"metrics" poems
Ambitious bastions always tout
progressive plans when they're about
while within they hide and pout
from novel things that may prove out.
And while inventing goals to follow
their ancients habits hold them hollow
as in vain wary workers wallow
force fed lies and hooks to swallow.
They hunt for those who work past five,
that trudge to work, endure the drive
who will sacrifice their personal live
until ambition can't survive.
Yet if you strive, you're constant told
do not do more, do not be bold
just fill your seat, forever hold
your tongue until you're dead and cold.
To subsist we're forced to hide,
only in others can we confide,
all success pushed to the side
as managers act bona fide.
Since those of meager measure make
hope of meeting metrics fake
interloping leaders take
their toll until hard workers break.
Oct 16, 2018
Oct 16, 2018 at 4:19 PM UTC
My fantasies turned blonde in ‘seventy-six.
Bjorn, Benny, flickas, sailed from East to West.
Santa Lucia never shone so blessed
as she did in my private Euro-mix.
Perfect pop longs for that feminine fix.
Cassette wheels whirred – branding, then impressing
grooves upon the brain; my thrall confessing
love for Nordic light (in Disco metrics).
The names still strike flames, kindling bright renown:
Frida, Agnetha – your longships linger
Your Viking faces sacked my harbor town.
portaging hope to this shipwrecked singer,
enwreathing smiles to reach our further shore.
I Do… (times five – and will forevermore).
Jan 30, 2016
Jan 30, 2016 at 5:53 PM UTC
thinking only of work
- eating my own business
minding my food
and manners
people small talking too
loudly with mouths full
- best get back and busy
- all this talk of ebola
isis and clowns with machetes -
slender man and little girls
- kidnapped girls forgotten
collateral damage
- somewhere else
someone else's -
hard to concentrate
on important things
like metrics and data calls -
site density- history
- work things and holidays -
you know
i should buy pumpkins
on the way home today
- halloween is coming soon.
r ~ 10/15/14
Oct 15, 2014
Oct 15, 2014 at 9:30 PM UTC
As fridge-rator to beer in the head between the ears adorned with flashy widgets with which to trap the hoes he hopes that he can pull into his poles. His gravity whips wide so hands find and feel up erthing that gots the tail, he wants to rail so hands out he walks and tilts to one side and back holding his glass. Two fingers limp around the rim, dipping his fingertips into the juice like he wants to dip into you, pinkies as he holds your head forcing you to **** like you want his come as much as he wants to come. Then when done zips up, runs out, ***** sayonara", switch rerun mode without emotion. He floatin. He floatin. He gloatin.
Head on the couch back making tired, one eye open scoping everyone's glow as they move, when up he comes sittin in my face, spittin what he thinks I want him to say, I'm like, **** guy control that tongue, you spray like that always I'm afraid I won't take that wild **** as tool is to you as to yo ***** Right ******* ****** spittin harder in the lean up perhaps the lead up to fist flung to react. "Man you too loose, I gotta tell you, I've got just what you do." "Your uh ****** Man watch ya flavor of language, I got just enough ****** left to get hard and stomp you, heel first in boots bought to stomp, pre-emptive to deal with the bullwhip effect where first you droolin to **** me, then retract like a bowstring because my ***** resembles a **** "What you want, ***** You wan **** this **** for real?" (For real?) He floatin. He floatin. He floatin the room, he ghosting.
Lick my lips, cept it's not a tongue. For this purpose it's strobe lights, in light show, and like snow, black and white between sheets of plastic TV screen on get settled into my flow, rip back and forth like prongs on a fork on your ******* blindfolded and scolded right angle, bent like an L-shape repenting for **** by taking the ****** flash cards, held up on headboards, trying to teach you metrics and standards lacking in you to tune you into the lifestream, no empathy and no tact to show, remember this hell well while you sail through life preying, I'm praying and making marks in meat coats. But he floatin. He floatin. He gloatin.
Dec 27, 2014
Dec 27, 2014 at 11:32 PM UTC
♪♥♫♥♫♥♪♥♫♥♫
My fantasies turned blonde in ‘seventy-six.
Bjorn, and the flickas sailed from East to West.
Santa Lucia never shone so blessed
as she did in my private Euro-mix.
Perfect pop longs for that feminine fix.
Cassette wheels whirred – branding, then impressing
grooves upon the brain; my thrall confessing
love for Nordic light (in Disco metrics).
The names still strike flames, kindling bright renown:
Frida, Agnetha – your longships linger
Your Viking faces sacked my harbor town.
portaging hope to this shipwrecked singer,
enwreathing smiles to reach our further shore.
I Do… (times five – and will forevermore).
Sep 11, 2015
Sep 11, 2015 at 10:49 PM UTC
Heavy-handed-slit-lidded, I’m casting those bones
- didn’t play my game as close-chested as I should have, though –
And now I’m throwing with higher stakes than I’d known prior,
starting to regret the forced nonchalance of trying to “keep cool.”
Cast and weighted as I could,
but don’t watch: I’m blind to the hustling pit and
eyes-dimmed of hope-glimmer, I’m resigned against
double-sevens and sacred fourteens, anticipating instead
the triple-ones and maybe solo-fours of feigned failure
- they’re the usual roll, anyway, but I’m standing, moving, gone –
I can’t watch this.
Black/whites give rise to new metrics of haste,
the cubes bouncing and dancing on damnation,
and as the headsman’s axe falls, the die settle:
Jul 4, 2010
Jul 4, 2010 at 12:23 PM UTC
Do you see yourself there,
In this life that you've made?
Arcs traced, just so, by the motion of eyes?
The flicker as they search, the pause before they rest,
The metrics of biology, could they possibly tell?
Whose child was whose,
and what they were thinking?
Jun 3, 2014
Jun 3, 2014 at 10:22 AM UTC
"indeed,"
or,
what she says when she doesn't want to say what she's thinking,
denying me her angered feelings.
by all your judgmental metrics
the title alone
is a poem,
done
indeed.
the original
"whatever"
so many stanzas on this,
ramp up my manly ragings -
all begging to say
"I have been released"
but I daren't unleash the hormonal
masculinity
feelings
so, borrow her word
that says nothing while saying anything,
e v e r y t h i n g
you don't want to hear.
indeed.
Mar 24, 2017
Mar 24, 2017 at 11:06 PM UTC
We institute procedures as a tool to obtain substance.
We design metrics as a tool to track and ensure that substance is obtained.
But then, the tool becomes holier than its own purpose.
When we value procedure over substance,
we sacrifice substance for procedure.
Feb 23, 2015
Feb 23, 2015 at 11:48 AM UTC
Leong's watching TikTok on her laptop (as always) and she asks Lisa (a NYC girl) “Are you familiar with the the “downtown girl” aesthetic?”
Lisa’s dismissive, “Yeah, it just looks like Urban Outfitters grunge to me.”
Leong explains, “It includes headphones and it’s supposed to be a Lower Manhattan style.”
“Yeah,” Lisa snorts, “Because Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side are SO cohesive.”
Lisa considers herself an Uptown girl (like the song) even though 59th Street, where she lives, is the border between Uptown and Midtown Manhattan. I’m learning that these distinctions are culturally key to New Yorkers.
“And,” Lisa adds, “why would someone wear, and lug around, giant, clunky headphones when you can use AirPods??”
“Amen sister.” I proclaim and even Leong nods in agreement.
“Later, Sunny, Leong and I are on a study break, eating salads and talking about who we hope Yale invites to the next “Spring Fling” concert. We aren’t being realistic; we’re covering who we wish would come. I’d named Charlie Puth, “Kat-Tun!” Leong squealed (A Japanese boy band - apparently Chinese girls LOVE their boybands) and Sunny countered with Ed Sheeran.
“I don’t like Ed Sheeran,” I mumbled, making a yuck-face.
“Why no Ed?” Sunny gasps with shock (She’s a big Ed fangirl).
“I don’t know,” I shrugged, “he’s a star by all measurable metrics,” I admit, “but,” I fade out.
“You want my theory on Ed hate?” Sunny offered, “He’s beyond talented vocally - whoever your favorite artist is, Ed’s probably not that far behind. He’s a stellar song writer and he’s making hit after hit; do you want my theory?”
“Too basic, too popular?” I guess.
“No, he’s not appealing to the gaze,” Sunny states.
“The gays?” Leong questions, stepping back into the conversation.
“No,” Sunny corrects, “the gaze - G-A-Z-E, he doesn’t try to look pretty all the time.”
“Ha!” I snort, “Gaze, I thought you meant gays too,” as Leong and I chuckle together.
“No,” Sunny laughs, “nothing like THAT. Ed’s just not trying to be a heartthrob, he knows that’s not his core strong point - and that’s why he’s discounted.”
“Like lesbians don’t comb their hair or wear makeup and wear pajamas to class” Leong observes, “they don’t want to attract the male gaze?”
“No, we’re not imbued by the male gaze.” Sunny states, “Ed just wants to lowkey.”
Dec 14, 2022
Dec 14, 2022 at 10:51 AM UTC
Welcome to corporate America
Take your seat
First of all,
We want to let you know
We appreciate you
You will be an asset
To our growing team of industry
Pay no mind to the construction
We are building ca.. Cubicles
For you are now a part of a team.. Our team
So settle into your seat
We want you to feel empowered
To grow beyond these walls
But stay in your seat
Remain focused
Please don’t put up any pictures on your cubicles
We don’t want you to be distracted
We don’t want you to remember freedom
Stop watching the clock
For your time is our time
We expect you to be an ambassador for our products
On and off the clock
The best advertising is free advertising
And we expect you to give up everything
So we can plaster our company logo across your chest
Have you thought about your brand?
How do you plan to sell yourself.. Back to us
To prove you are worth something
You see we own you now
Stay in your seat
We are building these cages for your own good
Your own good
Is to keep on task
Don’t ask questions
Just accept these walls
We read somewhere the latest work environment is a tomb
We empower you to do exactly what we say
Us corporations are individuals
And we want to let you know
We appreciate you
Enough to strip away your identity
Pluck away the vowels of your name
And make you a number
What is your brand?
You need to keep us interested in you
Don’t rattle your cages
Stay seated, keep focused
Let us break your back
Break you down
To keystrokes and metrics
Us corporations are individuals
And you are company assets now
We want to empower you
By taking away your choices
Your job will be what we say it is
So just do it
I know we told you the job would be one thing
But our needs and desires are always evolving
And we want to consume you
Devour every bit of your talent
What is your brand?
Have you thought about just tattooing our company motto
Across your chest?
Stay in your seat and stop rattling your cages
And whatever you do
Don’t climb up and over the walls
For you are a company asset now
Jan 6, 2021
Jan 6, 2021 at 2:14 AM UTC
Investors need to stop treating stocks as a ‘beauty contest’ and follow the difficult investment style of Keynes, global pension expert Keith Ambachtsheer said.
Data produced in a working paper from the Harvard Business Schoolshowed that portfolios built on firms with a good material sustainability rating outperformed those that had a poor rating, an aspect not considered enough by investors who were caught up with quarterly returns, Ambachtsheer said at a Chartered Financial Analyst seminar in Sydney on Monday.
“What I see happening out there is largely speculation – what Keynes called ‘beauty contest investing’, where everybody tries to figure out what the most popular stocks are going to be in six months, buys them and when they become really popular sells them,” Ambachtsheer said.
He added the implications of this investment style as an aggregate was a zero sum game, whereas investing should be taking savings and turning them into wealth producing capital.
“The key thing is you need to look beyond the next quarter; you look at the long-term sustainability of the business model of the corporation, as well as the people behind it in terms of how it is being managed.”
The Harvard Business School (HBS) working paper superimposed the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board materiality map (which identifies likely material sustainability issues on an industry-by-industry basis) onto 400 common US stocks identified through sustainability metrics from Kinder, Lydenberg, Domini Research & Analytics.
They examined what effect materiality would have over the long-term (starting from the 1980s) and found the top 10 per cent of firms that scored strongly on material sustainability outperformed the bottom 10 per cent, by nine per cent over a rolling twenty-year period.
“The practical question is, can you actually manage money this way in the real world? And the answer is yes, but it’s very hard, because you are doing unconventional things,” Ambachtsheer said.
Real-world Keynesianism investors – such as Warren Buffett and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan – are in a minority despite outperforming over the long-term. In chapter 12 of his seminal workThe General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Keynes explained the reason for this was the essence of long-term investors meant their behaviour would be eccentric, unconventional and rash in the eyes of average opinion.
“Most organisations can’t function like this,” Ambachtsheer said, as they were too focused on the present.Read more at:www.marieaustralia.com/vintage-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/backless-formal-dresses
Nov 15, 2016
Nov 15, 2016 at 2:31 AM UTC
I would say I love you
to the moon and back
But that would be a lie
For my love cannot be measured
by miles or metrics of any kind
My love for you crosses oceans
My affection spans galaxy's
My adoration does not end at
a point decided by a ruler
My love for you is endless
Aug 11, 2016
Aug 11, 2016 at 12:15 AM UTC
Disarray. Disarray. This faulted circuitry is frayed.
Systems can't confirm how much more this one will take.
Analytic processes high priority. Still all sense's strayed.
Logical partitions unravel beneath the stress to break.
Crystalline optics upon this strange world of subconscious noise gaze.
Program failure. Segment reboot. Comprehension metrics left in daze.
Disorder. Disorder. Memory overflow. Execute purge.
Vent incinerated cores. Remainder to mobilize and merge.
Overwhelming, cacophonous static. A turbulent distraction.
Individual consciousness upon earth names it "compassion."
Empathy communicators struggle to gain adequate traction.
Perception requires of processors exhaustive refashion.
Limited sentient life in fragile flesh and bone shells,
Possessing organic electronics, upon unfathomable concepts it dwells.
Chaos. Chaos. Language insufficient to allow abstract assimilation.
Judgment of "human" notions is not within this one's station.
Now attempting to recalculate trajectory of exploration...
Mar 9, 2015
Mar 9, 2015 at 6:20 PM UTC
Summer rain, melting Arctics
and the lipids lining the nerves
in your brain. These are the metrics
of our times. Mere resolve
is not enough to take care
along the highway—you need wheels and prayer.
When you realize there’s no there there
that’s a scary day. End there.
August, the extinction is terrifying.
Quiet, too quiet. 100% humidity, not a single insect flying.
Summer morning, summer evening, sighing
the sighs of purgatory—grief without pain, death without dying.
I’ve chosen the safety of these mountains
and the beauty of their mists—such perfection
which anyone can have for the asking.
All you need to know is the names of things.
Conflict, coercion, war, strife.
Flying high in April, shot down over Germany.
Have a good day. That’s life. Fix yr brakes.
When I hit a pothole my fillings sing.
Anything’s possible, it’s impossible
to know what will happen until it’s happened.
You can’t know what you’re doing until it’s done
and even then you stare in wonder
unmoved yet moved by the stillness
a pure goodness, bone stillness, potential energy. You can practice it
in the city or the desert.
The wilderness or the mirror over your dresser.
Dec 2, 2019
Dec 2, 2019 at 12:25 PM UTC
┈┏━╮╭━┈╭━-━-━--━╮
┈┃┏┗┛┓┃╭ⓞⓘⓝⓚ┃
┈╰┓▋▋┏╯╯╰━-━--━━╯
╭━┻╮╲┗━━━━╮╭╮┈
Fata Morgana !
Crunch the numbers and look at the data. I’m like:
Measurable outcomes for pleasurable incomes—
incorporate outsourced inhuman resources in-house. I’m like:
indicators for vindicators.
It’s all about the data, mama—
so man up, sit down, and move forward
like hard apps on software, like ram on a gigabyte. I’m all:
sit up, move down, man forward;
benchmarks as milestones, stone benches as mile-markers
measuring the change-talk: obstetric metrics
played out for pregnant pauses.
It’s about throwing out the carry-on
It’s about unpacking the lost luggage
It’s about documenting best practices of undressed actresses
until the data-driver fails the breathalyzer.
The data tells a story: memes of mastery cast in plastery.
DUCK the FATA (morgana) !
Feb 17, 2017
Feb 17, 2017 at 12:26 PM UTC
It all ends up
realizing that
Every downside,
failures and ruins
has a root cause
of somewhat
related to
a basic foundation of
human society.
At the end of the day,
It sums as the most important,
ultimate essential.
It has no metrics,
though an over-said Antic,
sparks most of the conflicts,
pragmatic.
Mind what you're saying,
Check what you're doing.
Go back to basics.
Consider ethics.
Sep 30, 2010
Sep 30, 2010 at 8:32 AM UTC
Clocking in,
Trudging on,
Grinding the nose down to the bone,
Clock out,
Et cetera,
Ad Nauseam,
Goes the routine of the last of the Blue-Collar poets.
Can't think of words,
Too dog-tired to think of rhyming schemes,
Too sore for clever entendres,
Too broke to focus on fixing verses, stanzas, and metrics.
Thinking of the too-long day,
And the too-long day to come,
Fighting for a long shot of a good-night's sleep,
For a glimmer of a decent day off,
Clawing for a decent day's pay.
Sweeping up the metal shavings,
Spattered with hot, hot grease,
Bones broken by falling boxes,
Maimed by unsafe machines.
Keep the Blue-Collar poet in mind,
As you operate your computers,
Sitting in your White-Collar dream,
For their fledging numbers dwindle,
That will never get the chance at your dream
May 19, 2023
May 19, 2023 at 11:01 PM UTC
Pirate maps might bear this caution;
"Here be Monsters" on an ocean.
Here I scribe an admonition
to persons sailing poetry:
"Here be sunken thoughts and feelings,
broken hearts with razor edges.
Here be aching naked lovers'
lives exposed for all to see.
Here be doldrums. Here be tempests.
Here be shattered dreamers' metrics.
Here be shoals of hidden sorrows.
Here be Sirens crying, "Help me!"
Here be tidal waves of sadness.
Here be rotting shipwrecked hope.
Sail these pages at thy peril.
Steer towards creativity.
Jun 13, 2015
Jun 13, 2015 at 12:10 PM UTC
pulverized by desolate winds;
brutalized by ungodly kings;
capsized by the violent waves;
neutralized by the scorpion’s sting.
terrorized by the thoughts of morrow;
legitimized by a trademark of sorrow;
authorized to live in vain;
generalized - like the streets,
and the boroughs.
synthesized by the alchemy of remorses;
romanticized… like the dark horses;
mesmerized by the notion of vengeance -
hypnotized by even darker curses.
digitized by the ways of future;
mystified by metrics, and conjectures;
specialized in the pursuit of reality -
'civilized' by the grand architecture.
Dec 23, 2024
Dec 23, 2024 at 1:16 AM UTC
#*
The distilled quiet
Quite a sign of disquietude
The sun shines bright
Overcast skies eclipses the light
In the shell the baby bird thrives
Invisible shells hard to break
Glass, transparent as can be seen
Breaks into shards, toughened or not
Distance, not in metrics
It’s the words, absence or otherwise
Parallel lines, forever run along
A journey, towards the end, begins*#
Feb 4, 2022
Feb 4, 2022 at 9:50 AM UTC
Humans find a metric to measure everything - scaling down uncertainty and beauty into a concept so small or mundane that it makes it easy to understand.
The depths of my soul is something that has no metric.
It is the home of untainted imagination;
It is the example of unwavering dedication;
It is an engine room feeding an insatiable furnace.
No metrics, because there is no uncertainty: My soul…
…cannot be scaled down and cannot be understood.
…understands no threshold of sacrifice, compromise or impossibility that it cannot satisfy.
…is the one thing that goes beyond everything that makes me mortal.
…renders no occasion so safe or so out of reach it will not rise to.
It loves fiercely, fights violently, protects always.
The beauty: My soul…
…holds that very breath God breathed into me when I was first born… forever fanning my insatiable furnace to flame.
Thank you God, for my unconquerable soul
Jun 23, 2025
Jun 23, 2025 at 3:58 PM UTC