"scientific" poems
Basketball stands for war or battle.
That's why I think about the players'
personalities, in my foxhole or squad.
Danny and Ben are fast and smart. Dan
especially can pass making him master
and commander. To defeat them as we did
is pst satisfying. Ben's five year old son
disdains to answer my question
Why are you you?
But I'm not here
to catalogue the men's personalities.
I like them. But each of us has moved on
many times, when ___________ suddenly died
the games went on with hardly a mention
and his name has since been forgotten.
But even this, absolute mortality
of not just our bodies but our names
and souls is not what I came
to talk about. Yesterday, between games,
I asked Joe how Molly his daughter likes
the high school. He mounted an impassioned
defense of reading as the indispensable skill
when I suggested math, the scientific method
and history are essential too.
Also between games
Bob diffidently asked why my kids are bald.
I was moved by the care he took to satisfy
his curiosity, concerned the subject might be
difficult. He's a political science teacher so
I took the opportunity to ask What ails
the republic? Of course I answered myself
wanting mostly to hear myself talk about Iraq
and how empire is self-correcting. For once I was amusing
I thought, treating the subject with a light touch
heretofore lacking.
But none of this is what I came to say.
A new guy, long quick and strong, a
bulldozer under the boards with a good
outside shot if needed got into a dispute
with the other Bob who likes to tell people
what to do sometimes, about an offensive
foul Bob called which we almost never do.
The new guy said If you can't take it don't
play under the boards which is what I say
when I'm ****** and don't give a ****
Bob said You've been pushing and shoving me
all day. I said He doesn't want to be
pushed and shoved which got a wry
smile out of Danny as I put the ball in play.
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 8:59 AM UTC
Every night I lie awake
And every day I lie abed
And hear the doctors, Pain and Death,
Confering at my head.
They speak in scientific tones,
Professional and low—
One argues for a speedy cure,
The other, sure and slow.
To one so humble as myself
It should be matter for some pride
To have such noted fellows here,
Conferring at my side.
19.5k
everyone keeps saying "we made it"
and it's actually a little confusing
because it's almost like they thought we couldn't
five teenagers on lockdown have never caused so much panic but I guess we're just
the deadbeat generation
(knock once for failure, twice for rebirth, three times to see your life in twenty years-
who knows, maybe you'll have a life in twenty years)
we pick locks on bad days turn back the clocks on good days
if we try hard enough maybe we'll go back to the glory days I wanna blast music from the busted up speakers
in the back of my car I wanna live like I used to
we're anthems and parades and kids crying out in the middle of the night when the hole in their stomach opens up
or closes
we're caught up in a whirlwind of scientific facts and figures and sometimes I want to scream at the top of my lungs
as if that'll help me escape the noise in my head
punk isn't about living through the fall of something it's about living through the rise of me
I am real I am here I will scream it from the ******* rooftops if I have to
I will tap my fingertips on tables even when I'm told not to
I will tattoo myself a thousand times over, an endless mantra of existence
i exist i exist i exist
this isn't a happy ending, or at least it isn't the one I was promised
but it's something
it's okay
and that's good enough because okay is ******* wonderful
lace my fingers with yours call me a queen tell me you'll never let me go because I will never let you go
we are the kids who will never stop living
even when they tell us that we are impossible we are heartbeats pounding on cracked pavement,
leather and cheap beer, lather me in love lay me down to sleep
with the promise of tomorrow
promise me that tomorrow will still be there when I wake up
you can have a house but not a home
I was a house but not a home until I met you
deadbeat degenerates make a better family than most.
Jun 24, 2014
Jun 24, 2014 at 8:37 AM UTC
What is a "soul"?
Seriously, what is it?
Ambiguity obviates all simple and complex definitions.
If "souls" do exist,
I suppose my "soul" is transmogrifying,
Transfusing the screen.
The key is Transition
Of a remote position.
Maybe someday a scientific physician
Will invent a tracking device to track its travelling distance?
Sounds sort of like a Stephen Spielberg novel
The genre of science fiction
Or is it?
7/18/11
(c) 2011 Brandon Antonio Smith
Oct 14, 2014
Oct 14, 2014 at 4:38 PM UTC
On a mythical Mumbai weekend,
of no serene start or dubious end,
with imaginary beauties, invisible friends,
I stepped out of a puffing train,
my long unkempt hair a lion's mane,
getting used to my twitching tail,
Posing on the Gateway of India,
the extraordinary explorer pose,
took a boat to Elephanta (sans the hose),
and when my shivering co-passengers
had finished feverishly taking pictures
and started screaming holy mothers and sisters,
I took off from the starboard end,
and became the first man-lion to
cross the polluted Indian channel,
surviving to make the news channels,
my scientific name listed as a brand new mammal,
my mating call recognized as a gushing gargle,
On a mythical Mumbai weekend,
of no serene start or dubious end,
with imaginary beauties, invisible friends,
I devoured deep-kissing lovers for lunch
at Bandstand's low-tide on a hunch,
to the delicious sound of munch! munch!
even as Shah Rukh Khan watched disgusted
from his big big bungalow by the sea,
and as the city sharpshooters came after me,
and later when they brought me down,
from Nariman Point building, like KING KONG,
I tuned a dusty guitar and sang a melancholy song,
on the death of adventure, love and reality,
dangers of delusions, lethargy and self-pity,
repression, horniness and too much TV,
down in a shower of bullets when I went,
sky like the coming of rain, godspeed, godsend,
in a mythical city, where nothing is really meant,
On a mythical Mumbai weekend,
of no serene start or dubious end,
with imaginary beauties, invisible friends...
Jun 4, 2016
Jun 4, 2016 at 11:01 AM UTC
I want to be your abacus baby,Oh you can count on me.
I wont say that i love you, or i heart you, I less than 3 you.
Your molecules must be moving fast,girl. Cause your really hot.
Are you igneous sedimentary or metamorphic? All i know is baby you rock.
And if god existed I'd thank him for you, but I'm rational and read a lot of Sam Harris.
Your beautiful like the font garamad,but i want to see you sandarac, take your pants off.
I want to be your abacus baby, you can count on me,
And i observe your quirks oscillating, and I'm formulating, a g-string theory..
Like an archeologist,I'm gonna try and compute your age. cause i really want to date you.
You make me feel like a male giraffe. I want to nudge your **** and make you urinate,and mate you.
Scientific fact,thats what they do.
The value of my love for you cannot be expressed exactly. More rational then Pi.
Hey **** is a legitimate word in scrabble, just FYI
I want to be your abacus baby, you can count on me.
You can **** me into your super massive black hole, the center of your galaxy. Im talkin ******
I may not be the strongest or the prettiest, but my knowledge of grammar shines.
I know how to use the words further and farther..correctly. Every fricken time.
Example:farther indicates physical distance
and further a depth or degree
example: the moon is getting farther from the earth
about 4 centimeters annually. Fun factoid,take it home with ya.
You just keep getting further into my heart.
You just keep getting farther into my heart.
I want to be your abacus baby, you can count on me,and if the situation is ambiguous, further and farther can be used interchangeably. Just a fun factoid.
I want to be your abacus baby, you can count on me.
Baby i less than 3 you.
So please take off your pants.
Aug 10, 2013
Aug 10, 2013 at 7:14 PM UTC
Go hang yourself, you old M.D.!
You shall not sneer at me.
Pick up your hat and stethoscope,
Go wash your mouth with laundry soap;
I contemplate a joy exquisite
I'm not paying you for your visit.
I did not call you to be told
My malady is a common cold.
By pounding brow and swollen lip;
By fever's hot and scaly grip;
By those two red redundant eyes
That weep like woeful April skies;
By racking snuffle, snort, and sniff;
By handkerchief after handkerchief;
This cold you wave away as naught
Is the damnedest cold man ever caught!
Give ear, you scientific fossil!
Here is the genuine Cold Colossal;
The Cold of which researchers dream,
The Perfect Cold, the Cold Supreme.
This honored system humbly holds
The Super-cold to end all colds;
The Cold Crusading for Democracy;
The Führer of the Streptococcracy.
Bacilli swarm within my portals
Such as were ne'er conceived by mortals,
But bred by scientists wise and hoary
In some Olympic laboratory;
Bacteria as large as mice,
With feet of fire and heads of ice
Who never interrupt for slumber
Their stamping elephantine rumba.
A common cold, gadzooks, forsooth!
Ah, yes. And Lincoln was jostled by Booth;
Don Juan was a budding gallant,
And Shakespeare's plays show signs of talent;
The Arctic winter is fairly coolish,
And your diagnosis is fairly foolish.
Oh what a derision history holds
For the man who belittled the Cold of Colds!
10.8k
study, cram, call, make plans...
power point, presentation, speech, rewrite...
theory, materialism and idealism and the difference,
Marx, Freud to psychoanalyze...
on to polynomials, linear equations, I make a scientific notation...
take a break. (eat)
ham sweet and thick
with lots of pineapple and some cherries
potato bread and cheese
PowerAde to rehydrate
little vodca with o.j. and cigarette
after lunch, breathe .
and it’s back to study lab to mentally beat meat.
paper due, final today, did I remember to triple check
and get rid of paper clips, include a cover sheet...
ready to evaluate... I think.
ready to second guess, miss dates and time, "you're late"
again...
95, 98, 3.5 GPA? pre-test, for final, make sure your research is done,
site, source, quote, student rate and double space
power nap, smoke again,
is the day over yet?..
Nov 26, 2012
Nov 26, 2012 at 3:52 PM UTC
Geometry,
more generally, Mathematics,
is a Scientific way of breaking down and explaining
the beautiful and infinite complexity
of our reality.
Apr 16, 2013
Apr 16, 2013 at 6:50 PM UTC
Welcome to the informational age
We're enjoy the world of technology
Never felt this modern world could emerge
Magical world with braveness and courage.
Welcome to the social media age
As everything we do is on page
We live like birds in a cage
It makes us falling into a rage.
Welcome to the insane and madness age
To make headlines,create a **** sweet savage
Can't believe we're on this stage
But we are still holding our grudge.
Welcome to the sweetest scientific age
Your reputation,you better manage
Like passenger manage it, as your luggage
Saving it, save safe from the salvage.
Jul 23, 2018
Jul 23, 2018 at 10:01 AM UTC
I think there was something wrong with my bladder
I noticed I was starting to *** a lot
(Must have had an infection somewhere),
It was like every thirty minutes I was going off to the loo
At this rate I thought you'll have the handle of the loo worn off with all the toilet flushing you're doing,
A little while later I'm out in my back garden walking, getting some air
And there's this... there's this great big **** just growing there
And I think to myself "I wonder what'd happen if I peed on that ****
Would it **** it or have any effect on it'
So I started peeing on the **** and you know strangely it starts to become this kind of obsession with me
A kind of a scientific experiment, this peeing on the ****
(Probably shows how empty my life is LoL)
All through the day I go out to *** on my ****
Even at night I go out with a flashlight just to *** on my ****
And sure enough about a week and a half later
The leaves their all starting to wilt, the whole plant just starts turning to mush
Well that's quite a discovery I say to myself,
*** it's a a potent weedkiller
And then there's this other **** a different kind of **** and I start peeing on that one too
And y'know the same thing happens
After a week or two of being constantly peed upon
The other **** starts to wilt as well turn to mush
I'm suddenly reminded of the famous old scientist Issac Newton
The guy who was out in his garden one day and got hit on the head with the apple and then invented gravity
(What goes up must come down)
"Well", I thought, "Issac you're not the only one who discovered something in his garden
Us scientists, yea! we got to stick together, we're a rare breed altogether"
Anyway awhile later I'm down the shop and I bump into this neighbour of mine
He asks me 'Are you enjoying the lovely Spring weather ?'
I told him I was, that it was lovely weather
Then he asks 'Are you doing any Spring cleaning, that house of yours ?'
I thought for a second, then said "Spring cleaning...Naw!"
Then I smiled "But I have... I have been doing a spot of gardening though".
May 2, 2022
May 2, 2022 at 8:08 PM UTC
I truly believe that one of the reasons that the US is despised and condemned world wide is because of such views on such characteristics as: honesty, integrity, independence(this includes not thinking in a collective mindset which we do as a culture, everything is apple or windows, pepsi or cola, republican or democrat, people need to think for themselves stop claiming and just be), persistence, determination, morale, empathy, tradition/heritage, learning, chivalry, discernment, and humility.
Instead of utilizing and perfecting these people of this nation and similar one's have become: prideful, dependent, drive-less, imprudent/unwise, insulting, ignorant(willfully so), objective, biased, crude, mediocre, and surface oriented.
In turn we have neglected the responsibilities we have of ourselves. This has resulted in physical, mental, and spiritual capacity regression on a mass scale. Most people have no idea what they are consuming in their daily dietary intake(I mean really know what all the ingredients are and what they do whether positive or negative). Most citizens have also become, literally and according to the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization, mentally incapable and completely inane as compared to even 15yrs ago. We have forgotten how to have a community to the point that neighbors don't know each other anymore. We have exchanged the truly important things in life like knowledge and wisdom for wealth and appearance. We have completely forgotten how to survive without the aid of water treatment, electricity, and useless objects. One of the worst of all things we have stopped doing, is being involved with our government; instead, we have put our trust in them without oversight, and this is why we have been losing our liberties. I believe, just like Benjamin Franklin stated, that any individual who sacrifices even one liberty for safety/security... deserves to have all of their liberties eradicated.
In conclusion, it is time to return our societies to ourselves. We need to relearn the truly important things in life and start living with ourselves, each other, and nature as we must to thrive. It is on us as a people to repair what generations before us, and our generations are doing; lest, I am afraid, our children and grandchildren will inherit the same ideals and expand upon them until we regress to the point that insolence, ignorance, and imprudence is the common norm... we have already begun to accept these. Open your eyes to the truth, at first it will be painful and difficult, but than you will be set free. WE THE PEOPLE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR FUTURES AND CHILDREN'S FUTURES.
Sep 14, 2012
Sep 14, 2012 at 12:18 AM UTC
Mirror
by Kajal Ahmad, a Kurdish poet
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
My era’s obscuring mirror
shattered
because it magnified the small
and made the great seem insignificant.
Dictators and monsters filled its contours.
Now when I breathe
its jagged shards pierce my heart
and instead of sweat
I exude glass.
Keywords/Tags: Kajal Ahmad, Kurd, Kurdish, translation, mirror, shattered, magnified, dictators, monsters, jagged, shards, sweat, perspire, leak, bleed, extrude, protrude, glass
The Lonely Earth
by Kajal Ahmad
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
The pale celestial bodies
never bid her "Good morning! "
nor do the creative stars
kiss her.
Earth, where so many tender persuasions and roses lie interred,
might expire for the lack of a glance, or an odor.
She's a lonely dusty orb,
so very lonely! , as she observes the moon's patchwork attire
knowing the sun's an imposter
who sears with rays he has stolen for himself
and who looks down on the moon and earth like lodgers.
Kurds are Birds
by Kajal Ahmad
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
Per the latest scientific classification, Kurds
now belong to a species of bird!
This is why,
traveling across the torn, fraying pages of history,
they are nomads recognized by their caravans.
Yes, Kurds are birds! And,
even worse, when
there's nowhere left to nest, no refuge from their pain,
they turn to the illusion of traveling again
between the warm and arctic sectors of their homeland.
So I don't think it strange Kurds can fly but not land.
They wander from region to region
never realizing their dreams
of settling,
of forming a colony, of nesting.
No, they never settle down long enough
to visit Rumi and inquire about his health,
or to bow down deeply in the gust-
stirred dust,
like Nali.
Bi Havre (“Together”)
possibly the oldest Kurdish poem
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I want us to be together:
we would eat together,
climb the mountain together,
sing songs together, songs of love,
songs from the heart, sung from above.
I want us to have one heart, together.
Many words in this ancient poem are in doubt, so I have excerpted what I grok to be the central meaning.
And because Kajal mentioned Rumi, here are my translations of Rumi:
Raise your words, not their volume.
Rain grows flowers, not thunder.
—Rumi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Birdsong
by Rumi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Birdsong relieves
my deepest griefs:
now I'm just as ecstatic as they,
but with nothing to say!
Please universe,
rehearse
your poetry
through me!
Apr 1, 2020
Apr 1, 2020 at 3:00 AM UTC
My brother, you quietly succumbed to death.
Why do you defeat yourself I implore?
For cruel injustice had done by poor health
To rob of good of life you may explore.
Despite our vigil you went just the same.
In times of great wonders still suffered,
With scientific breakthroughs, and what a shame.
What possible way death can be differed?
Sleep in peace in tranquility brother;
Oh, leave this world to us, to concern, to think.
Some lives toiled for many, some no other,
Some only lives on merriment and drink.
Here laid he in soil of red burial earth,
And free of cares and rest for all it's worth.
Jun 3, 2018
Jun 3, 2018 at 11:15 PM UTC
In my pursuit of a higher education
I am now starting to study the process of human decomposition
And how strange we all rot away like road **** and plant vegetation.
I see the word Casper and my memory takes me back to when I was a child
Remembering he was a sad and lonely invisible cartoon character.
I am now reading it is a proven scientific law, that after you pass
And you give up your ghost, your body then becomes
A breeding ground and you are the decaying host.
Trying to hide the evidence you’re now digging a shallow grave
Don’t do that because it takes eight times longer
Thinking about submerging in water? Yes, it’s a little quicker
But if someone did you seriously wrong and unfair
The quickest way to decompose them is,
Just leave them hiding under some brush and in the summer open air
So then the flies, insects and bee's’ can make a home in their hair.
Sir Isaac Newton told the world how gravity should behave
And now a modern man proved it is no longer so
I can see now, Newton is raging hard and deep inside his grave.
I have not a single fear the only thing that scares me is,
I know without any doubt now that I am insanely brave
Trust me I’ll drag your corpse also and hide it in my make shift grave.
I’m out on a night prowl to change Casper’s law
And prove to you all that it was really only just a theory
Reading books about death gives me a thrill,
Better pray and hope I don’t someday become terminally ill
Everything I do stems from my madness and with it,
Premeditated thoughts and also a great conspiracy.
(SirCARSr. 3-2-2013)
Mar 3, 2013
Mar 3, 2013 at 5:05 PM UTC
By: Cedric McClester
Despite some misconceptions
And attacks
Endure for centuries
By us blacks
Let me lay down
Some unknown facts
How ‘bout we start with
Henrietta Lacks
For most of us
After our death
Other than memories
What else is left?
For our survivors
The bereft
Yet her cells live on
It’s a matter of theft
From Henrietta’s
Cancerous cells
A bold idea
Suddenly jells
Spawning cures for cancer
As her biographer tells
And in vitro fertilization
Other things as well
Science took complete advantage
Of her cells
Which they still manage
Though she died of cervical cancer
Her cells provided them
With the answer
To scientific mystery
Check out her cells history
Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2017. All rights reserved.
Apr 15, 2017
Apr 15, 2017 at 12:25 PM UTC
You ask me if I'm okay
And I can't even tell you
Because the words break in my throat
Like waves crashing against the cliffside.
How can I look at something I knew
Like a scientific conviction
And believed in with a faith
Stronger than that of god,
And choke out the words,
"How could i still love you,
Through all this pain you've caused?"
I've always been broken,
Something that I've accepted
Like the knowledge that the sun comes up each morning
And goes back down at night.
I never asked for any of it,
And never asked anyone but God and Archangel Micheal
For help.
But you heard the echo of my plea,
And mistook it for a cry for your help.
I never asked it of you
Yet you acted as if I expected you to stop your life
To find and mend the pieces.
In reality,
All I asked for was your support as a friend.
But even that was too much.
Instead,
You ignored me.
Me and my pain.
Maybe you didn't want to deal with it,
And I can assure you that I did not.
But you made me a million promises
And broke every single one.
I suppose you did it to protect yourself,
And through everything,
I've learned that from you.
I've learned to fight for my soul too.
So now I begin writing my goodbyes
Which will probably come to you in a thousand fragments.
But this is it.
The pain and anger over the last 6 months was heart shattering.
I've come to resent you.
For loving you so much that I can't tell you I can't love you anymore.
And even though I cherish and love
The people who laid next to me when I was sick..
Who never left or judged or pitied..
Who were just..
There...
It will hurt every time someone mentions your name
Until the day I die.
And even when they shower me in the light of their smiles,
I will miss you like a bad habit,
And yearn to see your eyes
Like the steely kiss of cold metal on my wrist.
Aug 7, 2014
Aug 7, 2014 at 2:00 AM UTC
unsure, uncertain,
of the laws invested
in the realms and reams
of poetry ingested,
am i addict,
or supplier,
retail consumer
or
wholesale supplier,
a mom & pop candy store,
or a metastasizing intelligence
that takes any thing, and all,
a solitary letter,
an instance of a sighting,
a gasping palpitation
and reformats it into
a hehe literary madhatter^ piece
you supply, I demand,
I supply, boy oh boy,
do I ever, but you never,
come to me directly asking,
write me a poem, thick or thin,
witty fitty or an overly looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong
e~pistle (a/k/a e~pistol)
yet the trade goes on and om,
the marketplace never closes,
except when periodically the
gatewaykeeper is slow to pay his bills,
and the trading centres are global scattered,
young entrepreneurs try to sell a single
piece, as if it was breaking news history,
and tired old men, review their lived,
eager to memorialize, so it's ok to forget,
in retro!spect perspective,
the mirror who cannot lie,
states affirmatively, you are
both ****** and dealer,
a corporation scientific
of ancient biblical origins,
a psalmist, a deacon,
a lyricist, but thankfully
not a singer,
an essayist who writes best
when ****** by tawny port wine,
who snatches inspiration with
equality of equity,
(wait! that's wrong,
the equity of equality,)
where he can
find, ***** city streets, the deaths
of heroes, the sunrise calm miracle
he drinks in daily, by rivers, by seas,
by estuaries brackish, and streams
of watered purity, the riveting bays,
the individualized glisten deflected
into my eyes, that each
contains one pure blessing within…. nml
Sep 27, 2025
Sep 27, 2025 at 9:24 AM UTC
“The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.”
Stephen Jay Gould
Give me
vacuum tube torus Lorentz-Klein interference receptors
dual noble-gas maser integration processors
at least one
prosthetic Gaussian carbon-coated ribosomal Tesla coil
an anthropomorphic hierarchical temporal meme-pseudopod
some
support vector k-nearest neighbor algorithms
reverse engineered quantum optic die-cast silica motherboards
self-assembling three dimensional electro-active protein polymers
maybe even
a superconducting spectral alkali resonance analyzer
paired with
harmonizing piezoelectric kinematic thermal modules
dipped in
subzero Kurzweil-circuit nanite neurotransmitters
and voila!
God.
Dec 15, 2011
Dec 15, 2011 at 5:18 PM UTC
I don't know man. It just has been different lately, you know?
No not really. What do you mean? Like, explain it.
Okay so you know how you do it and you feel everything dissolve? You know? And that warm fuzzy light fills you up and the back of your head sags all the way to the floor? You know how you can't stop smiling? How nothing matters because everything is going to be chill in the end? You know?
Yeah? So what's the issue?
Well recently, and I mean very recently, I just got this feeling. This ******* feeling for two hours and all I want is for it all to be over.
The thing is - I know that everything is fine. That it's all chill and that I'm just geeking out, but still, the way it makes me feel. I can't do that anymore.
How the hell does it make you feel dude? Jesus can we get to the point sometime soon?
Right, my bad. It's my heart first. I feel my heart going at a thousand ******* miles a minute but when I check my pulse or heart beat - everything is normal. But still I feel it in my chest yapping like a dog at the front door and I can't convince myself that this is chill. Then it's my chest. You know how Jesus died of suffocation on the cross?
I thought they stabbed him before they suffocated?
Whatever, you know what I mean, how people on crosses couldn't breathe because of their arms and lungs and chest or whatever? Well I get this feeling that my chest is thinner than a sheet of printer paper. That every single time that I inhale it's never enough. Then I get this electricity in the back of my head. It creeps up from my sternum, through my throat and then to my brain stem. Like an itch you can't ******* scratch no matter how many layers of skin you go through?
Jesus dude.
Then I convince myself that I can't move my right hand. Convince myself I'm partially paralyzed. Only I'm watching my right hand move. But I feel like it has to be an illusion, because how the hell am I moving a paralyzed hand? It's all gotten so ******* twisted that I don't know which sense I can trust.
Well are you sure that that's the reason? Why don't you take a small geeb or something? For the sake of the scientific method?
Listen to me you fool. There is no method to this. Just madness. But I suppose, in the name of fairness, I should do some more research. Maybe just this one last time. Just to be sure.
Exactly... So you wanna smoke some ****
Yes. I want to smoke some **** Just for science and all that. I kinda have to. It'd be unamerican to not smoke, right?
Right.
Jan 3, 2014
Jan 3, 2014 at 10:41 PM UTC
The farthest man made object in space, Voyager 1,
is over 20 billion km away from Earth.
On board is a phonograph record, brilliant gold,
containing sounds and images of what life is like on earth,
A message to whoever is able to listen, a literal shot in the dark.
On it is an inscription that is perhaps the most beautiful sentence
I have ever read
TO THE MAKERS OF MUSIC
ALL TIMES
ALL WORLDS
a time capsule, a gift, from us
To anywhere and everywhere
A hundred years from now or a thousand
Our belief that no matter what time
Or world you belong to, melody and harmony and rhythm, can bring us together, can communicate.
On the cover
Are figures, explaining how to operate this record
Hieroglyphics from what by then
Would be ancient history
Messages in binary, the 1s and 0s
Our position in the universe marked by our distances
from gigantic pulsars, the star map to our home,
the creators of this message
There's beauty in this marriage of math and art
Code and music
As a way to communicate with the universe.
Some of the images on the record are
the most beautifully simple ones,
Of us, humans, drinking and eating, laughing,
of animals, nature, food and architecture.
Then there are images of our scientific observations,
mathematical calculations, our discoveries,
Like a child showing off
Look, look what I can do!
Black and white and in colour,
Pictures, proof that we, indeed have lived and achieved.
The music, classical, our very best from Bach and Mozart
to Blind Willie Johnson's Dark was the Night.
But all of this can only matter, can come to fruition
if someone exists to receive it, and is evolved enough
to comprehend what it means.
But that's the thing, everybody knows,
That's there's a slim chance of this record ever being heard,
and it's much more possible that the Voyager will simply end up as floating debris in the cosmos, but it doesn't matter!
We just want someone to know that there was a species of bipedal, intelligent animals on this blue planet,
no different than finding graffiti in alleys that read I WAS HERE.
WE WERE HERE, WE EXISTED.
And it's all about that hope, the hope that someone will see us,
our pictures, listen to our languages, our greetings, our music, and remember us, even after we're long gone.
Or perhaps we will one day be interstellar space faring people as well, following the path of the Voyager, doing what we do best,
Explore.
Jan 2, 2016
Jan 2, 2016 at 9:32 AM UTC
To Struga Festival Golden Wreath Laureates
& International Bards 1986
Stand up against governments, against God.
Stay irresponsible.
Say only what we know & imagine.
Absolutes are coercion.
Change is absolute.
Ordinary mind includes eternal perceptions.
Observe what's vivid.
Notice what you notice.
Catch yourself thinking.
Vividness is self-selecting.
If we don't show anyone, we're free to write anything.
Remember the future.
Advise only yourself.
Don't drink yourself to death.
Two molecules clanking against each other requires an observer to become
scientific data.
The measuring instrument determines the appearance of the phenomenal
world after Einstein.
The universe is subjective.
Walt Whitman celebrated Person.
We Are an observer, measuring instrument, eye, subject, Person.
Universe is person.
Inside skull vast as outside skull.
Mind is outer space.
"Each on his bed spoke to himself alone, making no sound."
First thought, best thought.
Mind is shapely, Art is shapely.
Maximum information, minimum number of syllables.
Syntax condensed, sound is solid.
Intense fragments of spoken idiom, best.
Consonants around vowels make sense.
Savor vowels, appreciate consonants.
Subject is known by what she sees.
Others can measure their vision by what we see.
Candor ends paranoia.
Kral Majales
June 25, 1986
Boulder, Colorado
5.5k
I'm pretty sure I dreamed you up
Late last night while I was walking in the rain.
I probably shouldn't tell you
That nobody's ever been
Proud
To hold my hand
In front of anyone else.
It probably shouldn't mean something to me
That your fingers felt natural laced with mine.
Everybody has hands,
Everybody can touch me.
Ah,
But few people can touch me
And make me feel it.
I could go on about your voice,
The way you stumble and trip over your words
That tugs at my heart in this deliciously painful way:
I want to stop your confusion
With a kiss.
I could talk about your eyes,
Sparkling, sparking a connection like a short circuit in my head
That makes me have to stop and re-collect myself.
With a ring of dark around the edges of the iris
That I read somewhere makes somebody more beautiful,
Scientifically.
It didn't feel scientific.
It felt gravitational.
I could say lots about the way your hair
Never falls the same way,
And dances, reaching, in the breeze
And somehow the image makes your eyes glow more.
But your hands...
Contact is a thing for me, you see.
Skin.
(Yours.)
I love contact, and it's because
No words get in the way of what you want to say.
If you feel and wish, you need nothing more than a brushing of fingertips
To say exactly what you mean to.
I think you heard me, all night.
I was saying everything
I wasn't saying.
You kept drifting back to me, your fingers on my knee
Or resting in my palm,
And I think that's really what did it,
Honestly.
What made me decide I don't care if this is a terrible idea
(oh it surely is)
I know I should probably make a better show of it-
A token attempt, really, to be smart.
But then again, when
Does that ever work out?
And your fingers twined with mine...
I think you carry some kind of low level electric charge,
And it sizzled through me every time your hand touched mine.
I thought of breaking the connection a hundred times,
Easier for you,
Easier for me,
But god, how impossible.
I held the thought in my mind and it hurt me to consider.
And so instead I pulled you a little closer
And kept going.
Outside walking in the rain early this morning,
When the streets were paved in silver and gold from the sheen of the water
That caught and held the soft glow of the streetlamps
I thought,
"Well **** this is going to keep me up nights, isn't it?"
And it began immediately
To pour.
Sep 2, 2013
Sep 2, 2013 at 12:12 PM UTC
Did you know that since I met you I haven’t finished a single cup of coffee,
or had a dream that I could remember
or gone to bed the same day that I got up?
I’m not complaining mind you.
I just find it intriguing the little things you have changed in my life without even realising it,
without any effort.
My life used to be mostly empty, as in devoid of things, vacuous perhaps, if that means like a vacuum. I mean there was lots of space in it that wasn’t filled with anything in particular.
But you have managed to fill all of that nothingness up.
The times when I used to sit here and daydream about nothing, suddenly there you are.
When I close my eyes before going to sleep and used to spend on average seven minutes thinking of nothing (and that a scientific fact not one I made up) I now spend (on average) seven minutes thinking about you.
In that fraction of a second when breathing in turns to breathing out, there you are.
In that fraction of a second when I blink, its you I see.
Because its you I yearn for. Because its you I want to have and hold and kiss and caress and so much more that I dare not write, even in a poem.
But how?
How did you do this?
How did you invade my very psyche, my soul, my spirit so completely so effortlessly and with such subtlety that I never even noticed. Until I noticed. And its not like I noticed you were here and watched as you spread to there but you were suddenly everywhere.
Places no one else had ever been before.
Ever.
Places that people I had known for much longer and much more intimately had never been able to reach.
And yet there you are.
Sitting on a swing.
Waiting.
I just wish I knew what for.
Sep 17, 2010
Sep 17, 2010 at 7:47 PM UTC