"quantities" poems
Disappointment is thrown strongly at my direction.
Blame gathers in large quantities like a pest infestation.
"It's your fault" and words like "You always make mistakes" evoke anger.
Anger which I want to take out on myself and take out on others.
I can excel in my work of choice, I know I'm more than average.
The bad gets pointed out more and little praise is given for the good.
Stunned by unmoving words. I'm like a prisoner sentenced to jail, released and expected to do worse.
Destruction emerges from my enraged emotions, i wish your words could offer a solution.
I want to be an alchemist and turn things into gold.
It's ironic how I am a creator of words but cant create better words in my critics.
Conversations lead to arguments because i want to be heard.
I'm sick of revolving doors, sick of being slammed by your atrocious comments.
"You have no common sense" you say to me, maybe I just prefer to be in a daydream, my mind drifting away because life is too dull.
Realize that what you say has an effect and that effect can drive somebody or stop them in motion.
Jun 21, 2014
Jun 21, 2014 at 5:38 PM UTC
Ganges, dawn, a luminous haze
over the water. The bathing ghats
are busy with the faithful. (But India
is inconceivable without faith.)
The robed bathers, raising river water
to the sun, pouring it back
to mother Ganges, are they worshipping
the sun or the river?
For them God is everywhere
and everything. Water, sun,
the river and the twinkling lamps floating on it
are part of one consciousness.
The burning ghats too (such quantities of wood
stacked ready) are beginning their day.
The funeral party approaching in respectful haste
have a job to do. They build their pile,
move the body to the wood,
start the fire. I watch, but not for long.
This moment, so intimate, so public, reminds me
I am an intruder here. The ashes
will return to Ganga unwitnessed by me.
Away from the river, the vendors of tea
do their trade among the stalls. Monkeys,
cheerfully pilfering, are chased away
half-heartedly, for they are Hanuman’s representatives,
and they, with the sacred, garbage-clearing cows,
are part of the one consciousness. In this land
all are “the faithful”, everything is God’s creation.
In this poverty is richness.
Nov 29, 2016
Nov 29, 2016 at 2:58 PM UTC
Stumbling into ancient scripts, authored a decades plus ago,
ago being a modifier of time quantities, minute or large, unspecific
without an objective adjective additive, that faucets a stream of an interlocutory elocution of a batter of rooted emotional histories,
but not histrionics
fanciful words for dredged up memories, acute, but tarnished,
powered yet worn by a cousin of ago, a/k/a,
age
and yet
renews as of,
at this very second, as if it were a first, a tumult of visions, swelling of remembrances, embodied scars, and I weep anew but not
for me, as much for the resonating simpatico souls with whom
they even now vibrate with resonance of the immediacy of
If not now, When?
Aside: The exterior environment is noisy wet pelting of thunderstorms and ****** sheets of bulleting rain, piercing projectiles, but I am safe in the sunroom, sadly happy my dog is no longer here to shiver and tremble, cuddle and be soothed by steady stroking
But I am here, wrestling with this dredging operation, digging up
tons of sand that require dumping, and I ask, inquire, beg:
Who will take this detritus off my hands, once more, now uncovered,
now recovered, the soil is already soaked and can absorb no more,
the soul is already soaked and can absorb no more, the weakened
heart, damaged and occluded, suffer cannot bare twice the
outrageous misfortune
of unbared recollections, twice, or thrice, and I feel myself drowning in revisiting pain, **** **** **** these old poems, not nuggets, but boulders dropping from night skies, shot from a pitching machine, without letup, piercing of agonies that once ago
freshly desecrated and decorated my basic training in humanity.
Enough whining:
*I wrote those poems to
eject out those pains,
and I write this now, once more,
to realize that so so many still face
uncertain and unrelenting similarities,
doing their own sums,
and I wish them easing,
strength to compose and
thereby dispose of
the ineloquent
and eloquent
words of staining suffering*
3:30am
Thur
July 10
2025
Jul 16, 2025
Jul 16, 2025 at 5:39 PM UTC
Estimate tells us the avg. height
of a female in the U.S. is 64 inches.
This is quantitative. Unfeeling of prospect,
the numbers fascinate and baffle.
Recent estimation supposes
1500 active volcanoes on the earth of which
500 have erupted since history,
the invention of writing.
Such a short time ago.
Measuring in quantities, the earth is
4.5-4.6 billion years old.
Creatures of like sentience who never wrote about
volcanoes, the age of their earth.
Quantities hum of something borrowed.
So tight-wound, so deeply close, and yet still.
Something not ours.
Blind, free of invention.
Jan 20, 2015
Jan 20, 2015 at 7:44 PM UTC
food
the requirement of life
comes in all shapes and tastes
and smells and quantities
to the starving
a bowl of rice
the bottom barely covered
to the obese
a five-course meal
or piles of junk food
in bright packaging
the starving
celebrate their meals
in quiet concentration
each grain of rice
is tasted carefully
and chewed with care
extracting to the full its scant nourishment
the last one disappears
with unheard sighs
when junk food and the five-course meal
have long been finished
Mar 31, 2015
Mar 31, 2015 at 12:27 PM UTC
He looks like the moon from the sky,
His radiant eyes would steal the sunrise,
His shoulder stood high,
Heartbeats as if he smells his likely world
on his arm, there is everything but a tie!
He just doesn't have a job, been interviewed,
He expressed his qualities, many quantities,
but lost, walked out without a offer!
His sunny face was still shimmering.
The successful one, murmured 'my friend
you wasn't smart enough selling yourself!'
I don't think I wanted to do that, he replied:
Am is willing to serve to earn the means
to be served, don't mean to sale and buy.
If ethic has no value maybe then
a job is nothing but 'sale and buy'!
Aug 11, 2017
Aug 11, 2017 at 10:19 PM UTC
The living reality of a metaphor, almost every ounce in-taken,
Every nuance, every pronounce, measured, weighted and weighty,
Fluid or firmament, each encapsulated, prior to release, scaled,
Tabulated, ordered, noted, recorded, and ultimately judg-ed.
Totality of it all, the varied quantities of the ingested nutrients,
even the forecast of the future, if every day was a metaphor for
like today…
DO
I speak of the day's headlines?
Of the quantity and nutrition that passes through my lips?
Or
The surround sound of the surrounding sounds of this day,
the flocks of bandito geese who exist only to torment,
the landscape working crews, with their tools, like a 7::00an wake up buzzing about, for the entire street, going house to house, looking for itinerant grassy knolls of patches of bright green,
overnight sprung up and needy to be
guillotined,
laundry to do, rugs needy for clothesline screaming/beating or merely super fast vacuuming;
they, hawking their skills available for the old and infirm,
or the fatty catty cattle lazy, (somewhere in there is moi);
and the decibels of their machines, the rat-a-tat of their rapido, voluble speech that feeds me poetry by the ounce of their laughter, but more exactly of,
What do I speak, to what do I allude?
Why all and none, everything and specifically nothing,
for the metaphor is meta! (1)
It is life itself, from the quarter teaspoon
to the overflowing bath, it is life at its most incremental,
the moment
of flushing face,
the second
of ah ha! recollection, the,
long term trends
trending,
the flatline of my EKG,
the weighty pronouncement of my talking scale (you've been bad),
IT IS THE EVERYTHING
that is measurable, weighable, isolatable, defined;
it is our existence of our each & every of action and inaction strung together like a necklace and a chain
We are metaphor, reality, is, the script,
which is the product of you.
scriptwriter…/
Aug 8, 2025
Aug 8, 2025 at 6:17 PM UTC
I have migraine headaches quite often.
Stress could be a factor as
I am a fifty-one year old father of three;
a retiree with too many chits, too many broken nest eggs...
Or it could possibly be my diet:
lots of carbohydrates and complex sugars,
mixed well with large quantities of
diet soda and inactivity...
Or perhaps the trouble lies with allergens;
for my life is inundated with pet dander, pollen,
dust, and grass clippings. Add to that
humidity levels and mold blooms -
who wouldn’t be allergic?
Or maybe it’s just a brain tumor.
Aug 10, 2013
Aug 10, 2013 at 9:39 PM UTC
The tree of knowledge was the tree of reason.
That's why the taste of it
drove us from Eden. That fruit
was meant to be dried and milled to a fine powder
for use a pinch at a time, a condiment.
God had probably planned to tell us later
about this new pleasure.
We stuffed our mouths full of it,
gorged on but and if and how and again
but, knowing no better.
It's toxic in large quantities; fumes
swirled in our heads and around us
to form a dense cloud that hardened to steel,
a wall between us and God, Who was Paradise.
Not that God is unreasonable – but reason
in such excess was tyranny
and locked us into its own limits, a polished cell
reflecting our own faces. God lives
on the other side of that mirror,
but through the slit where the barrier doesn't
quite touch ground, manages still
to squeeze in – as filtered light,
splinters of fire, a strain of music heard
then lost, then heard again.
3.2k
our lives are fraught with numbers
so many fractions of a second faster in a race
most wins on record best jury votes
highest flight deepest dive most goals
meters of rising sea levels
millions of refugees and more displaced
tens of thousands honor killings
thousands of deaths with Ebola
millions of Zika virus victims next year
billions of deficit or profit in import/export
or the stock exchange
votes in elections or for beauty queens
polls tweets virtual friends & followers
likes on the social media on hellopoetry
we have been taught to measure our status
our importance and the significance of our lives
in clicks of other peoples’ digital devices
even our time has been reduced to numbers
the digital has long replaced the comprehensive
instead of the round dial that shows 12 hours
suggesting the duration of a normal day
we have a punctual display without the whole
the cyclical has lost against the linear
0101010101010101010101010101010101
we all look forward to our numbered future
no past and very little present
our hands on smart phones homes TVs
pushing a button makes things move
swishing a screen displays the world
over all that we easily forget
that we ourselves have been reduced to numbers
of customers for businesses
of voters for the politicians
of workers for the corporations
of citizens for our nations
digital quantities we have become
and if we take a global view
we are part of the seven billion plus
that currently inhabit our earth
all of which do expect their individuality
be honored and their dignity respected
numbers don’t honor individuality
they simply count the units
items or people are for them the same
it’s left to us to find a way
that leaves the numbers in their place
yet guarantees us dignity
as individual members of the human race
Feb 1, 2016
Feb 1, 2016 at 6:19 PM UTC
Pencils are opportunities, it dulls as you write,
mistakes slowly burns the red rubber ****
and sharpeners are luxuries or government help or socialism.
But what about cheap pencils,
whose lead dulls or breaks easily.
Pencils are all equal if you look it in the outside
but what you can't see is that these cheap pencils
does not have a solid strip of lead inside,
it has some small quantities of opportunities to write.
I need to sharpen it once in a while
so I can clearly write.
But not everyone has sharpeners nor extra pencils,
some even bought this kind of pencil
with all the money they have
and they cannot write their stories
and their happy endings,
when the luster of their leads are constantly fading
into white, swallowed by the open
free-market place of ideas blank paper.
And I can't blame the poor vendor who sold me
these substandard opportunities.
However,
I am blaming the owners of factories,
for making such lousy imitations,
for exploiting my hunger to write.
I am blaming the government,
for allowing such pencils to ever exist!
Their lust for power, their greed takes away
my opportunities to write clearly and continuously,
I am blaming them for assuming that all of us have sharpeners!
We should not pay for social sharpening services!
Sharpeners and pencils should be free!
Sep 27, 2018
Sep 27, 2018 at 8:45 AM UTC
They used to call
him
the young genius
now they call
him
the old recluse,
holed up in his
shack on the Mad River,
A garden of grow
in the back corner,
Always a **** for me and you.
He sits out on
his little patio
those bottle fed
cats
all running around
chasing ghosts
this way and that.
Pink camillas
white roses
silken dried out hydrangeas,
Spirits in the faces of the flowers.
Red berries
the bird's bar
a bar fight breaks out every evening.
We visit him there
on Friday afternoons
sun setting
sun high in the blue sky.
He finger ****** his
way through life,
Where ever he stopped,
People's lives changed,
He, searching for the words
to heal others pain
until compassion fatigue
set in,
Now he can only relate
to others
in small quantities of moments
too much pain felt
from
without within.
He is like his river,
a madness,
always different/always the same.
The sanest person we ever
knew.
Just watch your eyes, though,
with a look
he'll see right through you,
All your secrets will be revealed.
The young genius
the old recluse
if you need some healin'
go ahead and see'em,
He'll give you just a
hint,
Even if he's not feeling,
He'll take you down to
the Mad River's shore
give you a glimpse of you
and
bring you back home again
for more.
Shaman's on their way
have nothing much better to do
and nothing else to prove.
Jan 22, 2015
Jan 22, 2015 at 10:15 AM UTC
Time is measured
in problem sets and exams
birthday parties and housewarming parties and frat parties
going out to eat with chattering friends,
anxiety in the wait for the week’s end,
finding the time for peace in ‘alone’
or calling our parents up on the phone.
Specific occurrences far from each other:
Weeks.
... or daily:
Watching each minute slide by,
Digits slipping one by one
Into ever-so-slightly increasing quantities.
Like a microscopic tortoise
on an infinitely stretching number line,
Moving steadily,
always so steadily,
toward the invisible finish line.
Why?
Feb 27, 2010
Feb 27, 2010 at 12:16 AM UTC
~~~
Vanilla Extract
under extreme duress,
word-boarding extreme,
she issues up reluctantly a true confess
her secret ingredient
in everything is
vanilla extract
*where do you source this
in quantities so ample,
keep it well hid,
for all I see
after cupboard investigatory
solitary tiny brown bottle
shelved alone, forlornly?*
wearing a vanilla smile,
that persists for quite the while,
she crinkly eyed laughs
“I extract vanilla
nearly everyday,
for when I awake to a
fresh poem from a poet
who loves me,
I draw all the vanilla out,
then feed it back to him
in the foods I supply,
so his poetry is for ever
sustainable”
Jun 6, 2015
Jun 6, 2015 at 11:37 AM UTC
For a Statue of Napoleon
A conqueror as provident as brave,
He robbed the cradle to supply the grave.
His reign laid quantities of human dust:
He fell upon the just and the unjust.
2k
Colorful colors, colors everywhere.
Afar, maybe near, or just someplace over there.
Colors in quantities,
A copious amount.
Too many colors to keep any count.
Metaphorical colors aren't physically there,
But a good color-finder can sense them in the air.
True colors like to a person describe;
Who's what in what way- the how and the why.
In a colorful world, we all live and stay.
In colorful beds, at night we all lay.
With colors, there's always a great source for play.
Colors make life worth living each day.
Jan 14, 2013
Jan 14, 2013 at 8:36 AM UTC
1.
The old lady sits on the garden bench, a fixture,
from the days so far, colonial times to be precise,
thickly painted green, coat after coat,that covers up age,
after the incessant lashing of copious monsoon rains,this evening
the bench has a secret gleam, as if it's age has been washed away for ever.
2.
Her hair, resplendent silver;the children playing on the sand bed
in the open space in front of her bench, stand wondering:
far removed from realities familiar,she seemed,"Is she real?"
The old lady plays with a child that ran to her and embraced,
curious to touch her hair, happily it springs on to her lap,
her starched Sari gets crumpled,to it'smother
the old lady softly says"Don't bother children need space,
freedom and care, love his smile, don't want to see it wither"
3.
She looks at the flowerbed and smiles to herself,
as if she remembered her own dreams a day too far.
The old garden bench, senses a magic,with a start it wakes up
from it's slumber and begins to prattle,"Yes, it's really her,
remember the passion filled kisses she exchanged with her sweetheart,
when darkness came stealthily,like a crafty lover out to rob hearts,
right here on my lap, at a time love was a scent wafting low in the air
Where has he gone? I now wonder,a lot of monsoon clouds
burst up on me limitless quantities of water,after that"
4.
A wind so strong, like the hands of time ruffled
the leaves of the giant banyan tree,that stood sentinel,
leaves started a cheerful dance, reminiscent of the play of life*
Perhaps the night the death waiting on the wings is little disappointed.
Dec 1, 2015
Dec 1, 2015 at 8:12 AM UTC
Expectations slide and diminish as I grow wiser and more superstitious
Presume it's low tide and finish with a wave that's astoundingly vicious
Don"t be fooled by my disguise as I continue to build and prepare for the worst
Every day I rise comes a surprise to my eyes with another heart quenched thirst
Oblivious pessimistic sheople treading in the desert, then they ask me for a drink
Reality cracked their rose colored glasses, now they see my glass teeter on the brink
So try and hope less and enjoy life more
Real optimism prevails from your core
You only want to talk to me when your hopped up on caffeine
And then you come crying with a popped open empty canteen
Relativity reminds us that it could always be worse or better
As technology blinds us to the simple pleasure of a letter
So wear your smiles across your faces like a filthy circus clown
Mine will travel miles and I won't let you all drag me down
Life's easy to waste chasing all the different quantities or amounts
But it´s the quality of taste of what's in your glass that really counts
Feb 3, 2013
Feb 3, 2013 at 4:48 PM UTC
No tengo - Spanish for don't have
<•>
*woke up bushy and mushy,
"Siri, get my muse on the line,"
wise *** asked which one,
guess she was feeling feisty
as well as girl-gorgeous,
poem perfect on a July 2 Sunday
fake growled and she said
"alright, alright, just a sec..."
"0 Muse, it's me,
it's not even seven am,
got the urge, ready to cruise,
pick me one of my Natman outfit de-skyizes and
let us write many jive poems
let us write till the sunsets texts us
sire, dude,
I'm
just above the horizon,
poems no mas,
unless you will write by
the fire of the maister's grill"
My Muse,
strangely morose, denies replies,
"sorry sire, (she's nice English)
all of the available words
have been purchased until
July twenty tooth"
What, I screamed, threatened and challenged,
must be one of those rude dude tech billionaires,
who think limitless is just another word for more please!
Siri
"get me god on the line so I can maccabee end,
this poetic oppression"
***** an old friend,
an A list star of many prior writs,
would surely insist that a
special rabbinical dispensation,
could be found to squeeze nattyman me,
a few thousand or so
God (looking straight at him, makes him crazy)
"so many things I do not have such as,
your prolificacy,
making me jealous that all your poets
rain down in greater quantities
than I can manufacture clear crystallinely
but now is the hour of your power,
the minute of my need,
give me some words please"
the disembodied voice's disemboweled me
"sorry son,
gotta run,
if it is words you want,
suggest get an in with
wordvango and betterdays,
me, no tengo!
their profligacy,
poems by the hour
have drained the list,
and had I not put a stop to it,
they would have taken them all
till Christmas!"
*So made me some future reservations,
selling them likes suns, 3 for a dollar,
which is even cheaper, (Eliot!)
no ifs and ands about (it)
come see the maister natser,
my words are made of obsidian
and specialty Valyrian steel,
and nobody eats my words
they just-wink at them,
then lift some, a nice steal
cause I never read a poem
undeserving
Jul 17, 2017
Jul 17, 2017 at 6:02 PM UTC
these poems here
tethered to me
by some unknown
uncontrollable force
I didn’t ask for this
I didn’t ask for any of this
all I wanted to do was to play
with the women and the music
and maybe even my kids every now and then
not knowing, not caring,
not believing, not searching
for a higher purpose
for a greater meaning
for an elixir of divinity
but they have arrived
in different variances
& mass quantities
I didn’t ask for this
now it is here
I can’t stop
I won’t stop
until it kills me
until it kills something inside of me
until there is nothing left
except
these poems here.
Feb 20, 2025
Feb 20, 2025 at 11:56 AM UTC
His love is infinite
It's not measured in quantities
There are no limitations
There are no boundaries
His love pierces my heart
Sharper than any dagger
He who burns brighter
than any fire
My guide through the dark
I've lost my lighter
Keep me from breaking
My resilient fighter
Mar 11, 2015
Mar 11, 2015 at 1:35 AM UTC
sometimes i feel like a citrus
lemon, orange, lime, or grapefruit
fragrant and flavorful
my insides bitter or sweet
and my outsides the exact opposite
high quantities of acid regardless
eat me raw
press my juice, i make a great 'ade
you may also preserve me in a marmalade
sometimes i feel like an apple
do not call me a crab tho
a globose pome
my outside has smooth shiny skin
my inside is sweet or **** yet soft
my centre contains seeds arranged in a star-like manner
i make great pies
but i also pair great with cheese
my versatility allows me to please
sometimes i feel like grape
growing from the woody vines
my flexibility is far and wide
raisins, vinegar, oil, and wines
i prefer to remain in a cluster of friends
im afraid to venture out
because i need them to sustain
sometimes i feel like anything other than me
i am tired of looking in the mirror
i have grown weary of what i see
so i pick flora and fauna
inanimate objects
weather and time
space and place
to rectify my existence
in some way that i can relate
at least when i list fruit
my belly aches with delight
Apr 12, 2013
Apr 12, 2013 at 3:37 PM UTC
I am from worn out measuring cups where the numbers no longer show,
From years of guessed quantities and over sugared cakes.
I am from cracked blue paint,
And the mantra “we’ll get a new coat next year.”
I am from the cow peas, crop circling, and honeysuckle vines ornamented with butterflies.
I am from Grandpa’s tobacco yellowed hands, Grandma Doll’s old wives tales,
From “eat your bread crusts and your hair will curl,”
And from “your face just might stick like that.”
I am from morning walks and the sylvan veil of moss,
From meandering trails and the drip of rain on leaves.
I am from Otter Pops, and bright blue tongues.
I am from cassette tapes, now left in the back of the closet to grow antique.
And VCRs,
From Monsters Inc. and Totoro.
And I am from the worn bindings of The Phantom Tollbooth and The Velveteen Rabbit.
I am from the meadow,
From searching for fairies, and sometimes even finding them.
And from the whispered promise “I’ll dream of you and you’ll dream of me…”
I am from the babbling gurgling creek, from the itch of nettles and the deep earthy scent of loam.
I am from the cat in Alice in Wonderland,
From Jacob and Leah’s wronged daughter.
I am from the Xanadu, the Akela, and the Dynamite,
From the crack of sails and the swing of the boom.
I am from placid seas and the rushing tumult of rain,
From heavy grey skies and flaming sunsets painted in watercolor across the Olympics.
I am from the pink syringe and the old blind dog’s last breath,
And I am from the hole where we laid her.
I am from the evergreen planted in the frozen ground to the sounds of my first cry,
That tree whose limbs witnessed my first breath, whose lofty trunk now stands as a testament, a marker, of where I am from.
Nov 24, 2011
Nov 24, 2011 at 10:31 AM UTC
Could we cut ourselves off from our country?
Burn all the books and monochrome rules;
Sever the fragile vessels of history?
I want to walk fast without news in my ear
over hills and fields and so thrilled with fear;
I want to take a tab
of fantastic poison
and see the world lit up
in a kaleidoscope of flags.
Through woods, past trees,
I will kick leaves
and brave a universe of tumbleweeds.
And from beneath a
canopy of luxury
a paradise I see
past the sun, where all is free
and hatred wastes and bleeds.
But everything is not as it seems -
Back home I dream in cut-throat numbers
vile quantities disturb my slumbers.
My identity drifts in the TV;
Jeremy Kyle makes my last plea
as my ears fill with adultery.
And then there are debts
that flash up - my patience cracks
into a pool of anguish.
I must get away,
get away from this madness.
Aug 31, 2012
Aug 31, 2012 at 7:04 AM UTC