"gradients" 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
Staring
With
Lustful
Gaze
Seductive
Darkness
Eludes
Light
To
Dark
Black
To
White
Gradients
Of
Trouble
Capture
This
Weary
Mind
Lie
Still
You
Hopeful
Hostage
Thirsting
For
Sleep’s
Tranquil
Sanctuary
Assuredly
Salvation
Is
Just
Moments
Away
Sep 23, 2018
Sep 23, 2018 at 5:34 AM UTC
You descended into my soul so effortlessly, like dark blue dissipate into the muted periwinkle sky that kiss the hilltops of dew covered mornings.
Had there been but no measurement of the graceful manner in which your touch take a turn from skin to grasping onto organs locked behind the stern walls this may not be so difficult to comprehend.
Yet for the first time, the notion of numbers on a clock became irrelevant and I saw this beginning in gradients and neon bursts of color that illuminate all in its path.
For what can we track the depth of which we dive into oceans- with a ticking minute hand or the depth in which the opacity of our surroundings grow?
I caught you at midnight, I drowned in your essence like 500 kilometers below sea level, I admire you most at sun break, and I love you, how I love you, like the most effortless periwinkle blue.
Nov 16, 2015
Nov 16, 2015 at 8:55 PM UTC
i swallowed the sunset like a pill;
and drowned it with a bottle of nyquil;
so my dreams involve stars instead of your hands;
and my brain contains gradients in place of your arms.
i clawed my own eyeballs out, mistaking them for yours;
and what i thought was your skeleton i rammed with my car;
was actually just a mailbox.
i’ve screamed at the top of my lungs;
but you are still jammed in my throat.
i’ve opened up my skin;
but your poison is stuck to me like a sunburn.
(a.m.c.)
Apr 29, 2014
Apr 29, 2014 at 8:41 PM UTC
If I lay on that big, white bed for along time,
will you help me find my Father?
If I put tubes in my arm
and didn't eat for a week,
would you show me where he is?
Will the robot standing next to my head feed me
coordinates through rhythmic beeps and blips and red flashing lights?
I will do that.
I will shrink in my bed
and let my hair shed off like snake skin
and let my skin wrinkle like I had been in the bath tub for too long
and leave the windows wide open so my children can watch.
My lungs will burn out
and you'll put a mask on my face
and add one more tube to the collection
in the crook of my elbow,
adding more weight
as I lose mass
just like my Father.
And after countless times of being told,
"You have his smile,"
I will truly know what they meant
when my lips become sandpaper
and my tongue becomes parchment
and my teeth hollow out in gradients of pale moon yellow.
The iron from my blood
will add zest to every wheezing hack
and trickle down my throat like the morning dew
watering the growing weeds in my lungs.
I will do nothing but blink my crusting, glazed eyes
when my family cries at my bedside.
I will not flinch as their shouted cries echo the hallway
or look up as they throw their hands to the sky,
begging to a name I had long turned away from.
Would I find my Father if the flesh of my cheeks sunk into its bones
and my face was contoured by the ugly shadows in its
every crevice?
Even then, I would not find my Father.
I would not find my Father
until the white coats stand over my bed,
prodding me with pens and magnifying glasses and stinging needles,
and finally tell my family there is no chance.
I would nto be my Father until I refuse to cry
or scream
or become angered
or say goodbye.
I will be relieved that after countless months of being dead,
they finally declare my pulse gone.
Jun 3, 2014
Jun 3, 2014 at 10:41 AM UTC
The solar system reclines in the flowing locks of your hair.
Floss the soul from the rhythm of nocturnal galaxies.
Can I please urge you to humbly acknowledge those strato-cumulus signs which signify the altitude of brazen sensuality?
Pressure gradients are real you know.
Dec 31, 2013
Dec 31, 2013 at 4:00 PM UTC
Rain-clouds linger in cumulonimbus fascination where the cultural class-formation is shaped by abstract territoriality.
Pressure gradients of global awareness are impacted by the adiabatic process.
So, turn up the heat and chill in the waves of dialectical ontology.
Dec 31, 2013
Dec 31, 2013 at 4:11 PM UTC
In my first life, I died
The year I turned 25,
And now that I’m in the hours before I taste my second,
I want to make it all the way to
28.27 years
cause when you divide that by 9,
You’re left with pi.
And because the universe isn’t just a
Straight line, you’ve got to use a formula to get around,
Get all up on that pi d because piety just
isn't logic enough for me, where even the repentant
Are told they’re going to burn in purgatory, sweetheart, please.
Being alive and feeling was
sometimes hell enough for me.
In just a few hours before I’m sent through that
Tight tunnel,
I want to be judged by the god of
3.14159, the baker that made me
Mr. Blueberry Buddah
Master in the art of reincarnation.
I want to be birthed **** with just a dab of pure whipped
cream for a soul,
Drizzled sweet with the blood I never watched my
mother bleed for me
on the morning of my second birth.
But I gotta say, this bardo shit's pretty odd,
Here the sky ranges in color gradients too specific like
“violent salmon” all the way to “lukewarm smoothie”
But once I get out, I know things will be strange,
owning a life that’s not quite mine to lose.
And even though I’ll have no answer to give, I desperately
Want someone to ask,
Stranger, tell me, how did it feel?
Theoretically, I’ll respond,
Well, I was kicked back into some ancestral dream
To meet everyone I will ever be, everyone
I have ever been and
Once I’ve met all of them,
Everyone I will never meet again.
And they'll ask,
Friend, is that why babies take so long to be born?
Yes, its because they’re shaking hands with the universe
On the way out of the womb.
At least, the one who will reach nirvana
After this life cycle circles through.
Lover, if I were to meet you again, will you remember?
Does your soul still have my story
Etched on it somewhere,
Or will you be washed clean of me,
The tabula rasa upon which Locke never wrote?
I won’t remember you, but
I have faith that you’ll find me,
Even lifetimes grow apart after too long.
It’s all about the company you keep because
They never stay.
And if that should happen, well,
We just met each other in an inconvenient life.
Apr 24, 2013
Apr 24, 2013 at 2:26 AM UTC
Crushing the air from my lungs, exhaling in a gasp
If it's nothing more than the dance of neurotransmitters across synapses
Nerves transmitting impulses
Proton gradients forming and dissipating
Why do I feel it so vividly
Jun 20, 2013
Jun 20, 2013 at 10:55 AM UTC
To look carefully.
It begins with a reminder to myself to look oh so carefully
Because this isn't just any time of day,
But the end of day time when the light fades away.
To think, that this happens before every eve and after every noon
Night pulls at the Sun so gently.
From behind the mountains
The anchor of time begins its distortion
Upon the Sun, its stress seems to bless the sky
In those blending hues
And spins clouds into colorful sweetness
As it demands an encore for a set too soon.
The mountains become flat nibbles into space,
Eating at the canvas
Where sky's light knows nothing of us.
It too, flattens buildings at the foothills;
A pasting of pastel flavor, drawn
By the distant gray air of sand and sea.
The glorified glass edifices at my shore watching,
Bleeding, in mocking colors of a time that burns into another
A time that ends in blazing defiant oranges assaulting the falling sky
In quarrelsome pinks and purples
I remember the tender
I must see this so softly
At the sinking light
As the mountains swallow burning sky
One ring at a time,
Lighter than velvet.
Heavier than vivid.
Humility rose, with this setting,
To stand against so many gradients
And recall the faux pas of permanence.
Not until it was gone
With its whims toward time.
Could I see, tenderly.
The width and warmth
Of their embellished embrace
Between day, and night-
Pouring that fragility-
From the last light.
Jan 14, 2013
Jan 14, 2013 at 5:39 PM UTC
Ah, to write with glorious sight
All life's joy and all its pain
To color in the shadows and highlight their beauty
To fill emptiness with gradients of emotion
Oh yes, a pencil can pierce a lung if stabbed with enough force
A sketch can elicit unexpected responses
And the words of a stranger can feel like home
In the subtleties of one's own emotion
In the thoughts that build our fear,
There is only loneliness when the pictures don't hit the page
For in our isolation, there is unity
In our pain... passion
In our hate... love
And in all things... beauty
2815
Feb 8, 2015
Feb 8, 2015 at 9:01 AM UTC
I've always been nervous
not loud enough to say how I really
feel about this or that. OCD about strange
things like sugar packets and cups on the table
and gradients of tea. I could stand up for other
people but never for me. Always been quiet about
the things that matter and the things tattooed on
my heart like that bird on your arm. The things that
speak to me in the middle of the night like knocks on a
door, Knock, Knock. Wake up at three am because God
is yelling at me, but I can't tell any of YOU that because
of the bitterness locked in your chest and there's bitterness
locked in mine. For all this anxiety that I feel up in front of
this crowd, You all make me want to not say things out loud
Because as much as any one of you say you accept all things
you have never once accepted me. And I'm slapping pavement
with bare hands in the middle of the night, red callouses from
holding on too tight, begging for a way in when I'm only ever
gonna be left out because you've water-hosed me from your bathroom
tile like old chunks of grout. I've always been too nervous to say how
I really feel, because my God scares people away.
So here I am too afraid to look off this piece of paper because my voice has never been
above a whisper, and I'm too afraid to see any of you up close and personal,
a shake that no public speaking class could ever fix, because these tremors
are more like heart quakes, and all your demons are hitting my st-stutter
buttons, who ever said you weren't terrifying was a freaking liar
you
are.
Aug 12, 2013
Aug 12, 2013 at 8:38 PM UTC
I'm a plain white canvas
waiting to be filled
with lovely colors
day by day
I try hard
to fill myself up
with smooth textures
and gorgeous gradients
and then you came by
spilling and splashing
splattering black ink
all over the beautiful painting
and now no matter how hard
I try to cover it up
that cannot change the fact
that the canvas, nay, I
was already ruined
Jun 24, 2014
Jun 24, 2014 at 12:41 PM UTC
He said he liked her style
and her pianist fingers.
She told him that he could paint her
onto canvas, in shades
of cinnamon and ivory.
He laughed at her trembling hands
as she sat there, dressed in naught
but peonies and wild roses.
She scowled at his impudence
and then laughed
at the absurdity of it all.
She sat there and he told her
hold still
with a smile that flashed
across his eyes like quicksilver.
She watched him create poetry
with strokes of umber and chartreuse,
cerulean and scarlet.
He pulled the shadows from her eyes
and placed them into a fixed state of being.
She watched the metamorphosis of scars
into moonlit fault lines and
freckles into blips of smooth paint.
He transformed her pale outline
into a sensuous display of smooth gradients
and colors deep enough to make men weep.
He captured the penumbra of sorrow
and spread it across her painted eyes.
As he anointed the canvas
with delicate finishing touches,
She dressed in a paint-spattered shirt
and marveled at the uncanny likeness.
They sat and watched the paint dry
as he rubbed the knots from her shoulders
and kissed strained tendons and ligament
beneath innocuous flesh,
as she tapped rhythms into his hands.
He is no longer hers to consume.
He belongs now to the kingdom of earthworms
and a darkness that swallows all traces of light.
He took with him the chunk of her
that knew how to love as a human
and left her with shirts devoid of his form
and gradually losing his scent,
fragmented memories that slip
through fingers like sand,
and a room full of paintings
that she cannot bring herself
to uncover.
Mar 2, 2014
Mar 2, 2014 at 9:47 PM UTC
You are such a fearless thing
in your twenties now and still alive
when I got that bike seat for you and me
to travel around on the back for all to see
Man I peddled fast on busy streets
with you cooing on the back seat
you loved the speed
so fearless indeed
Then that day that we were on our way
for your mothers to mine
down that steep hill with all the ramps
of many gradients unkind
We hit that rather big speed bump
and with an unnatural clunk
I knew something was amiss
I stopped, got off, goodness the seat was junk
There you were learning over
one of the supports were broken and gone
yet you smiled at me, my non plus tike
my sweet baby on my bike
By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris
May 14, 2014
May 14, 2014 at 9:34 AM UTC
Such a wind today! The air
seems almost solid. Impossible
to go out in it.
Swifts invoking anti-gravity
lean on the air with sickle wings,
slice upward through it;
hang weightless at the peak,
then accepting the pull of earth,
hurtle downhill on kamikaze ski-run,
a mutual slalom, each avoiding
a hundred twisting obstacles;
alter their angle to the air, and rise again
up invisible gradients,
a swooping, soaring ballet with the wind,
its complex choreography
conceived in the tiny brains
of a hundred separate birds.
One pair, suddenly detached,
wings fluttering, wheel and plunge,
circle each other in an aerial
ice-dance pas de deux,
stunt kites without strings;
return to the flock, and are replaced
by another, and another, virtuoso couple.
The whole etherial stage is full
of improvisational star turns.
Such a wind! Impossible
for this earthbound human
to go out in it.
I'll stay and watch the show.
Apr 27, 2016
Apr 27, 2016 at 10:10 AM UTC
The sun sets gentle as it is painted
and painted over,
a portrait of sliding sky.
in gradients too slow for
notice the painter erase the day's melodies
brooding all the
while the sky finishes its fall
onto the rising night.
He is a quiet man, all
calloused hands, stained forearms,
more accustomed to solitude than
the daylight of scrutiny.
With the precision of an almanac,
the painter finishes, canvas cleaned
of its light and
sliding quiet beneath his blanket of tattered stars,
the man waits
in hope, that tender lunacy,
to find the lady who resides in the corners of his dreams.
He longs to touch her outside his mind's eye,
but all too soon he is asleep
and she is nowhere to be found.
His breathing evens out and
rising unconscious from the bed,
he shuffles towards the canvas.
Sitting picturesque before the easel,
he eases the woman into existence,
champagne beneath his brush.
She never stays longs, though,
leaving with the drop
of her mimosa glass,
bleeding orange onto background and body;
he rushes to catch her oils as she
drips between his fingers.
The painter sighs deep
and begins to cover his work.
Every night his heart breaks
as he paints and paints her over.
When he finally wakes,
dropping the shredded sky from his frame,
he finds the canvas inexplicably different
than how it was left.
It will be forever, it seems,
until their two shadows will be allowed to meet,
concrete as a realist's ache
for resolution.
May 3, 2013
May 3, 2013 at 2:43 PM UTC
Just let these feelings
sit inside
and subside
let the tried and true
come to you
through the two
rules of this life
One
there is no rival
for love
Two
there is no love
if you can't face it
embrace it
UPPER CASE IT
because if you can't
give it
than prepare to live
a life
of receiving but not having
and traipse the edge of the knife
sort of like
a tightrope act
walked until cracked
in half complete
on cold concrete
with no one to say
goodbye to.
No-one would even remember you.
Love is the lens we see ourselves through
and it will all, one day, come into focus.
None of this 'meet and greet' hocus pocus,
life is an encounter
that you step up our back down to
but if you can come up,
then you will not go back down, you
are ten seconds of sunshine
in a night where no-one can find
anything,
you are the something,
you are the exception
we connect ourselves by strings
like hearts made of tin
there will be lonely days
when the path ahead
splays out like
a million highways.
But you can be a moonbeam
by which everything that would seem
impassable,
insurmountable
like boot set in dirt
so hard it takes up root
all these things
become moot
when held to your radiance
because there are gradients
in all life's creatures
but the greatest teachers
ever summoned to our side
will be our reflection
in the pond
do not abscond from this sight
you will die...
if you do not fight.
Alright?
Dec 27, 2014
Dec 27, 2014 at 1:37 AM UTC
*prancing about on your
illustrious painted words
finely tuned elusive emotions
that leap from the heart
my soul immersed in fine
pomegranate wine's
effervescence, glissading
upon silken grassy gradients
of yesteryear's intentions
romancing the spirit's
rhythm'd inclinations
within this enchantment
of poetic's movements tempo
inhaling vapor'd affinity of
ecstasy's diaphanous illusions
bumble'd upon convictions
confection'd sensibilities
floating on celestial air's divine
wafting impulses
ecstatically dying a little death
with each fine tuned melody
dancing in the cadence of *****
nectar'd blissful notes
of poesy's mesmerizing etchings
upon a soulful caress*
Feb 20, 2014
Feb 20, 2014 at 8:59 AM UTC
I hadn't heard the wind blow in a few weeks. I bricked myself within the eight walls of my cell, I turned off the lights, and I drowned in the dark. Nothing protruding other than glimpses of my rafters, and two sets of stairs on either side of me, but I wouldn't dare use them. In fact, I had soon forgotten they even existed, I was blind to any escape from the infinity surrounding me. I couldn't breathe without poisoning myself, and I couldn't swallow without glass bottles prying my lips from each other. Repetition became an excuse, re-reading the tales trailing the left side of my left arm, rose colored love stories in flat black. Unfinished, unpredictable, but they are mine, and I know what follows. Broken windows, one in particular, and my silhouette in the star shaped shards barely intact. That's what made me feel alive, those simple moments filled with tint gradients, wishing I had never seen your trapping smile. Wishing you had never taken place of all the elements around me. This infinity is just a room. This room has a light switch, and two sets of stairs. This is just a chair, and my window is just open, and I miss when the wind would blow, because it was just you breathing.
Oct 7, 2013
Oct 7, 2013 at 11:47 AM UTC
Measure me.
Can you quantify the gradients of emotions
I spin through daily?
If I awake from years of passivity,
will you still know how to walk through years of
conversation and growth?
I hate when
I call upon the gods of anxious hearts,
The ones who have troubled
every decision you have made.
They make your commute from genuine emotions
to a grey, murky house full of
players pretending to be teams,
blue's pretending to be rainbows,
and persons pretending to be people.
Come here and hold my hands.
Mine have been missing their fingerprints
for countless lifetimes.
Touch my incomplete, hungry dreams.
You alone can.
I alone can.
Can I?
Nov 3, 2019
Nov 3, 2019 at 9:51 PM UTC
What else can I cover my mouth with
Other than clear, cherry-flavored lip balm?
It stains, otherwise
Goes where I ask it not to go
Its' gradients are as spread and varying as strands on a feather
I prefer, to be different, to taste better than I look
After all, it's my story that always wins
It was never Red Riding Hood
But the enigma beneath the cloak
I am one of those girls
Hairy and imperfectly coiffed
Veiled in nudes, beiges, and understatements
When men look at me, I wonder what their gazes snag on
There's no snare of life about me except the berry on my fingers and toes
These chipped, bright nails are my calling card
Through the cracks in the polished veneer you can see
**** me filtering through
I hide my hands , tuck the berry away
This is not what I want you to see
Sep 14, 2015
Sep 14, 2015 at 9:24 PM UTC
in dreams, her heels dig into the soft overlap
between ocean and beach, an underbelly
she ebbs and flows to phantom melodies
of spectral murmurs, un-broken.
she is adrift, with the liberation of seabirds
amidst salty, swirling sea breezes
all gradients of blues poured over ice,
and the cocktail of fluttering wings, beating, pumping
like an undamaged heart.
Mar 14, 2016
Mar 14, 2016 at 12:04 AM UTC