"determinate" poems
As night hath stars, more rare than ships
In ocean, faint from pole to pole,
So all the wonder of her lips
Hints her innavigable soul.
Such lights she gives as guide my bark;
But I am swallowed in the swell
Of her heart's ocean, sagely dark,
That holds my heaven and holds my hell.
In her I live, a mote minute
Dancing a moment in the sun:
In her I die, a sterile shoot
Of nightshade in oblivion.
In her my elf dissolves, a grain
Of salt cast careless in the sea;
My passion purifies my pain
To peace past personality.
Love of my life, God grant the years
Confirm the chrism - rose to rood!
Anointing loves, asperging tears
In sanctifying solitude!
Man is so infinitely small
In all these stars, determinate.
Maker and moulder of them all,
Man is so infinitely great!
14.3k
I have missed your company.
Enveloped in strange faces,
The only coterie I keep of late
Is that of your overwrought descant.
Oh, James Douglas.
What happened to your dream?
DO NOT DESPAIR,
FRIEND
The words you once transcribed
Your intoxicating,
Or was it intoxicated
Ragtime
Linger in the subconscious of a generation,
an unnoticeable haversack
Traveling
Seeing
Traveling
Watching every ounce
Of the determinate world
Seeing
Acting as
The portmantoligism of my conscience
And what is left of my intellect
Until I realize that my
Crippling loneliness,
Is the only palatable fruit of disillusionment.
See, Christine?
Anybody can use big words to write about the 20th Century.
Feb 17, 2013
Feb 17, 2013 at 11:38 PM UTC
Should I become a middle school math or English teacher?
Leave my bed early in the morning and return with test papers to grade.
With what authority will I persuade those kids to sit still and perform
calculations and interpretations.
I won’t be allowed to teach A Good Man Is Hard To Find. Nope, it’ll be
Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies and Slaughterhouse Five. Novels
that annoy.
Poems and math are magic. Words and numbers are things no one has
ever seen or heard or touched.
But the administration keeps them separate. The curriculum’s
determinate.
The kids are beautiful but combustible. When middle school lets out at
the periapsis of Earth’s orbit, that’s the face of joy.
The purpose of school is to introduce us to the world’s innumerable
wonders. The periodic table, World Wars I and II, Huckleberry Finn
and Jim.
Once a gaggle of teenage girls bet whether I wore boxers or jockeys. I felt
ambushed and unlucky. Also a bit afraid.
There’s little love lost between the students and the teachers. Expect to
forget and be forgotten. Information.
I remember Mr. Killian my chemistry teacher. So boring about something
I now find so interesting and important. He wasn’t boring; I was
boring.
I remember Mr. Christensen my history teacher. He was fat and funny but
taught as little as possible. I was known to laugh so hard I cried.
I remember Mr. T my calculus teacher. He dressed everyday exactly like
Gene Kranz in mission control. I was confused past help so he didn’t
help.
I remember Tone Kwas my music teacher. He said I was the worst
trumpet player he’d ever tried to teach and switched me to
sousaphone. He was right but so what! Playing badly is the best
riposte.
Mar 2, 2022
Mar 2, 2022 at 6:40 AM UTC
Should it come to this, without remorse? Like that orange, feeble
and deciduous, while we waited with binoculars through that gray on gray
afternoon for the owl to spread its wings. Perhaps it did, past dusk,
behind the trees, under those vaguely baleen-formed clouds.
The clouds cast shadows on other clouds, as if holding them up against reality, even for our affirmation. Did you think of me this morning, over your Life cereal, and did you miss the fruit? The “organic wholeness?” What is the determinant thing that dissolves?
The dissolution of the self-contradictory comes from the dissolution of the determinant thing. Arguments formed in apartments over a bowl of cherries or a bowl of **** or some such. Loss of a determinate thing (under Article 1262, par. 1.) is the equivalent of impossibility of performance in obligations to do referred to in Article 1266. We are left with the form of a bowl, perhaps a ginger bowl, or some form of lost lacquer.
The distinct lack of skyscrapers from SoHo up through Chelsea was said to be a function of Manhattan bedrock. But modern materials seem to have overcome that problem. Getting on the subway, he heard someone say “…as if each word is born with another word, and spends its life on lines looking for the perfect rhyme". "You know they mate for life," he thought, "the swans. If one is killed, the other often dies of boredom.”
Jan 17, 2016
Jan 17, 2016 at 11:36 PM UTC
Farewell! Thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know’st thy estimate,
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting,
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thyself thou gav’st, thy own worth then not knowing,
Or me, to whom thou gav’st it, else mistaking;
So thy great gift upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgement making.
Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter,
In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.
1.2k
•
**All the beauteous and delightful words in the world,
Being integrated all together,
Can never be in equilibrium,
Of how much happy I am,
Of how much you mean to me,
And of how much I love you.** (hahaaaaa)
*Your words of love,
Are just like a firefly in my pitch-black times,
You’ve enlighten me with your luminescence,
Just that little wonderful light that you’ve showed me daily,
Being put all together,
Just made a delightful gleaming sun,
In a noontide,
That glows up my darkest corners,
That gives me warmth in my numbing days,
That gives me hope,
That gives me the strongest feeling to be the best I can be,
And that gives me a better vision for tomorrow.*
*You make my world an orchestral arena,
Just the most wonderful tunes are played,
The tunes of bona fide endearment, care and with hope,
You’ve surrounded me with your fervid love songs,
I have absorbed all of it,
That together circulates into my body,
As an energizer,
And as supplier of all good nutrients.*
*You’ve created a dance hall in my world,
That I uses,
To sway and undulate away,
All the love and happiness,
And let exuberance consume,
All deleterious hormones that is in me,
Into your phenomenal, auspicious dance steps,
Steps that keep our love healthy and in perfect shape,
And steps that carries me all the way to heaven.*
*You are indeed my serotonin,
My happiness hormone,
That keeps me smiling,
And keeping me away from depression.*
*My endorphin,
That always make me feel good,
The one that reduces my apprehension.*
*My dopamine,
That keeps me mentally alert,
That you,
The source of dopamine,
Just provide me,
All inspiration I need,
Keeps me concentrated on good stuff,
And that takes away all bad moods in me.*
*My ghrelin,
That takes away all my stress,
And replace it with peace of mind,
And relaxing state.*
*My phenylethamine,
That gives me such gaiety,
In this love that envelops me,
A love that always put spark in my countenance.*
*In my engineering life,
You are just the perfect solution,
In my engineering truss problems,
And the truss as our love,
You are the identification,
Whether our love,
Is statically determinate, or indeterminate,
Statically stable or unstable,
And finding the reactions of our love,
Taking all the summation of forces,
From the vertical to the horizontal axis,
And the summations of all moments needed,
In order to have strong and firm truss,
A truss that would last,
‘Till eternity.*
*You are the calculator in this path of mine,
I could just be staring in blank space,
Without any hope of solving any mathematical problems without you,
You are the calculator that we call,
An addition to our intestines,
Without you my life will not be successful,
And with your love as motivation and inspiration,
It made me more successful in my career in life.*
**And for the most important thing,
You are the answer,
To my earnest and lachrymose prayers,
Prayers that are dearly uttered,
During my detrimental moments,
And just up to this day,
I have understood,
How God,
Can allow throe to be planted into our lives,
How a devastating incident,
Will turn into propitious aurora,
I knew from this day on,
My life will completely change.**
with love <3
© Earl Jane
♥ E.J.C.S.
Aug 9, 2015
Aug 9, 2015 at 12:45 AM UTC
Are you determined or terminated.
Will you push,
Will you shove.
Go in strong,
Come out soft.
Go in weak,
Come out free.
Will you push,
Will you shove.
Or will you pull,
Like the strongest.
Gods of men,
Men of children.
Blades of bats,
Books from trash.
Will you grow.
Will you go.
Like the strongest
Gods of men.
Nov 4, 2013
Nov 4, 2013 at 10:04 PM UTC
Would life to some be for others deceased
The greed of man is the Devil in awe
Open and eager to satiate the beast
Allied; redundant rebels fast become feast
A thriving surmise from a snarling abhor
Would life to some be for others deceased
Stiff media outlets quietly policed
Less of a ***** more of a *****
Open and eager to satiate the beast
Dynamic complex entity, undefined common thread in the East
Internal displacement clashes with border decor
Would life to some be for others deceased
Bray Lampwick; Bray! Add volume to the doom release
Crooked anticipation of the determinate straw
Open and eager to satiate the beast
If the potent and equipped old grip is continually greased
Our trades will deduce the national core
Would life to some be for others deceased
Open and eager to satiate the beast
Craig Steele
Feb 19, 2017
Feb 19, 2017 at 6:53 AM UTC
“…knowledge of the beginning and the end, and of that all-pervading Reason which orders the universe in its determinate cycles to the end of time"
- Marcus Aurelius's definition of the sage
*I’m starting to think poets are bleeding ink
Longing for true understanding, an oath on the stand
Mentally sinking in quicksand, trials never finish
Fear of diminishing quicker than our escape plan
Seeking wisdom in time for our demise,
and as we're writing our words, our fears are in disguise
Intricate word-weaving, we’re prisoners of the moment,
spilling ink on the paper and anxious for our atonement
The dream of a dreamer’s quick to take him places
A limbo of the unknown, and filled with many faces
Endless deliberation with the jury of the mind
Furious and made in a hurry, truly “one of a kind”
But truthfully one of many, and so it’s up to you
Live an Epicurus life, happiness is a truth
Patient examination of nature is natural
A masterful snap of the mental camera is factual
The sage’s knowledge of reason is unilateral
Theory of forms and as Plato had put it
It’s reason you see before you that offers spatial relationships
Properties seeming apparent - hope you relate to this
Believe nothing you hear and half of what you see
Our fears are found in the lines written by you and me
So keep the words coming, never stop pursuing wisdom
Enlightenment of the soul towards a new beginning.*
May 20, 2016
May 20, 2016 at 11:28 AM UTC
~
2/7/25
<•>
the price of eggs is mundane,
controlled by supply and demand,
and the human need for
pleasure and pain,
delivered by merely breathing
what you are sensing
is a staple
that is unique and yet-ubiquitous,
entree always calculable
with math
With X being your financial
limitations, you can/cannot
afford
the pleasure or the pain
of eggs, especially the
Omega-3 Cage Free Vegetarian
Growth Hormone-Antibiotic
and Pesticides Free,
you so
Lazarus yearn to be free to buy,
but you’re free still
to buy and swallow the cheapest
eggs and still live another day
BUT THE PRICE OF POETRY!
Dear God, it’s beyond costly,
beyond mundane
it is pleasure and the pain,
in combination,
irreplaceable and un substitutable,
and happily
affordable and free
Incalculable and Unlimited
so unlike eggs
for I speak
of & to
your very soul
I would not die if I
never was to enjoy
an egg in any form ever;
but
*if I-would
never write nor read another
poem, even then, I still would not-die,
but if only, and yet,
one could, one must
at the very least*
live a life poetic
*seeing and appreciating
the mysterious in/of life
the simplest complexity
of a stolen kiss,
the inescapable high
of one more spectacle
of morning sunrise
and the mourning meaning
of an evenings sunset*
*the precise mathematics of life
that is imprecisely inherent in it all,
of all that is
inherent in out
be~ing
and all that is
with~in
& ab~out us,*
is recorded by our senses
preserved by memory
sometimes well, and sometimes not!
so we write to preserve it
better
in poems, music & paint
try to keep
the quantity of love and truth
given to us by family and friend,
in your heart+soul
but perhaps somethings
mathematically unmeasurable,
are harder to keep close by,
but this element of
the life poetic is corporeal
is measurable
determinate
effected
by the
*unlimited availability of the
poetic life you
can choose to live
and the words
in your possess
you
can choose too*
if
*one has
to keep it
closer still*
if you so choose to record it
with imperfect fallible
but yet useful
words
you live forever
<•>
(^And the muse is laughing at me,
She, giggling, saying
“you see why you rise up at 4:45 AM,
Only then can you see and love
and write of your poetic life!
and you willingly would die
when egged on to the beyond-you
on that day no longer do you ask
why, where when
and how”)
Feb 7, 2025
Feb 7, 2025 at 4:34 PM UTC
Thoughts are bubbles;
Drifting.
Always changing;
Shifting.
Words are concrete;
Permanent,
Limiting,
Determinate.
The mind can think and feel.
The mouth can only steal
the morsels that the brain creates;
the lips then mutilate.
Dreams with totipotency
crash to Earth woefully.
If we dictated
what our minds have slated
rather than the deplorable mess
that comes out more often than less,
A different world we would live in.
With ample free thought to swim in.
We'd drink it in, not spit it out.
We'd coexist, express our doubt.
Put an end to censorship
and start a human relationship
Feb 16, 2016
Feb 16, 2016 at 10:15 PM UTC
Shroud, halo, aura of smoke
Swirling round my disposition
I watch as an exhalation casts a shadow as determinate as my own.
My family –
My family –
Yes, we are a family.
But
When push comes to shove
The memories shroud like smoke
And I cannot see through.
My family:
Four isolated individuals
Thrashing in the ocean
Grasping each other in the hope of staying afloat
Is how it has always been.
If four corners make a square,
Is each corner defined as “segment of square”?
Or can the four points reach into a rectangle infinite
Stretching perpetually further from one another?
Outside of my window is an oak
In the autumn, this oak becomes a yellow dandelion tree erupting with splendor and where it was once meek and young with flat green leaves, now there is fire!
And every other tree its disciple.
Walking on leaf littered concrete
I step over hundreds of bodies.
Their irregular coloration seems to beg –
“I am not finished yet.”
I wince with every crunch underfoot.
Walking through darkness
Alone, again
And I return
I return to the place I always do
The place that keeps me when I sleep
But does not keep me safe –
Jugula nigra drops its fleshy fruit,
Encased, one nut –
Enough nutrients for several generations.
Ink stains my hands black
As I tear away the husk
Obliterate the shell
Desperately seeking that which is not rotten.
I didn’t find it.
Now, when I walk, I look straight ahead.
Seeking a solution for the void to fill the emptiness
Running outside,
Around, and around, and around
Until I retire to my wooden square
I pace nervously
I pace
I pace
With niether conviction nor righteousness.
Another leaf, unfinished with life,
Aborted by the tree.
I cannot see one more.
I suppose I had wanted to reconcile
These leaves with these branches
But I am powerless.
I am a ghost.
Perhaps these words will float away,
But likely, they will reverberate in my bones
For life.
Outside of my window is an oak
Its leaves have dropped.
The fire has been extinguished.
I close my eyes
And let one thousand poplars swirl me away.
Oct 14, 2014
Oct 14, 2014 at 3:39 PM UTC
the comfort zone is not a place.
you can't touch, hear or see it.
instead, it's that amount of grace
the universe will remit.
but, if you should be found outside
this determinate that's not 3d,
there is one truth that can be implied
you're with splendid company
Jun 14, 2022
Jun 14, 2022 at 6:18 PM UTC