"halving" poems
1. Sunlight
There was a sunlit absence.
The helmeted pump in the yard
heated its iron,
water honeyed
in the slung bucket
and the sun stood
like a griddle cooling
against the wall
of each long afternoon.
So, her hands scuffled
over the bakeboard,
the reddening stove
sent its plaque of heat
against her where she stood
in a floury apron
by the window.
Now she dusts the board
with a goose's wing,
now sits, broad-lapped,
with whitened nails
and measling shins:
here is a space
again, the scone rising
to the tick of two clocks.
And here is love
like a tinsmith's scoop
sunk past its gleam
in the meal-bin.
2. The Seed Cutters
They seem hundreds of years away. Brueghel,
You'll know them if I can get them true.
They kneel under the hedge in a half-circle
Behind a windbreak wind is breaking through.
They are the seed cutters. The tuck and frill
Of leaf-sprout is on the seed potates
Buried under that straw. With time to ****
They are taking their time. Each sharp knife goes
Lazily halving each root that falls apart
In the palm of the hand: a milky gleam,
And, at the centre, a dark watermark.
Oh, calendar customs! Under the broom
Yellowing over them, compose the frieze
With all of us there, our anonymities.
4.9k
*Feelin’ like a new model keepin’ thoughts in a safe
Nothin’ but new beginnings while maintainin’ the faith
Of better days ahead, walkin’ away instead
The world on my shoulders while walkin’ on eggshells
Difficult steps lead to redemption, no need for attention
Dowsin’ my sorrows in drinks with a fear of reinvention
Weakened souls lackin’ ambition – ones that we attend to
Distracted by the means to makin’ profit
Pharaohs and kings reach Ozymandias
Castle of the manliest reduced to rubble
Inspiration's a privilege, the uninitiated struggle
Lookin’ to the stars closer to Mercury
Celebrating longer than a single anniversary
Build the padlocked building blocks of the brain, preventin’ burglary
Intellect protection needs remedial advancement
Followin' the lessons and morals of real testaments
Crimson waters divided by Moses, halving the sea
Aidin’ people across, the shepherd leadin’ the sheep
Heated cycle of violence by disciples
De-escalated by the sacred teachings of the bible
Able to color-code their understandin’ with a cipher
Gifted in nature, minus robotics turnin’ sentient*
WE MARCH!
*Hand-in-hand in unison! A unit full of sin
But we protect the world from Judases,
Our doubts are in the wind
A state of peace we feel the crew is in
The rest will follow soon,
Our inner voice of hate is ludicrous
It sings a hollow tune.
Leavin' this place without askin' just where the exit is,
Keep a steady pace as we're headin' right into exodus.
Lessons are taught to help you rise from the fall,
Nirvana awaitin' – you better answer the call.*
May 23, 2016
May 23, 2016 at 9:53 AM UTC
Poetry is always the epicenter of my expressions,
My soul's sole extension
The way I give subvention
To my tension
To give confession to my transgression
But my pen is now empty
The bottle tempts me
I pour my drink to fill
Only to find the emptiness of the glass
Matches the emptiness of the heart
The emptiness of the pen
My mind as blank as paper
My thoughts fleeting as vapor
All I can think is how I miss her
How I miss her voice that's been gone so long
How I miss the care she would give to me
How I regret that I would forget
Just how much she meant to me
& now I lament what should have prevented
Halving my heart and her heart
Never to be together because I blew it
I blew it
& I can't stop writing about you, my friend
but there are only so many words
They cannot transform this pain
They only perform for others to read
& that will not make me whole again...
So here's to the good years poetry has brought me
Here's to the good memories of you and I
I say goodbye to what once was
Because it just hurts to write
I only long to be numb
Aug 6, 2018
Aug 6, 2018 at 3:13 PM UTC
When I was seventeen I thought I knew love.
I thought it came naturally, like you didn't have to seek it.
And you couldn't hide from it.
When I was seven I looked my mom right in her blue eyes and said
"Nobody ever tells you that the person you love is the most dangerous."
This was after He died.
My grandmother literally broke my grandfather's heart by sleeping with the priest on Sunday while the children drawing
Jesus closed their eyes and hoped that their prayers would save them from Goliath.
I started a rumor when I was younger that if you layed with your ear to the grass above his grave you could still hear
him reciting love letters.
Listen closely, I'm writing in whispers
until the whispers become whispers
and I want to keep halving myself
until the halves become something salvageable.
If I talked to you today you would tell me that I was the worst person
to try and save.
Every morning I'd wake up with new scars and you in my ear.
Telling me that you love me as much as you can love a person
as much as a person can love a person as much as my father loved my mother
and as much as my mother loved herself.
(Never enough).
When I was thirteen I got my first detention for talking too loudly,
now when I speak, eyes widen and mouths open.
I wish nobody quieted me down.
Because now the only words I know are apologetic and giving
and full of goodbye.
Nobody ever tells you that the person you love will be the person who lives.
Nobody ever tells you that God is a child with a serotonin imbalance and a
bad sense of humor.
Nobody ever tells you that love is Goliath.
Nobody ever told David to use his hands.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 8:39 PM UTC
Criss-cross of arteries unclaimed in Lost and Found.
Accidental knots bound together by frayed ends.
Applesauce and pork chops may be ******* up logic,
but I'm so glad we are friends.
A cactus ***** can be the catalyst of an unspoken understanding.
We bleed our bloods into each other until the gaps are just the abstract outlines of us.
Failed to falter on this landing -
Let's hold hands and jump these last few steps.
Where every other shallow swimmer surfaced half-bloated by their purpose,
we've maintained our depth.
Half-swimming, half-drowning;
all while halving the latest trends.
Just in case I haven't mentioned it already;
I'm so glad that we're friends.
Exhausted by the constant exasperation of our own attempts to exaggerate self-condemnation.
It's so nice to find a place to rest.
BFF, BFFLE, BIEH.
Hey,
how're you doing there bestie?
I get it.
You get it.
We get it.
It's gotten.
All our fondest memories are the ones all but forgotten.
Hearts on ice.
Hearts in grass.
Hearts as apple-shaped shards of glass.
We stand here together on the sharpest edge.
I ******* love you guys.
I'm so glad we're friends.
Nov 7, 2015
Nov 7, 2015 at 11:42 PM UTC
i'm not writing, more or less simply knitting, a jumper -
which is more than just a mere poem.
the comfort allowance, listening to delta goodrem
and i love pop,
more than a rugby
player aged ~20,
mind you,
sometimes labouring over one
selfie with 20 Chinese to match
makes you feel oh so good -
it took those 20 Chinese
the same effort - pretty white girl
and blonde syndrome,
eastern Europe gets a sniff
and simply says: well, that' **** isn't it?
the days that came with
the motto: we need astronauts more than
tourists...
days like these i rather take selfies
of the sleeper than write something...
and i do...
i fiddle on the roof
and cartoon the rest...
because that matters.
pristine Australian and the gimmicks
worthy of South Korean singalongs....
next in line
***** duped Jews...
whenever the gentleman
lost hist top-hat and the confectioner glyph typo -
me and an audience?
as in a day job?
i don't mind...
d'ah la la la...
and the piano....
these days are rare....
having enough words
in-tune with all others...
of such days
i say: sometimes a picture revitalises the lost words....
and when encouraged
a slip-up of beckoning...
readied for an avalanche -
to make writing into
knitting a jumper or a scarf...
equivalent...
in a society that deems Japanese culture
inquiries
as the righteous standards
to avoid the jobs of nursing and dentistry -
well...
we're in sure need of robotics
to ease off stress that our societies have
themselves halving demand...
sure, she's still there,
crazy naked and starving a kaleidoscope hope
of reminiscence
concerning a fear of spiders:
that do not weave webbing...
the size of your palm...
those ones, scary...
that context of x,
between agoraphobia minor
(in an urban setting)
and agoraphobia major
in an countryside setting -
phobia: or the intricate fear
when an antidote is due because of too much rationalism -
agoraphobia minor:
fear of being in an open space with too many people...
agoraphobia major:
fear of being in an open space
anticipating a congregation that never comes...
i'm enthralled by these compounds:
kindred of: lithium salts - or other compounds.
sometimes just a day with a selfie...
or a poem like this: an exercise in utilising language
to no grand scheme of making a profit:
rather an indentation, and nothing more.
Oct 10, 2016
Oct 10, 2016 at 8:55 PM UTC
There’s too little time.
To think that
by halving and halving and
halving again
this can be drawn out.
Somehow be avoided.
Death is no holographic dream.
It’s as real as circuitous
firing triggers of phosphene.
I see light suspended
in this final moment.
The tugging burin
etches away at the
last things it can shape.
Nov 14, 2011
Nov 14, 2011 at 8:32 AM UTC
Me, up on the snow-rock white glacial cliff hedges mountaineering my way in the moments-after-twilight-sweeping-black. Execrable cold, a death-making quiet, Not a seal, not a hare - this Earth of gelid death. I climbed out above the snow Where my expiration left sinuous brandings in the copper light. But the Weddell was siphoning the darkness to the katabatic deep valleys - piceous lees of the brightening umber - cleaving the moon in two like the split eye of a winter lynx. And I saw the penguins: Little specks of black in the limitless white - fifty together - obelisk-still. Their inaudible coo, they sat motionless, nearly mute, With creamsicle feet and amber-eyes, incomparably mum. I proceeded: not one chirped or swiveled its little fur cap. Black silent fragments of a black silent world. I hearkened in the barrens of the desiccate plains. While the wooly bears came from the sea to see of the silence. Slowly edges oozed out of the darkness. Then the moon ivory, porcelain, azure erupted Quietly, and halving to its heart and shot mist, shaking and the ocean opened, crying blue, And the giant mountains lunged-. I stopped Scrambling, as if up from my voice at the mouth of a nightmare, down towards the snow-rock, from their glacial sheaths, And came the penguins. There stood they, still-, silent, in the river of blue light: Creamsicle feet and amber-eyed Thwacking the ice in a grand fête While everywhere was gray and rimy. And still they did not speak above a breath, Not one squeeked or cawed, Their nestled shining beaks dug into the polar rim, Low into the valleys, in the blue shimmering rays - In throngs of the congested cities, living among the years, the faces, May I some day greet my memory in such solemn a world Into the estuaries and the azure-skies, curious wooly bears, Listening as the ice tholes.
Apr 11, 2017
Apr 11, 2017 at 4:40 AM UTC
Doe eyed, she looks up and asks,
"Will you carry me?"
Halving the rhythm of footfalls.
Honesty in his action hitting the
first notes of a lasting song, holding
fulfillment and fear in the
form of a little girl in arms.
Loyal through the swells- music and storm,
teaching things that he had no business knowing while
conquering things that had no business attacking him.
When the fork in the path
read that he must decide between
Rest and Moving On
he quietly comforted his aching heart
and limped further,
Apologizing all the while to the ***** faced child.
Her arms around his neck choking him, warmly.
Finding peace in their relentlessness,
certain that would
carry her when he no longer could,
taken with the idea that
death was the needed break he awaited.
May 13, 2014
May 13, 2014 at 2:27 PM UTC
The UK General Election has run its course.
A “win” for the Conservative Tories
With most votes and seats
Though they lost their parliamentary Majority,
And can only govern
By doing a deal with the Northern Irish DUP
Who oppose the rights of gays and women
And want to bring back hanging.
Yet Labour too are celebrating a win:
Halving the gap between the Tories and themselves
And winning loads of votes and seats.
OK they finished fifty odd seats behind,
But hey!
And then the Libdems “won” four more seats.
Plus The Greens held Brighton by a merry mile.
The Scottish Nationalists still got thirty five seats,
In spite of Nicola Sturgeon calling for
Another referendum on independence.
Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland got more seats too.
And the Welsh limited their damage by Labour.
“Winners” all, except for UKIP.
That’s politics.
Until the next election.
Which might be fairly soon.
Paul Butters
Jun 11, 2017
Jun 11, 2017 at 5:48 AM UTC
In the current financial system we never can
Know the future increase of money supply as
This is decided by a few powerful people who
Are not elected or chosen by the citizens, yet
Rig the game for the benefit of those in power
Monetary Inflation rate for 2024? We don’t know
Monetary Inflation rate for 2025? We don’t know
Therefore
Let’s gain surety by using a Bitcoin Standard
Which has a perfectly predictable issue rate
The new coin inflation rate for 2023? 1.78%
Inflation rate after halving in 2024? 1.1%
Knowing these figures exactly for the next
100 years and more gives people surety
And businesses foresight and stability
Stats on Bitcoin Issuance when this poem was written 6/14/23
Total amount of Bitcoins to be mined: 21,000,000
Bitcoins in Circulation: 19,401,756
Total Bitcoins left to mine: 1,598,024
Bitcoins Generated per day: 900
Bitcoins Generated per day after halving: 450
Jun 24, 2023
Jun 24, 2023 at 11:27 AM UTC
The inverse of lamba squared is ten thousand to the power of the heist
Your Presence has premiere rhythm; Substitute halving my health
Estuary bearing burden standing true grit
Loaded dice humanity Undertaken uneath
forsaken aether Fluoridated month
Perfect posse palpitating puncture buck shot Higher than an ambush ambassador
Ceasing the sky fills wounded knee high to smokescreen rising Picking golden stunning silence
Mesmerizing Ocean wind wild card crying colour
All I want is form, yew grows always happy
Death defying lateral trial Destiny Timings
Legendary League of Ten thousand feet Emissary Ameliorate Stark inebriety
phantoms fathom cat and mouse Sanctuary in Sensory
Hustle bustle Gravity’s Blasting Muscle Pulses Corpuscles To Alleviate
Spiraling Carcass harness the sieve erase the harvest remove the artist’s grin
Smirk at Graves and hunt their Twisted Fates
Jan 12, 2016
Jan 12, 2016 at 12:11 AM UTC
I am in need of litmus paper;
A wriggling creature indeterminately featured follows,
It does not sit nor stand no feet nor hands just wriggling waving scribbling in goopy slop, no stops
The smell of burning band-aids trailing in its wake.
Savage monstrous floatation above a tile sea,
Its motions are elegantly sick, delightful barf,
And I think I am thinking I'd like to know what it thinks,
But then, I know I should never truly know.
I am in need of litmus paper.
Is it an acid, base, or an accidental space
Filled, yet out of place, a dogma to my face?
Recurrent in its situation, killed once, but a reactivation?
I am in need of litmus paper.
Somewhere, I find, I am in the trail it leaves behind.
In this sign, I am afraid.
As it situates, conscious or unconsious,
Wriggling along, regurgitating from behind itself over and over again,
Halving itself, then fusing whole again,
It stares ahead, using an invisible force, inward eyes inside a blank face, to its next traversed inch in the slimy tiles.
And I think,
I need litmus paper.
Feb 20, 2013
Feb 20, 2013 at 3:20 PM UTC
feverish wholes, isometric wonders
oscillating and halving on asunder
a smillet of terror, a made-up fear
false like the pattern and words you hear
May 26, 2025
May 26, 2025 at 6:34 PM UTC
Me, up on the snow-rock white glacial cliff hedges mountaineering my way in the moments-after-twilight-sweeping-black. Execrable cold, a death-making quiet, Not a seal, not a hare - this Earth of gelid death. I climbed out above the snow Where my expiration left sinuous brandings in the copper light. But the Weddell was siphoning the darkness to the katabatic deep valleys - piceous lees of the brightening umber - cleaving the moon in two like the split eye of a winter lynx. And I saw the penguins: Little specks of black in the limitless white - fifty together - obelisk-still. Their inaudible coo, they sat motionless, nearly mute, With creamsicle feet and amber-eyes, incomparably mum. I proceeded: not one chirped or swiveled its little fur cap. Black silent fragments of a black silent world. I hearkened in the barrens of the desiccate plains. While the wooly bears came from the sea to see of the silence. Slowly edges oozed out of the darkness. Then the moon ivory, porcelain, azure erupted Quietly, and halving to its heart and shot mist, shaking and the ocean opened, crying blue, And the giant mountains lunged-. I stopped Scrambling, as if up from my voice at the mouth of a nightmare, down towards the snow-rock, from their glacial sheaths, And came the penguins. There stood they, still-, silent, in the river of blue light: Creamsicle feet and amber-eyed Thwacking the ice in a grand fête While everywhere was gray and rimy. And still they did not speak above a breath, Not one squeeked or cawed, Their nestled shining beaks dug into the polar rim, Low into the valleys, in the blue shimmering rays - In throngs of the congested cities, living among the years, the faces, May I some day greet my memory in such solemn a world Into the estuaries and the azure-skies, curious wooly bears, Listening as the ice tholes.
Apr 11, 2017
Apr 11, 2017 at 4:42 AM UTC
Bitter grot,
daily grey hemlock pulp
wavy lays and apple flesh
at lull.
Brain floating static,
the kind that builds
in shoulder muscle
pushing through an image
mostly null
and void--
a happiness inherent in
South Korean absence
beaten to death by
self & blood & head--
a black that follows everything
in late class hurried laundry pickings
red and blue striped glass
of smoke & life & pine.
Needles ***** the sides of aether sighs
Halving forests by signing
American english bible verses
to the sky.
The path is inside
beside the others.
Content ears
hear nothing new.
Mar 18, 2014
Mar 18, 2014 at 12:55 AM UTC
We'll meet landscapes golden,
Gently folding round,
Halving,
Hiding lifetimes.
Draw the wheat around.
Sing me to sleep...
Sunlight,
Through green and blue,
Haloed round you.
"Here, the divine."
Whisper into fire
Gently,
Burning sound -
Silence.
All the words jealous under my tongue,
Craving sleep.
Drifting
Through green and blue,
I find you.
"Here, the divine."
Jan 22, 2016
Jan 22, 2016 at 5:13 PM UTC
Life is one long strain of chemical sequence
Compiled in a trans neurological equation
Beginning with alpha and ending in binary
Infinitesimal mathematical truth of
Eternal division, internal tessellation of
Fission, fissures, halving into countless universes
Of possibility till nothing is left but the remainder,
Parts of the whole,
Expanding, not imploding, slow death
Spherical dimensions beyond
Comprehension
Improbable inventions,
Explosive beginnings with no beginning,
Particles creating life, cellular,
Molecular, birth in light,
Death in darkness
Ideas formed from eternal truths,
Theorems not yet disproved.
Cycles of growth and decay,
Meaningless processing
Lead those capable of thought
To the forever struggle of
Why.
Sep 29, 2016
Sep 29, 2016 at 12:31 AM UTC
In the Bitcoin mathematics
The equations work just right
They add up perfect every day
And they do the same at night
Adding data to the Timechain
Like clockwork, line by line
A ledger of all transactions
And it always adds up fine
Yes, the Bitcoin mathematics
To adjust the block creation
Keeps it close to six per hour
Though spread across all nations
And the math for bitcoin halving
Is elegant, exact, and true
It keeps the issue limited
Which adds up for me and you
Trust the math and trust the code
As Bitcoin keeps on growing
The equations add up neatly
So our money keeps on flowing
Jan 8, 2024
Jan 8, 2024 at 9:42 AM UTC
there is a cloud over my head tonight
and I keeping biting down on my lip
the blood is a red only seen
when halving a watermelon
that is perfectly ripe
I will eat till my stomach bleeds
seeing how far I can choke up the seeds
cheering as they take flight
I can only sleep in the dark
and I break my own heart
to dim the light
there is a dead plant
on my front porch
that I keep watering
out of habit
out of curiosity
out of desperation
I want to watch something grow
in front of me
something to hold in my hands
something
anything that I have made on my own
when all hope is lost
I want to be the one to bring life
back into a comfortable home
even if that means
that I live alone
and end up just a lonely box of bones
Aug 2, 2014
Aug 2, 2014 at 1:21 AM UTC
New coins come to those who add
Transactions to each new block
This started out as 50 coins
Every 10 minutes around the clock
7200 Bitcoin - average, each day
Over two million in each year
And at block 210,000
The first halving was here
HALF of all bitcoins already mined
Then the reward halved to 25...
Coins for each new block reward
And bitcoin continued to thrive
Four more years, block 420,000
And then cut in half once more
Bitcoin reward down to 12.5
But price continued to soar
At block 630,000, cut to 6.25
The supply continues to shrink
You may want to get some soon
As it’s catching on, I think
Now we approach block 840,000
A critical juncture in time
Rewards will “half” to 3.125
As the price continues to climb
Mar 20, 2024
Mar 20, 2024 at 11:33 AM UTC
barely spoken with my book open
wearing aprons with hay fever in full affect
woke up the neighbours four doors down with the shouting
and she calls me unreasonable
did they water this ******* aloe vera plant
or am I making up that it looks dry
shifting through these papers and the paperclip
that's holding everything together
stabbed into the tip of my thumb
and I can't afford my daughters wedding
brilliant that. cats that spat,
sat next to the lamp that leaks lies
like her on the third wine
she used to burn the union jack
now she laughs aleesha or mahil
because they don't look like
jack, jill me or him.
close the books, ask the waiter
bring my breakfast in the morning
under the name surrender
call the banks, tell the teller
rebuild my economy
without the one percenters
we can't agree
which is worse
surrendering
or halving our net worth.
she wants a divorce
who could blame her
she wanted a husband
and we left her in labour
Aug 18, 2019
Aug 18, 2019 at 1:25 PM UTC
Brittle and Bound,
The pain never dies,
Reiterate, reborn,
A sight for old eyes.
A cliff, an edge,
When will it all end?
Halving halves,
The pain never lends.
Jan 18, 2019
Jan 18, 2019 at 9:24 AM UTC
He was asking for an accident
And he had asked for it so long
It was quiet conspicuity
It was a whisper of a song
And whether mid-day,
night, or morning
I could have sworn that it had gone
"Let me in, let me in"
I could have sworn that it had gone
"Let it out, let it out"
I could have sworn that it had gone
"Pick it up, put it down,"
It was frightened ambiguity
Dandelioning along
It was frozen in the postal-state
It was a letter never drawn
Tremors halving contiguity
Whatever I'd like, whatever I'd like
Tomorrow towards the turnpike's tongue
It was quiet, but I knew it wasn't right
Sep 3, 2021
Sep 3, 2021 at 7:57 PM UTC
How are you having a whole of whats halving are you god do you assimalte what im renovating and rediscovering what ive excavated so far is all in intensity the duration of a whole life rent with hell im imagining what life would have been if i ever learned to live without but i never did and this is why im dead between everything
Nothing is close to what i need
Waiting for the reaper to name me
Waiting for your darkesss to need me
Waiting for the light to redeem me
And nothing ever bleeds the same
You are chemically indoctrinated
By the stains of your lamented womb
And a callous widowed bystander
In the heart of the gold in my tomb
Death is the savior in memory
and the coldest glass before revival
Give me.something to love again
Aug 18, 2017
Aug 18, 2017 at 2:52 AM UTC