"problematical" poems
The Cross, the Cross
Goes deeper in than we know,
Deeper into life;
Right into the marrow
And through the bone.
Along the back of the baby tortoise
The scales are locked in an arch like a bridge,
Scale-lapping, like a lobster's sections
Or a bee's.
Then crossways down his sides
Tiger-stripes and wasp-bands.
Five, and five again, and five again,
And round the edges twenty-five little ones,
The sections of the baby tortoise shell.
Four, and a keystone;
Four, and a keystone;
Four, and a keystone;
Then twenty-four, and a tiny little keystone.
It needed Pythagoras to see life playing with counters on the living back
Of the baby tortoise;
Life establishing the first eternal mathematical tablet,
Not in stone, like the Judean Lord, or bronze, but in life-clouded, life-rosy tortoise shell.
The first little mathematical gentleman
Stepping, wee mite, in his loose trousers
Under all the eternal dome of mathematical law.
Fives, and tens,
Threes and fours and twelves,
All the volte face of decimals,
The whirligig of dozens and the pinnacle of seven.
Turn him on his back,
The kicking little beetle,
And there again, on his shell-tender, earth-touching belly,
The long cleavage of division, upright of the eternal cross
And on either side count five,
On each side, two above, on each side, two below
The dark bar horizontal.
The Cross!
It goes right through him, the sprottling insect,
Through his cross-wise cloven psyche,
Through his five-fold complex-nature.
So turn him over on his toes again;
Four pin-point toes, and a problematical thumb-piece,
Four rowing limbs, and one wedge-balancing head,
Four and one makes five, which is the clue to all mathematics.
The Lord wrote it all down on the little slate
Of the baby tortoise.
Outward and visible indication of the plan within,
The complex, manifold involvedness of an individual creature
Plotted out
On this small bird, this rudiment,
This little dome, this pediment
Of all creation,
This slow one.
11.7k
My mind transfixed on this perplexing enigma
Left, right, up, down,down
Six colors spinning around
Yesterday i almost had it solved
But the ******* green square just wouldn't line up
I almost surrendered; frustrated by the puzzle
Which has always given me so much trouble
But for some reason i can't put it aside
Addicted to getting all the colors in line
I know there's an algorithm, but my mind's not mathematical
Day by day becoming exceedingly problematical
I won't give up...
Nov 7, 2015
Nov 7, 2015 at 11:14 AM UTC
My poems, where are they from?
Westerner.
An appellation, of the 'hood of my nation,
Customary identity association,
But not one that springs to mind,
When they inquire, as they do,
Hey man, tell us about your "self."
But there is no deniability,
At least three hundred years,
That my father was aware,
Europe to America,
Westward ** the seeds sown.
From the banks of the Lippe,
Ocean crossing to NYC,
From the Krakow Ghetto
To the shores of the
Manhattan Indian Reservation,
By the banks of the grandest river Hudson,
They journeyed, they sojourned,
Staying for awhile, scattering across the Midwest,
"Coming to America."
Yet out West,
I am an Easterner,
My hometown teams,
In the East Division,
And this schizophrenia
Is non-problematical.
But where are my poems from?
I have studied the time zones,.
The AM's and the PM's.
I know when I deliver this to you,
If the sun is rising or setting,
Whether to greet you with
नमस्कार or magandang umaga,
Greet you with a "Good Sabbath!"
Or an Insh'Allah...
But where are my poems from?
Bog of technical definitions,
Matters not, my poems have no
Passport to be stamped,
The Customs lines they cross are the
Customs of mine and yours.
The are both immigrant and emigre,
Experienced, well travelled, they familiar
With the right satellites to
Grace thy welcoming space.
Tap dance, recitations of evasions,
Answer the question man,
But where are my poems from?
You tell the when, the how but not the
Where.
We can't wait much longer,
The inbox heavy with homework,
Your poems to love, like and take.
Don't you see?
They, born in the West,
For lack of a better answer,
Clock and setting sun racers,
Surfing the Atlantic, Indian,
Circumnavigating the Pacific Isles,
Is just the course they take
When out my window sent.
But is that your answer,
Their path, to the single quest,
From the West, is that the best
Answer you can equivocate,
Where do they come from?
**No.
Obviously,
They come from you...**
Oct 26, 2013
Oct 26, 2013 at 6:42 AM UTC
I am now less than the sum of all my parts – in pieces
Like bits fell off something stopped working - strange
It’s like I am coming apart at the seams - breaking up
All those parallel things I do every day - disconnected
Hotel was booked for the week before I travel - dumb
One thousand euro lost due to card cloning - careless
Plans change I end up in the wrong place - drowning
People run away and ignore my requests - abandoned
Projects symphony becomes a cacophony - confusing
I feel like Alice going down the rabbit hole - dissociated
Normality is absent now as I spin around - breakdown?
My perception of the world has changed - problematical
I better get someone to glue me back together - quickly
Otherwise I will become invisible and irrelevant – not good
Like a set useless parts with no instructions - disassembled
Jan 21, 2012
Jan 21, 2012 at 11:03 AM UTC
Putting it mildly,
Sleep has discarded me.
My once restless nights have
Turned to now restless days,
And in ways I guess this is the better than sleeping…
In sleep I know I would only find myself
Dreaming about you.
Getting caught up in the fiction
That my mind has so kindly made up for me,
Because in reality,
I know that things wouldn’t be so great.
Things would be problematical,
Complicated,
Intricate.
Sleep is nothing if all I do is dream about you,
Because having you in my dreams isn't good enough for me,
I want to hold you in the embrace that I have mastered in the time that you were gone,
Kiss you in a way that you will remember every time you smell my perfume,
And love you in a way that I know you will never find again…
If left in just my dreams
Soon enough you'll just turn to another
Monster lurking in the corridors of my heart.
Knocking on the doors of our memories,
Unlatching the caged demons in my soul,
Baby things have gone a bit out of control here.
Skies that were once baby blue
Have turned to a new shade of depression,
Oppression,
You held me down.
Scratch that,
We held each other down in power struggle.
While I added bittersweet delirium to your life,
You put faultless certainty into mine.
I found that with you…
Things don’t have to make sense.
They can be messy and
Perplexing
And confusing,
And it will only add to the beauty of the situation.
But I still do not want to dream about you.
I fear what dreadful panorama my mind will paint me every night,
If it will be Romeo & Juliet
Or Harley Quinn and Joker…
The confusion of what will happen
Breaks me apart
Yet I can't help but want to start this all over again.
Go through the motions with you till you
You fracture my heart
Split it in to a new galaxy
Where pieces of my heart become stars.
Where monsters in the hallways won't scare me
And I am still free to be in love with you.
You captivate me like no one ever has,
Inevitably you are my Picasso.
Taking my heart and squeezing the life from it till its dry,
Using my blood as your paint
My heart your new paint brush.
As you create a portrait
Of what Love looks like,
And when you do
All you will paint
Is two people sleeping.
One in his bed peacefully asleep,
And the other,
Restlessly awake,
Afraid to start dreaming again.
Aug 7, 2015
Aug 7, 2015 at 7:10 PM UTC
Eyes lift
Controlling the heart's release of breath
The none constricting motion of the lungs
Emotion shown through listening ears
The heart now following what the eyes see
No longer a grunt made by tight motions
Seeing it's belief,
Straining the strange euphoria strung by tendons and muscles
The gift of giving one emotion to another
Nothing is as problematical as we present it
Unclear changes unselfish in the manner given
This sensation made in haste
To whom this particular change
This nursery of voice that calmly lulls the suggestion of peace
The suggestion of need
of consideration
The improvement of self in order to give
In order to love another as you love yourself
The existence of infatuation opinionated.
Still asking the enlightenment of eyes
The foresight of heart to give in the eye of love
The humble abode of running along without restraint
Free as breath
Feeling the state of complete togetherness
Eyes close
In the most relaxed state
Relaxed in the embrace of knowing
Feeling
Believing
Sep 16, 2016
Sep 16, 2016 at 10:39 AM UTC