forever
love
you
miss
Rivera.
From the end to beginning
from the algae to the fishes
like your kisses
like the long waits
like the eternal months
whether it rained or snowed
like our futile fights
like our happy cries
I heard you through the grapevine
I always heard you both
you have made me proud
and I hope the same I have done
my queen without a crown
here's your present
here's your child
welcome to the world
our baby boy Josh.
Apr 30, 2012
Apr 30, 2012 at 1:38 PM UTC
Smile
Speak quietly
Conjugate words
Kiss
Smile
Show teeth
Stick out your tongue
Salivate
Smile
Scream loudly
Hold breath
Swallow
Smile
Taste flavor
Pleasure him
Masticate
Smile
Speak eloquently
Say ahh
Repeat
Feb 20, 2018
Feb 20, 2018 at 9:56 PM UTC
Time has turned her back on me,
So I feel the rough shoulder blades of sin,
So I no longer conjugate with her reflective eyes,
But see the incommunicable universe, as cosmos
Of ribs and unshining lungs, wet and clay-like,
With fingerprints where I pressed in.
Time has a ravaged back and the organs drop
Like sodden fruit, gone unpicked.
Time is that woman looking back,
With her hair witchery of forever turning.
I see the future lovers on her crystal path,
Translucent workings of her single-sided glass.
Jul 8, 2019
Jul 8, 2019 at 11:11 AM UTC
Over this I vacillate:
The writing down of verse,
Wealth of language distillate
Quench and cause my thirst.
Easy enough to hesitate
When errands need be run,
Either way I procrastinate
Leaving the other undone.
For quiet I equivocate
Time and time again, for
It is bliss to terminate
The what, the where, the when.
Sometimes I stew in stalemate
Two webs entreat be spun:
Revel in stillness or illustrate,
I pay with time for one.
Rilke said discriminate
If one must write or not,
To breath to write to oscillate
Conundrum of my plot.
Awareness and artistry bifurcate
My will in two extremes,
Yet I know when conjugate
They vivify the means.
Unsure if it is designate
I muse and metaphor,
I know with thrill words compensate
When they begin to roar.
What is the thing that animates
This soul to write a poem,
Passion to note and formulate
Or to be loved at home?
Aug 13, 2010
Aug 13, 2010 at 8:25 AM UTC
Have you ever woken up one morning
With an overwhelmingly existential anxiety
Surrounding the inevitability
Of loneliness and dissatisfaction
With love as society has made it out to be
And the reality of the meaning of the word?
Nearly every single one of us humans,
If not all,
Dub ourselves "alone"
While simultaneously and obliviously relating
To each and every man or woman
Who has and will ever exhale
Into the earth's atmosphere
Unaware of each other's potential and ability
To connect with one another.
Our breaths conjugate
As they are ejected from our mouths,
As our feelings should,
Yet it is not as simple
It is not as simple as an involuntary respiration
Though it should be
It should be!
Why should I,
Another breather on this planet,
Feel as though my emotions
Are much too obscure and unfathomable
For a breather much like myself to comprehend?
Meanwhile in the other room
A man is breathing in the same air I am
And he is feeling the same way I am
-"alone"
Jul 25, 2013
Jul 25, 2013 at 3:24 AM UTC
all my poems are unique general principles
~for Helene Mendelsohn~
“A general principle never comes to life in my mind except by exhibiting itself in various special forms and in
crowds of instances for each form":
R.G. Collingwood
each a construct - an arch-i-texture,
each a crowd of a single instance
special forum, a dialogue differentiation,
a conjugate particle,
forming up, in marching order,
a singular troop, a base case singular,
a soldier especially demanding,
“Of Me, Write, Write”
for within my insight,
a one-off sighting,
one glinting wave reflecting,
its one millisecond exactitude of existence,
reforming unseemly, a new but not!
a seemingly similar shifted shape,
but no wave is a precision repetition,
perhaps a passing familiarity
of its precedents, antecedents,
at best
an instance borrowed and paid back
to the generosity of time
for a fully developed statement of a
general principle,
even a primary secondary textual emendation,
requires a unique naming definition
being born and dead dying while you are blinking,
does not understate absolute value,
a principle exists to give absolution,
so the moments resets,
perpetually,
but its own resolution is n’err forgotten
do you see the crowd of inferences
herein contained?
the principal unique,
poem plucked from passing sun ray,
a tickling hair of a brazen breeze,
one wave, one wave reconstituting a
millennium of preceding lives,
deriving its abbreviated genealogy
of droplets of prior principles
forever reinterpreted
so I gave you back
words you knew
but in a new combination
establishing this poem,
its constituents,
as a unique general principle
there is a prior poem, new, unique
in everything
Jul 21, 2019
Jul 21, 2019 at 10:06 AM UTC
The greatest are at Eddyville, the lesser at LaGrange
six hundred of no one at the jail on the hill
no windows, no bars, no name to do up to five nowhere
for nothing, or that's what they say.
Institutional white tones of gray
sealed concrete floors under light look like rivers at night
all so clean except the time, except the title
of the crime sounds so insipid.
Better robbery or ****** better yet
lining up on concrete rivers for a shave.
What is the essence of it?
No one's going to die.
Everyone will eat baloney on his food card and lie on his back.
Freedom begs the question of degree.
What is the essence of it?
Visiting baby mamma by TV?
The inability to conjugate the verbs of touch?
Freedom begs the question of degree.
What is the essence of it?
Never having lived a single day
beyond the shadow of the jail that has no name?
Jan 7, 2013
Jan 7, 2013 at 12:59 AM UTC
Love.
Evil.
A conjugate pair.
True partners in crime.
Be careful,
But don't stop moving forward.
Sep 20, 2016
Sep 20, 2016 at 7:08 PM UTC
Amber Dexterous(The Writer)-Episode VI
(Amber is taking a creative writing class at the community college)
Prof: "Today I am going to explain, and show you what
it means to conjugate verbs."
(Amber folds her notebook, stands, and walks toward the door)
Prof: "Where are you going Amber?"
Amber: "I'm sorry, sir(brushing hair off her forehead), but I don't like
***********
Prof: "Uh, you're excused!"
copyright: richard riddle May 24, 2015
May 24, 2015
May 24, 2015 at 11:43 AM UTC
have you heard that animals
come in more than one form,
not just covered in fur or lined
in scales, in shirts and jeans
they walk, talk and conjugate
have you heard that diseases
are more than just viruses, they
have names like thomas, luke, jeff,
scribbled in notebooks, sipped through
cocktail straws,
this is no friendly cherokee parable
spoken in elderflower and feathery
folklore,
the wolves are here and have always
been, you know they rarely come in ones,
curtailing escape, the abridged version of
all-them-who-called-wolf because we don't
cry wolf, we seek wolf.
speak wolf.
so surprised to have them at our throats
when we have been no angels--
neither devils
just another injured animal
trying to make peace.
Apr 15, 2017
Apr 15, 2017 at 7:53 PM UTC
I know a lot of things
like the capitals of most countries in Africa
and how to rationalize a denominator with a radical in it
and how to conjugate subjunctive verbs in Spanish
I know how to tie my shoes
two different ways
and I know how to tuck in the laces so I don't have to tie them at all
I know too many people's phone numbers
and how to make a cup of tea
I know that it is foolish to give yourself completely to a person.
I know that heartbreak is almost always inevitable
and that love hurts as much as it helps
I know all of these things, and
I know you take your tea with two spoons of sugar a little milk
I know your favorite Spanish word and its Aztec origins
I know that you're awful and algebra
and that you know more about geography than I could ever hope to learn
I know your phone number
and that you wish I would just tie my shoes so that the laces wouldn't come untucked when I walk too fast
I know you
and I know love
and I love you
Feb 7, 2014
Feb 7, 2014 at 3:08 AM UTC
Savoring the scent of my fear
Patiently you wait as I near
Kraftly hiding your true intent
Pretending awhile to be my friend.
In line to fate's checkmate
Imprisoned you recreate
To conjugate my soul
Your wake takes it's toll.
Twisting my insides out
Playing my every doubt
Closing in for the ****
Against the remnant of my will
Reality has become my fear
The end is already here
Jun 3, 2014
Jun 3, 2014 at 1:09 PM UTC
The story ends between fire and ice
The destructions happened twice
Fearlessness feeding the thick desire
Withering motions exceeding fire
Cold settled in eyes of night
Witnesses of the raging fight
Ripples moving far and wide
Hunger has no place to hide
Both extremes conjugate in with cries
Their frenzied sounds splitting skies
Oct 25, 2018
Oct 25, 2018 at 2:22 PM UTC