"quizzing" poems
Maybe my writing
Will improve
When strewn over
Blue lined graph paper,
Tiny boxes,
Coaxing out order,
Perhaps even
Clarifying boundaries
Between crazed truth,
And detrimental lies.
The grid putting
Poem in context,
Poem like graph,
Displaying
Levels of THC
Depression
Number of Kisses
Tears Cried
Outliers of secrets uttered.
Box and whisker plot
Displaying anxiety,
Skewed data toward extremes.
No.
Linear writing would
Reveal the chaos inside.
I can't fit the poems
To the squares.
A graph can't really cry
The way a person can.
There's a losing feeling
Etched in pen
On a harshly graded
Parcel of mathematical quizzing
That a poem has no place to
Instill in me.
And no one would
Be able to read my work
The way they tell you to show it.
My poems have no color coding.
Definition between data
Becomes hazy as
Layers of black are added
In empty,
All encompassing anger.
And I smoke while I write tonight,
Haze growing,
Lines wobbled,
And I may have put a poem
On a piece of graph paper
But it's nothing like the math homework
That stays in my backpack.
Sep 18, 2014
Sep 18, 2014 at 12:10 PM UTC
Astonishing
Bewildering
Caring
Dissing
Educating
Fulfilling
Gravitating
Healing
Inspiring
Joking
Keeping
Loving
Motivating
Naming
Organising
Praising
Quizzing
Restoring
Smiling
Trusting
Uplifting
Varying
Willing
Xoxo-ing
Yelling
Zesting
Dec 9, 2015
Dec 9, 2015 at 3:24 AM UTC
You taunt me, your
perfection,
your tan skin glows like a god's.
your legs pale with a criss-crossing of
light brown hair,
a furry overcoat.
Your veiny forearms
and blotchy red face, pink with
acne and scars.
Chapped lips and eyebrows
forever quizzing what has been said,
artificial black hair gelled into
stiff shapes.
I could look at you
forever
but you still seem to
puzzle me.
Sep 25, 2013
Sep 25, 2013 at 9:45 PM UTC
i'm sitting in my truck
perdition by my side
the wanderers shuffle past me
quizzing at my universe, which must seem out of place here
i watch them walk away
and disappear into the darkness
of a city burning
under a cruel sun
May 5, 2015
May 5, 2015 at 6:39 PM UTC
It’s Sunday morning, about 8am. My BF Peter and I we’re doing our laundry. Most of the time, we spent in my dorm common room, sitting side by side on a red corduroy couch, while our clothes washed, and then tumbled away in the dryer. If you want privacy on a college campus, or to do laundry in peace, avoiding the weekend laundry rush, do it before 10am.
"Why do you wear these," Peter asked, pulling and lightly snapping the hair-band on my wrist.
I pull my hand back, protectively. "If I don’t have a hair-band on my wrist I feel out of control."
There’s a new me. I’d decided - civilized, unemotional, clear-sighted.
"I've got a lot to do before summer,” Peter said earlier, “so I made a spreadsheet.”
I felt a shadow pass over me - our future is, at best, undecided. So, I shifted gears, the way the new me is trying to do lately.
“A Spreadsheet!” I said, like I approved, and he grinned. I’d made him happy. This is what adults do, I’d decided, they have civilized conversations where decisions were made or avoided - but there was a small, dark thing in my heart.
I got a text from our dryer saying our clothes were dry, so we headed down. I love the smell of fresh laundry and the feeling of shaved legs against fresh bed sheets - a luxurious combination no guy will ever understand. I made a mental note to shave my legs later.
The last couple of weeks I’ve been working on summer fellowship applications. A successful summer fellowship is one of those things I’ll need when I apply for med-school - like grades, faculty letters, physician recommendations, community service, a great MCAT score, bla bla bla.
My mom knows the 200 things med-schools use to cleave away pretenders and she’ll rattle them off upon request and sometimes over groaning protests.
What I need, ideally, this summer, are clinical experience hours. There’s not much at stake, just my future, the respect of the faculty, and the begrudging acknowledgement of my pre-med peers. My mom was quizzing me on my progress last night. I confirmed that all the applications were in and I ended with, “I haven’t slept with anyone yet, to gain advantage - but we’re still early in the process.”
She was not amused.
Feb 20, 2023
Feb 20, 2023 at 2:13 PM UTC
She bleeds through veins that have been retrofitted for our future,
A running methamphetamine that never tires and always keeps steady pulse,
Excitedly,
Beating,
Torn blue jeans, pant legs rolled up into shorts,
Slaving,
It isn’t about me,
It isn’t about me,
Selfless smile,
It isn’t about me.
A **** hunch, quizzing over an unstained oak desk of etchings,
First place to my second centered in the middle.
A posture for quizzing- a leaning first grader.
None greater.
If she is overcast, there exists none grayer.
But I dig deep and find a kaleidoscope,
At that moment, I look at the light,
It’s true,
It isn’t about me.
May 28, 2013
May 28, 2013 at 5:22 PM UTC
poetry masquerades under too much
freedom of ineffective
politics, which it does not which to
engage with, namely it's own:
far-left mummification,
the far left mummified its heroes,
the far right cremated theirs...
one took the route to
Prometheus absence as subsequent
lack of camp-fire eagerly hell-bent;
what truth is woman? the woman worthy
of socio-political affairs, or affairs
of paranoid idealism signature sentenced
as counter-argument with haircut stylistics
and tattooing? a healthy visible status,
rather than an unhealthy counter, status
or no status, one ascribed the guillotine phobia,
the second a necessary Buddhist heroism -
both left reward-lost: dream of troll maidens,
dream of perfected bedroom antics with
so much **** reducing acting to naught
and theatre to desperation with the ignited
insignia of bureaucracy rather than
bored harpsichord rebels hash tagging
emily davison for bets and awareness in having
monopoly - of her beauty i'll speak but little,
am i the shopkeeper, the merchant,
easier under the Niqab than for her fancy of ******
taking place... dreadlocks un-kept,
and three signatures on lips that made kissing
a pain... removed, thus revenged...
if i knew woman i'd have kept one...
but since i know none, i kept cats, bypassing women
and imagining children; and all the better
for my liking, such that the world shrunk
to the size of Lichtenstein - oh but the few
buttered friendships are there to be spoken off
in old age... the few that remain have already leveraged you
to bite the worm closest to the heart,
in times when educating yourself equated itself to being shamed;
when education became shame and trivia quizzing,
when education became Latin bulimia
and even that didn't fertilise the earth to spawn
the awaiting, unearthed root for what came to be
known as the chattering colour: as death stood,
in its wintry palace, jokingly mannequin.
Jun 4, 2016
Jun 4, 2016 at 8:31 PM UTC
The great lines, you quote, don't
stir me... you know my vexation,
with the twinkling lights, that don't move.
The colors, don't mix... I move
from death to death, to understand
life, and fail miserably. The body
does not open. Seducers
ready to jump for a bite, to tear
off my columns, my domes.
Yes, I give, give away my precious
heart, time, my infallible attention
to heal you.I don't demand any
dough, remaining in penury, do not
ask for the factors. My arithmetic
has failed. Cannot solve the puzzles
lost in maze of juggleries.
It was your world. I am living
at a binary planet, scarcely habitable.
Yet I am happy in myself
looking at the grains of sand on my
hands. You know, you cannot
write like me... like me.
Sep 27, 2016
Sep 27, 2016 at 11:31 PM UTC
I must admit – to other perfect strangers
Never to you, the stranger who wasn’t really stranger,
I was only stranger to you –
Your game was impressive last night,
Your wit and charm, like the prince himself
Your efforts most admirable, quizzing my friends
Then to recite the most beautiful, perfect poetry to me
That star-like glitter in your eyes, like night sky
Caused a secret smile and sudden thuds of my heart.
I know by evening end, when drunken bodies worshiped other guests
And I was still ignoring you, not hard to get, just leaving you a fool
You must have cursed me – or seen me as an excessive ***** –
Slight apologies for not bowing and giving you simple bliss.
Truth is – I desired you so desperately –
Every inch of your imperfect body – all the morsels of your soul
To invite you in and worship you, love you and lay with you
‘Til morning would steal our drunken pleasings
And leave us with awkward reckless, though perfect memories –
You were no stranger to me though,
And it cleft my heart and darkened my soul that I was stranger to thee.
When we were sixteen we were so in love –
Or so future revealed, I with you – you with other girls
I lay on your floor shedding tears, like an animal hairs
Begging you to still love me, to entertain my pleading even.
So last night – as cruel as it is
While you forgot the many kisses I had traced on your lips
And the stories I drew on your spine –
I smiled because even though I was stranger,
Finally -
it was you, whom begged for me.
Sep 20, 2014
Sep 20, 2014 at 7:06 AM UTC
Fingerprints of two
Don't match
O no one has the
Same genes
O quizzing
Is in his blood line
Not mine
Feeling bizarre?
O in this world
You find many similar ones
If not equal
Just like similar triangles
Not all of them
Are congruent
Similarity is in
Abundance
Let us all come together
To make this world
A better place
Every cloud has a silver lining,
You know
But every person also does
Let's combine
All of these precious things
The best of each one of us
To create a perfect
Harmonic equation
O if you can't find them
You are probably
Veiled disillusioned
But try at least
At least
We won't need
The Kalinga war
To change you
From chandasoka
To dhammasoka
O let all the bherighosa(sound of war drums)
Become dhammaghosa(sound of peace)
O peace has a sound?
Yes ,it does
Telling us
O you are the beloved of the gods
Devanampiya Piyadassi!
Feb 7, 2018
Feb 7, 2018 at 7:21 AM UTC
Who was that?
Netanya asked
who was whom?
I said
that *****
who has just
dropped you off
in her car
she said
O her
she gave me
a lift home
from the store
what did you do
at the store
that she needs
to give you a lift
in her car?
she said
I work at the store
she said
can I give you
a life home?
O sure
what else
did you give her
to make her
so grateful?
she gave me a lift
because she was going
my way
I said
do you fancy her?
does she get
your pecker going?
Netanya said
in her tight voice
I walked to the fridge
and took out a beer
pulled the ring
on the lid
and took a sip
she's four months pregnant
I said
walking to the sitting room
and sitting down
yours I suppose
she said
she stood with her hands
on her hips
her eyes darkening
no of course not
I barely know her
she works
in Home ware
I bet you've
given her one
Netanya said
I looked
at her frizzy hair
dark but greying
you know I wouldn't
I said
how do I know
what you get up to
at the store?
she replied
I don't fancy any
of the dames
at the store
I lied
Netanya walked off
her backside swaying
like a ship
on stormy seas
thoughts of the young dame
on Perishables
buzzing like bees.
Jun 11, 2014
Jun 11, 2014 at 2:50 PM UTC
Your self-worth quizzing
the Unquantifiable
cannot fit the box.
Feb 19, 2021
Feb 19, 2021 at 1:38 AM UTC
As a lactose intolerant
cow whirring lion eye zing
dual (Banjo playing) Manichean
("FAKE") keen man womanizing,
faux nymphomaniac wannabe,
I cone only scream about visualizing
nip pulling and getting a breast
of Hani La (vanilla),
this sweltering unfreezing
Wednesday while mouth
watering chiefly hanker
for milch of
human kindness, which titillating
fanciful fandom fantasies
skinny dipping into soliloquizing
whet dreams har made
sadly, simply, and sorely realizing
test tickles quizzing
noggin merely figment
of fertile imagination pricking
prurient potent plentifully oozing
naughty salacious, licentious,
and felicitous evocations pulsating
hypnotically invoking
trance send dint overriding
gloriously flirtatious escapade needling
my over active
thought processes monopolizing
ability to focus attention trying
to compose joyous leavening,
sans jump starting
massaging, and kneading
dormant limp libido liberating
panting allied force,
which seems tubby
in axis Sybil for Nick -
A.Ting, thus Celeb Basie,
frantically, gingerly, and
haphazardly kickstarting
***** riot with this feeble attempt
for a firm hut heave action,
one docile male member
devoid of livingsocial,
hence aye ****
sitter ring joining
a nunnery, which
would be habit chilly unfitting,
and very un convent
shin null for a poetic ending!
Aug 29, 2018
Aug 29, 2018 at 2:10 PM UTC
I'm unsure what it is about these majestic creatures that first drew me in
From a young age I longed to be surrounded by them
I made friends with a neighbour
she tolerated my company well enough. That smell, molasses and grains barrels high. Her dusty old feed shed with hands just as grey
I made friends with a girl who was just as obsessed. We would play "horses" all recess. I would stay every weekend holidays too quizzing each other on horse facts we knew
I'm unsure how I still admire these creatures. I've been kicked. Though never bit.
I've been holding on for dear life while the horse gallops and kicks
Yet I'd get on a horse tomorrow and feel just as I did as a kid
Jun 13, 2024
Jun 13, 2024 at 6:47 AM UTC