"mnemonic" poems
He stood fifty times his height,
his palms pressed against the glass
separating him from the road in their glamour;
blurred images of car in their splendor –
and there isn’t the
familiar scent of coffee –
I call this pandemonium.
Nothing beats a day in a café
redolent of the finest Arabica,
he’d inhale deeply and recall :
unroasted gives the sweetest scents
of blueberries –
roasted’s entirely different:
fruit, sugar, perfume –
They call this addiction.
Mnemonic – a wind chime
lost in the array of winds.
“You used to be my cup of tea –
I drink coffee now.”
These words slip out of his dry lips,
and a lone tear trickles down a milky cheek;
They all say if they’ve got love,
they don’t need money –
And he’d say if he’s got coffee,
he doesn’t need love –
He calls this heaven.
Oct 26, 2014
Oct 26, 2014 at 6:23 AM UTC
Hey lets start this thing and gain a little mnemonic
Cuz the teachers always explaining things so dull and robotic
But you got it, just trust this rhyme and I promise you'll have it
Let me teach you the equation for the function quadratic
It goes A, X and a 2 up high
Add that to a B multiplied with a Y
Put a plus sign and add the third term, the C
And set all that equal to a 0 bee
It's that easy, with that you can plot the graph
That will show you where the ball went and its flightpath
See the value of X shows where the line hits the axis
To illustrate where the ball was caught and where it was passed
It's cuts of cake to find this data with a formula rap
So keep in mind these fresh rhymes to the beat of the clap
You set X on the left, follow with an equal sign
Put the next little sect about a dividing line
And that little piece starts with a negative b
Add and subtract square root of B high 2 minus 4AC
Then divide what you get by 2 times A
If you forget this part man, your whole answers at stake
But if you follow my rules, and do all of this rap's math
I guarantee the next reports gonna say that you passed
Dec 5, 2010
Dec 5, 2010 at 3:42 AM UTC
Zeus had plastic surgery,
his fingertips shaved off
so he would not leave prints
when he committed
his archetypal crimes.
He changed his name to Saturn
then to Cronos
then to Albatross Von Mariner,
all this subterfuge
just to disquise the fact
that he goes borderline ballistic
when he doesn't get his way.
He pulled Icarus out of the sky,
wounded Prometheus’ side,
left Sisyphus on a steep lonely mountain,
dared Demeter to save her daughter,
yet these souls persist
in mnemonic literary defiance
of a single fact…
No god is greater than you,
the karma jury has come in
and Zeus is sentenced
to five years of community service
on Interstate Highway 5.
He will wear a yellow clown suit
with a red rubber nose
and floppy green shoes
with a fast food tray hanging from his neck
and he will walk in traffic snarls
stopping at every car
to clean the windows
to sell hotdogs
with purple relish and black mustard
wrapped in grey buns
as unappetizing and pathetic
as the lies
he has told us about ourselves
for so long.
Oct 24, 2012
Oct 24, 2012 at 7:35 AM UTC
it was a strange and fragile Kombination--
a desperate, lonely Hunger,
frenetic Thrill to sate--
we didn't speak each other's native Tongues
but Tongues we shared
in what we found, of random Meals,
and Pocket Lexika to taste
hidden Idioms we strove to understand..
our Bodies splashing Wasser
in the murky Spree, ******* Fountain by Berliner Dom
licking Lips of Bier und Eis a ways away from Reichstag Bullet Holes
below the steel Spirale encased in Glas
transparent Government--a Show for Tourist Stroll..
our Smiles glinting, coated international, that Week agreed
"eine schwester-bruder liebe.."
temptation--and propriety--preserved--
pale lotion, paler skin to honey in the sun
aloft in hostel bunks we shared--
a cush historic castle, touristische nook
of maps and candy pockets, so geil..
gleeful us, to melt from moscau and new york
we shared the deutsch between us,
ein bisschen englisch,
a bit of russisch too for fun...
our soulwise checkpoint charlie held the lust at bay
despite lustgarten romps
and walks beneath the lindens, lane of sighs..
an awkward bridge of question-words we built to muse about the stars
and what we see with only strangers never seen again.
we named ourselves an instant familie...so you could snore on me,
and let me stroke your hair
without the guilt of infidelity
the freedom from, we traded in our blatant,
goodbye tears you shed, i kept inside to craft mnemonic gems
i share and savor in again
'
Mar 17, 2013
Mar 17, 2013 at 8:56 PM UTC
~
*The disruptor,
whether digital or analog,
strikes the bell,
bioengineered automaton
—a manufactured life form
given little agency or dimension,
mnemonic to the finitude of life,
and subtle muddling of humankind's
supposed moral transcendence.*
~
May 2, 2021
May 2, 2021 at 10:59 PM UTC
Wandering paths ask for a dying cloud-drought
One black with the heart of darkness, devout.
A blooming earthly sunrise follows a fountain
and walks with her vices, talking to a mountain
Hope of finding you there, with bitter mnemonic
standing restless, alone in uncommon bucolic.
She proceeds to see with a call for rain
as fog blankets us, sunlight slowly wanes.
Lost in haze, could of sworn water fell genuine,
closing eyes swallow you whole, the medicine.
Aug 28, 2011
Aug 28, 2011 at 10:58 AM UTC
Fertile earth’s seductive sorcery
Like ephemeral effulgence’s effluent effusion
Can lead you to believe that it’s not a travesty
Like life’s visceral intuitive eternal is not lost in subtle evasive confusion
Life’s virile translucence reflects this glow
Like an aorist ensemble of interludes transposition
Can lead you to believe that you’re in the know
Like omnipresence presages omniscience’s ubiquity is existential exigency’s peroration’s exposition
Corporeally preternatural metaphysical mystique
Like a mirador bartizan tableau panorama
Can inspire us to rise above its critique
Like spatiotemporal’s telemetry incarnate is creation’s vivid intrepid cyclorama
Spectral verve’s liaison’s consortium
Like eclectic synectic’s conclave’s fatidic
Can leave you lost in germane compendium
Like terminus thrall’s apriori inclination is transcendental accession’s endemic mnemonic
Monad’s transitional majestic splendor
Like residual harmonic vibration’s resilience
Can autonomously evoke and vicariously render
Like rubato’s actuator’s prospectus revealed is orchestration rendition’s intriguing brilliance
Eidetic preterit’s aesthetic amendments
Like protractive analyses’ dimensional delineation
Can lead to cogent salacious enticements
Like phantasmagoria’s fantasia fantastication’s magniloquence is sultry solace’s ostentatious ideation
Jan 12, 2013
Jan 12, 2013 at 8:07 PM UTC
"Memory is more indelible than ink."
—Anita Loos
~
*Europe, after the rain,
the sun lending warmth and comfort.
fringes come into focus.
shadow journal,
fiscal dreams,
becoming ****** lines on a page;
procession bells
for young brides,
veiled in lace.
a touch from her
outstretched hands,
this honeymoon phase
running up the thigh,
the holding quite still until
she smiles for pendulum.
at first light, breakfast in bed,
granting pastel wishes on
boxing night,
then a letting go of the kite string.
new fingers in the medicine bottle,
tiny geometries
inside a house of reciprocal numbers.
paradise in mnemonic children:
cartwheels and handstands,
coloring books of
neglected spaces,
future ruins.
one hundred violins
play to isles of ignorance,
stray embers settle
along the solemn Chemin De Fer (railway).
a catalogue of afternoons
on the bike path
thru propeller seeds and dragonflies.
arriving in the haloed flesh:
skin dive,
the place of couloir descent;
**** beach,
the place of odd glances;
gun chamber,
the room of secondary light;
all horizon variations.
an algebra of darkness,
this dense Roman twilight,
their exiles unreflected
in blind lanterns.
our brightness will become
refracting silhouettes,
a broken yolk in the incendiary sky.*
~
Aug 29, 2022
Aug 29, 2022 at 12:38 PM UTC
Mnemonic...
Over my mug of steaming coffee,
...i see cookies and a fruit...sliced,
to freshen my breath after my coffee break....
one glance...
one unexpected glance, took me back... to
when i decided to do something for myself,
to be happy.....and to be somebody....but,
finally....i fought the desire, to be defiant...
those awakenings, and newfound feelings,
still haunt my evenings...the hurting, somewhat
changed me, and my beliefs.......i realized that,
at some point in one's life, a chance moment
unfolds on a landing...clear to the eyes...on a mission,
to change attitudes...to erase wrong impressions,
triggered by unpleasant experiences....i have also
discovered....at the right time, somebody comes,
......like an angel with hidden wings...to soften
our hardened minds....to melt our frozen hearts,
ease our tensed opinions...offer us a healing balm.
sometimes, a place, or a face, becomes a kind of paper
that can't be crumpled, or destroyed...so hard to forget.
anyone...anything, that strikes the heart hard,
easily comes back, with the slightest reminder,
catches you..........unprepared....
this fruit on the table, in silence, it just sits there,
...unaware of its being mnemonic...doesn't matter,
if it's fresh, rotten, or candied...a plum, apple or pear
....................would prompt me, to remember,
over my mug of steaming coffee...
Sally
Copyright July 27, 2016
Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
Dec 28, 2016
Dec 28, 2016 at 10:40 PM UTC
If, as they say, the cells
of the body are replaced every seven
years, then I'm a new being
since my sons were newborn.
I have died and been reborn
neither better nor worse yet remembering
feeding them while dancing to Moment's
Notice, as they attended with new minds.
Having died, as such, I find I do not mind
quiet living with the purpose of a cell
unbound by minutes or moments
as men know them. There are seven
deadly sins, seven ways of remembering,
seven stages in which to have been or continue being.
None of them recur after one's reborn
and none are known to us from before we're born.
Of the two young people to whom I was born,
one has lately died. I do not so much mind.
Although I do not, he believed he'd be reborn
and who can say what happened to his soul or cells?
Perhaps in Christ we continue being,
or with some other deity, as the churches claim monotonously,
momentously,
demonically and deviously. It seems about as relevant that
seven
rhymes with heaven and rhyming's a mnemonic device (for
remembering).
But remembering
what? To go to the daily discipline to which you were born?
I fought seven forest fires, took seven
lovers, my sons are seven, and my mind
is the sole owner and subsidiary of these memories and
moments.
Unless I am to be reborn
they disappear with me. Masefield's poem continues to be
the most honest and chilling assessment of our souls' and cells'
disbursement. I can imagine stem cell
research may lead to a cure for dementia, loss of memory
about who you are and where you've been.
If one's not been born
this doesn't matter. But if you're being reborn,
in the sense of "he not busy being born is busy being reborn"
(Dylan),
then it is best and most correct to consider your last moment
of a continuum with moments endless and entirely in your
mind.
The mind is made of cells and moments, seven billion of them.
Remember to be born and reborn, early and often.
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 1:43 PM UTC
Do dust bunnies have consciousness?
Does instinct guide them?
Instructing their best chance of survival
Is to hunker down,
Go out of sight,
Hide under a piece of furniture?
Will they survive & thrive in Dust Land,
Dust Land Planet Earth
Where cat hair is
“A sizeable constituency,”
So would say some latter day Machiavel’.
When spring comes, at last,
Will the minority Party
The Politburo in absentia,
Pick up on,
Comprehend the fact?
The red-red boffin
Goes beaucoup mnemonic, again.
“Wake up, wake up you sleepy head!
Get up, get out o' bed!
Cheer up! Cheer up!
The sun is red.
Live, love, laugh and be happy!”
The red-red-Redbird comes
Hammer & Sickle cell, again.
Jun 1, 2014
Jun 1, 2014 at 6:11 PM UTC
Arguing with disenchanted fractions of lust
Conserved in tributaries of fickle vestibules
Tactical pin ****** tranquilly distribute the crux of all misunderstood and demoralized charlatans
The levee enveloped in a felt like fabric
Dense and coarse
It had a mnemonic quality
Crafting a picture of my childhood bedroom
Mother would be oh so proud
Jun 9, 2013
Jun 9, 2013 at 10:41 PM UTC
Fertile earth’s seductive sorcery
Like ephemeral effulgence’s effluent effusion
Can lead you to believe that it’s not a travesty
Like life’s visceral intuitive eternal is not lost in subtle evasive confusion
Life’s virile translucence reflects this glow
Like an aorist ensemble of interludes transposition
Can lead you to believe that you’re in the know
Like omnipresence presages omniscience’s ubiquity is existential exigency’s peroration’s exposition
Corporeally preternatural's metaphysical mystique
Like a mirador bartizan tableau panorama
Can inspire us to rise above its critique
Like spatiotemporal’s telemetry incarnate is creation’s vivid intrepid cyclorama
Spectral verve’s liaison’s consortium
Like eclectic synectic’s conclave’s fatidic
Can leave you lost in germane compendium
Like terminus thrall’s apriori inclination is transcendental accession’s endemic mnemonic
Monad’s transitional majestic splendor
Like residual harmonic vibration’s resilience
Can autonomously evoke and vicariously render
Like rubato’s actuator’s prospectus revealed is orchestration rendition’s intriguing brilliance
Eidetic preterit’s aesthetic amendments
Like protractive analyses’ dimensional delineations
Can lead to cogent salacious enticements
Like phantasmagoria’s fantasia fantastication’s magniloquence is sultry solace’s ostentatious ideation
Mar 19, 2017
Mar 19, 2017 at 2:47 AM UTC
Like a speed limit,
Age 55 is a reminder,
A geriatric mnemonic,
Telling you to take it slowly.
Safe to say,
Most of us Baby-Boom geezers
Walk around half the time
Wondering how one gets laid,
“Hooks up”—
As our grandchildren say--
Gets laid behind & inside this
Asylum sanctuary?
Manning the ramparts,
Those Wackenhut stiffs
Are there for a reason.
Overt, direct ****** overtures
Strictly verboten (ver•bo•ten).
Yet, the silver-haired sireens
Crave company,
As in “keeping company,”
An ancient idiom for
“Let’s Hide the Pepperoni!”
But you’ve got to take it slow at
Del Webb Over-55 America,
A multi-state lunatic asylum,
Where a preponderance of
Single silver-tress foxes,
Having “lost their husband,”
Somewhere, at some point,
Some recent but forgotten,
Alzheimer’s moment along the trail,
They comb the daily obits,
Hunting prey, newly widowed men,
Fresh casserole recipients &
Crypto-pepperoni buddies.
May 12, 2015
May 12, 2015 at 4:44 PM UTC
I recalled the smell of junipers warming in the sun,
Or maybe mice nesting under the cupboard.
Or bleached linen hung out by Mum,
Reminds me of something about Dad from long ago,
You ask me…to say if it was gin;
There are things I can’t tell you, Son.
Some people think that it’s a sin;
So just use your imagination.
Another time I smelled crushed daisies of
The housemaids, I remember from Kleßheim.
Thunderstorms rolled down from the Alps at night,
Then turned at morning into clarified, buttered sun.
They remind me of someone’s blonde hair,
I just can’t tell you when or where,
So use your imagination.
Scent is the most potent mnemonic,
Triggering mystical cells inside,
Creating a stream of biophotonics,
Rapture returns in histrionics,
Tracking things from skin and hair,
To lips and eyes, to a groan, an intrigued stare.
Things we can never tell another, even if
He or she or they were there
What happened in those brilliant days?
Only imagination can say.
Crystal hanging in the window at nine o’clock,
Rays strike the glass, opening up the past.
Before me spreads a wide, green lawn,
Ladies and lords stroll with their finery on.
I sit and watch, while the procession advances,
Tricornes doffed and stays undone in dances.
Until the satin, silk and brocades lie on the ground,
Gavotte kisses become tender, sensual rounds
And naked, youth flees into woods.
And everything is happening;
Everything is good.
Jul 12, 2018
Jul 12, 2018 at 12:39 AM UTC
No...more...bickerin,
your eyes flickering you're nickering
your nit pickin' lost it quick as the Dickens
My tracks a hell of a kickin'
you're just the next feckin victim,
of the flow bound Hurricane of sense and rhythm,
The Sensemilla Sensei Kempei of verbal Kempo's home,
Like Alladin and Saladin mixed with a Party Boobytrap a Paladin of Palindrome...
The Storm rider glider blasts you through the other side of the Thunderdome
My - Spitfire drips Ire as ********* ***** fire Surprise in your eyes quick blast from the past from a .50 Cal Microphone-
Fiend in me soul under control you failed your roll,
will check failed-I check wills,its a Checkmate mate you-best quill your will and will to build some soul
Its a dill of pickle you're in - you're a nickle worth of Nickleback stickleback sticklebricking best Lego
I let go last, I'm the Legolas of the fast pass in the underpass stick you fast now you're stuck fast I buck fast at your glass of Buckfast
the Truculent, ever vigilant-words are Succulent got you diggin' in
diggin' out a liddle bit of Lidl in a stolen digger,move quicker stop the friggin' in the riggin' little Pigpen Pigeons time to drop the bridge in...
Mar 17, 2018
Mar 17, 2018 at 6:08 PM UTC
infinite beings
sitting in a room
sending visions from a distance
the listeners agree
we are free to try anything
as long as it doesnʼt alter
free will or destiny
if you let me show you
iʼll give you a taste of your own medicine
selected from feathers and falling leaves
breath agrees with bone
and form is hollow
mnemonic agents whisper agendas
into fields of green
lavender beings sweep the streets
and perform feats of beauty
that are rarely ever seen
Jul 16, 2019
Jul 16, 2019 at 8:16 AM UTC
12/10/2012:
A very mellow day,
A day that makes one’s golden years actually golden.
Happy in retirement?
There’s a joke:
You slave like Spartacus in the Libyan salt mines for 30 or 40 or even 50
years, and now you’re supposed to re-calibrate the machine, re-gauge
one’s anatomy and metabolism for a habitat so far and away grindstone
gone.
The muckrakers Studs Terkel and Barbara Ehrenreich remind us:
Work is the only thing we can do for 8 hours, other than sleep.
Perchance even to dream out that Roman **** or Bacchanal.
No, alas, 4 hours is the legal limit for an ******** lasting that long,
During all our joy-juiced carnal desires,
Be they under the elms or elsewhere.
**Cialis! ******
Names already living it up in infamy.
A simple truth about Retirement:
Stop working and die.
A most intense public service announcement,
A vast digital image out of Yeats,
A very special Spiritus Mundi P-S-A.
Targeting Baby Boomers, especially:
“You better find yourself something,
Or someone to occupy your mind.”
Brought to you by the good people at
OCCUPY BRAIN STREET,
First a national, then a veritable global movement,
However so short-lived;
Like all the others.
Oh, Boomers, your attention span is down to 8 minutes.
Your mnemonic links are frayed and tattered,
Your hard drive noodle fragmented,
Yet still whirring white noise jazz.
A New Orleans Dixieland funeral,
And Al-Zheim trumpet blast to go out on.
Well, I don’t know about the rest of you,
But I am relatively well adjusted in retirement.
And today—previously mentioned as a mellow day--
Today is one reason why.
As is medical marijuana and the sultry voice of Chrissie Hynde,
With or without her band of Pretenders.
And let’s throw in a lovely bottle of Temecula red wine--
Doffo, if you’re going to get fussy on me,
Another blithe distraction cultivated and custom-made for old age.
Indeed, a very mellow day.
May 14, 2015
May 14, 2015 at 3:21 PM UTC
Drinking to forget;
Mnemonic gin and tonic
hasn't helped me yet
Jun 21, 2017
Jun 21, 2017 at 3:33 PM UTC
And as you left that quick
You became my favorite mnemonic
That I am alive and loving
That I'm breathless but still breathing
The way you made me recall
Is both my mountain-top and pitfall
The way I was reminded
Is too hurting, too conceited
But, you are my favorite pain
Reminding me I'm alive through fiery rain
Making me feel by pulling heart strings
Pain reminds of life through stings
Every single detail has your shadow
Reminding me of us, everywhere I go
You made it seem so easy to forget everything
You made it feel like those times meant nothing
That what we had mattered only to me
Now all those we shared resonate with agony
As you abandoned me without hesitation
I arrived with a dreadful realization
You justified why storms are named...
After people, since they can damage just the same
Apr 10, 2016
Apr 10, 2016 at 1:46 PM UTC
eventually, I was asked to write about a dog.
there was a letter, and a man above it.
in my own letter, I asked for the woman behind him.
she arrived with the very little I came to know.
I could’ve been a room she sat sewing in.
her one hand nibbling the other, the foster door
of her back. my whole life in front of me
on another’s fours.
Jul 3, 2012
Jul 3, 2012 at 10:42 AM UTC
Wisps of a
fragile memory
swirl around me
fragrant, like petrichore.
Struggling out
like a tree out of a seed
breaking free from the clutches of time.
Not all at once
but in bits and pieces
Broken embers of
a once raging fire
searching for something
to set alight again.
Like life stirring
At the break of dawn
Shaking off the comforting night.
Like the shifting of the tide-
So gentle,
Hardly noticed.
Like a lost child
remembering a path
once forgotten.
-Vijayalakshmi Harish
16/11/2010
Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish
Aug 12, 2012
Aug 12, 2012 at 10:07 AM UTC
Windows open, cool breeze gliding upon the sound of rain and crickets with the desolate call of a train in the distance..
Tired muscles feel the texture of soft sheets as I lay with my thoughts of uncertainty and stillness..
My disposition is one of longing yet tranquility creeps along the edge while I ruminate the moment.
Every breath a mnemonic passage of transient motion.
Sep 27, 2014
Sep 27, 2014 at 12:01 AM UTC
My mother left on Sunday.
A ghostly presence walks the
Wooden stairs and flicks the finger-smudged
Spindles lining the path
To my parent's bedroom.
Clocks chime the hour, their bell-
Melodies insist mnemonic
Memories
Of her infinite delight.
She loves clocks. She'd often wake
Before us and sit in her
Favorite chair to listen to
The effect of their orchestrated
Sounds.
They have a white noise quality
More musical than whirred fans
And insistant television.
I've met this sound-off
With distaste.
Since her absence my distaste has transfigured
To homesickness.
The heart throbs in shadows.
I'm a clock whose white face has aged yellow,
Without hands to signal the hour,
With a song on a dented bell.
Jun 11, 2013
Jun 11, 2013 at 5:02 AM UTC