"simplifying" poems
This is art of simplifying love.
If you have no friend,
You don't have to go to the club,
And get drunk with strangers.
Let's get drunk together.
If you have no time,
You don't have to talk to me for hours,
Just simply text me,
And tell you're okay.
If you have no money,
You don't have to buy me fancy food,
We can eat the instant noodle instead.
Or I can cook and eat by myself.
If you're bad at remembering,
You don't have to remember our anniversary date, nor my birthday.
Just remember me,
Or simply remember my name.
If you're not in love with me,
You can start learning it,
Or simply throw me away.
It's way more simple than faking love.
Feb 22, 2016
Feb 22, 2016 at 7:47 AM UTC
I wake up at 7 AM, its raining, go figure. I catch the bus by Cohen’s Food Co., soaked, on the bus now, and the windows are down. Lucky me. I brought my big Boss head set because last night the convenient apple iPod ear buds got soaked too. I guess it was karma. But at least these have good bass. Transit bus, not yet to arrive to the station, we travel over a vi doc, the distant fogged *** view? A St Louis skyline. Busy people in and out of the station. Babies. Druggies. Fuglies. The woman in front of me has no teeth. She kept doing a ritual gum technique with her lips. Smacking them inward as if her teeth were actually there. **** I ride for awhile through the town. The plainest Jane land around, at least this Monday morning it was. My feet can’t touch the bus floor when I sit in the back. I like this, it reminds me of trips to California when I was small. The rental car was boring though once we got off the plane, Dad was asleep through the whole desert interstate. And my birthday, and your birthday. I’m at school. This junior college of filth. Free coffee though, I take a high advantage. MATH DRILL. Math. Simplifying the trickiest equations. Ratios and angles. Lateral products and dividing something half way through solving the problem. ***** math. 30 minute break. Smoking section. Nice little ash trays they supply, it would be a total turn off to walk far for a smoke in the wind. More coffee, I hate the taste, but need the caffeine. Second class starts. Writing. I like writing, but the projector smart board was broken, so we covered grammar from a text. We read something about complete sentences in the early 1920’s. In Europe. They would try as little as possible to use add verbs. Re-read this.
Jun 6, 2010
Jun 6, 2010 at 4:29 PM UTC
Sunrise nearing its death,
the end of today
complementing the beauty of a pen stroke,
harsh scratching alleviating indelible ideas
showing selves in hues painting our last moments
allowing me to trace timelines
in the contoured caresses
of this silent instrument played
to blend melody with beginnings,
each progression scaling further along
the passing hours left settling
to minutes from now,
purpose elaborated in contrasting
blues and oranges and purples
composing the elegance of utility,
colors not enough to excise the excesses
of depicting days in dimensions,
of simplifying it to degrees of time.
Laying alongside this current
to shape clouds
and animate constellations,
my faux-corpse stares again into
the memory held in galaxies
only glimpsed at twilight.
Sharp cuts of consonants
and vowels' smoothed corners
try to rid me of
stream of conscious thinking loosed,
the inner struggle hoping for reprieve
from that constant combative nature
of inward disagreement
and dialectic digression
deflecting the question of
what if we'd only spoke
instead of being lost
to foreign type-faces designed by
some soul never to see
the dying day my way.
If only we'd spoke,
I would have had the chance
to stumble on a goodbye.
Rather we are left
to flourishes of unfamiliar weapons
sitting askew on these pages,
the balance shifted due to
us degrading to another's personality,
and writing out those lines
we couldn't come to say.
Nov 16, 2012
Nov 16, 2012 at 6:51 PM UTC
You spoke to me with your
voice like Mia Farrow’s and
your eyes not at all like
trampolines. A tar twig
bobbed between your lips;
you spoke of self-destruction
and smoked your commas
and semi-colons. You asked me
questions with the least amount
of answers and the most amount
of space, like a widow’s home
adorned in compromise. The six
o’clock sun sprawled through.
You said I reminded you of how
we’re always treating people like
fractions, simplifying where we
should be unfurling equations.
I saw the dawn illuminate your
hiccups and your hesitations. I
took a kiss; I thought there’s
nothing more fleeting than
moments like this, but at least
you can’t run quickly with a
heart so full.
Mar 6, 2013
Mar 6, 2013 at 6:58 PM UTC
You know that bowl that I carry around in my belly?
Too heavy for my frame, I've carried it precariously, trying not to spill.
I've used it to catch the steady drip that's been there since forever. I've used it to catch the rocks that I hurled up like a juggler (to find where I begin). You've taken it, and now you're swirling the contents, rinsing them with your own feelings, your own words (yourloveyourloveyourlove). All the garbage, the petty insecurities and fearsfearsfears, wash out and leave behind the heavier stones and metals that I've used to construct myself, contain myself.
The material of my foundation exposed, you continue to rhythmically, relentlessly reduce me to the shimmersilt at the bottom of the bowl.
Eroding.
Simplifying.
Until you're left with the specks of gold that you say define me.
The evidence of treasured trust that remains after I've allowed you to dump out my contents with gentle, sweeping motions.
May 27, 2014
May 27, 2014 at 11:24 AM UTC
bitterly i remember
in my first simplification class
i forgot BODMAS.
boys around me
solved gleefully
while my pencil
showed no will
to budge with the clock
bent on making me a laughing stock
before my peers.
it's such times in life
when devils raid
to come to your aid.
i gave a furtive look
to the notebook
of the boy next to me
put an equal to sign
and to the sum's next line
wrote nine.
what followed i would keep to mine.
Feb 21, 2015
Feb 21, 2015 at 8:02 AM UTC
we can't stop our hearts from beating,
our lungs from breathing, so why
try and stop our minds from thinking?
they can destroy us once they're
overclocked and overloaded,
over-simplifying complicated situations.
we still try to forget ourselves,
and how they're always there,
but it's inevitable, atomic,
how time moves us, but we cannot move time,
only by falsifying hands tracking
secondary measurements, little ticks
that eventually drive us mad.
not with anger, but with sadness,
time slips, and we slip with it
back to innocence, perseverance ensues,
and we soon see how time changes
without our hands in the clock.
you can take your hands off the gears now,
and keep the time set where it was,
and before you know it,
that too shall pass.
Oct 7, 2014
Oct 7, 2014 at 12:53 PM UTC
It starts
as a wild thing. Thoughts
and ideas every which way. I pare
out bits, exposing hidden
needles, creating spaces.
Simplifying it—
revealing the
theme. It
takes shape;
evoking
the smell
and shape
and colour
of the original.
Dec 21, 2015
Dec 21, 2015 at 7:10 AM UTC
And if I stop.
If I stop doing,
and working,
and perfecting,
and working,
and complicating,
and simplifying,
you're there.
Unconditional love.
This giant truth on my back.
That I carry and ignore-
simply:
Unconditional love.
You are.
Just are.
No to do:
But stop.
And breathe.
And believe.
And be.
Unconditional love.
Feb 1, 2021
Feb 1, 2021 at 2:40 PM UTC
The mind
picked up an idea
from reading
to just relax
and vibrate with it
so the mind
since it likes to add
thought just relax
and harmonize with it
and then
just relax
and resonate with it
and I am in favor
of all these techniques
but it strikes me
that this additive nature
of the mind
creates too much
so what I have been doing
is simplifying.
I just harmonize
with everything.
Jan 18, 2011
Jan 18, 2011 at 10:45 PM UTC
the human body
has three hundred and fifty bones
when we are born
which fuse together
as we grow
to two hundred and six;
further simplifying
down to condensed calcium
and summated marrow,
growing our skeletons down
to simpler beings as we grow.
if only the human soul
was not the opposite;
*********** into
spreading stardust
particles so quickly that
we cannot put a simplified
finger on exactly who we are.
black & gold.
Nov 20, 2013
Nov 20, 2013 at 7:05 PM UTC
What if the people in this room were the pages upon which we wrote: documented with our travels, or inscribed with our beliefs. Our stories, once secrets, become legible. We carry them in heart to heart conversations both trivial and deep. We brainstorm, helping each other write the missing parts and next chapters with our actions as much as our words. We read those around us in the quiet company of our thoughts- our dreams- sometimes loosing ourselves in the blank spaces left by those we once loved. We look up briefly from our reading with renewed perspectives, and we move. Our hands both reach for the same pen at once to rewrite the narrative, passing late-night notes to each other if only to keep ourselves woke. We don’t name what we’ve written, but we sign our names at the bottom and call it ours for the time being. We are impermanent. Still, we leave our marks like fingerprints on the pages of each other - happy thoughts and revision comments color coded in the margins- our own jam session hidden between the lines we stay writing with no idea or expectation of how it will sound in the end. We utter mysteries and we’re misunderstood, simplifying our confusion into basic metaphors or parables, so that those who pick up where we leave off can understand them, or find some common ground; some shared chapter. We borrow pens and finish each others’ sentences as we collapse on the same endings. Our dialogue subsides into unspoken movement: into silent eyes reading. We are campfire surrounded by the stories we stay telling — that without, we'd be left to scratch the indiscernible signs of love on cave walls for only the darkness to forget.
May 8, 2019
May 8, 2019 at 8:37 PM UTC
We tend to separate monsters and men
Simplifying and beliving that such things can't happen again
But if we could only resurrect the dead
The sole answer would be "that's what we said"
We call abhorent acts of criminals "inhuman"
Thinking cruelty only comes from ******* men
But animals never threaten holocaust or world war
And even big brother was a child before
Feb 22, 2017
Feb 22, 2017 at 12:40 PM UTC
keep barking
what,
mongrel?!
never to a chemist
what, suddenly there is
no notion of a cognitive
mongrel, i.e. a bilingual breed
of man?
i found that people
complained about having
a mixed-ethnic rooting,
never was the case translated into
the cognitive element of
vocab...
you are allowed an ethno-allowance
"stipend" and be left off
the hook if your mother was
white, but your daddy was black,
but then it comes to
possessing two languages,
good luck Buck!
akin to psychiatric disorders...
the pills don't work!
tell that to a chemist:
the **** was i doing all this time,
so running, cardiovascular
oxygen to the brain will solve
all the problems?
the last thing you want a chemist to hear
is: the only medicine is exercise...
i'm not saying it's perfect,
but to suggest that all pill taking
is bad makes the study of
chemistry: pointless...
might as well be studying
arachnophobia!
if i actually did make it into
the profession i'd be as much hated as
a police officer...
chemistry: bad...
make sure you wash your teeth with
cow dung extract,
and perfume yourself with
freshly plucked daffodils then!
jobs retain a tinge of absolutism
because relativism doesn't exist between them,
the only relativism shared is
the relativistic fact that such jobs
exists, and can exist because
they are coexisting...
a bus driver coexists with
a cabbie because: e.g. e.g. i.e. a mechanical
means of travel...
psychiatry undermines
the benevolence of a chemist,
by over-simplifying
the case-study of a cardiovascular trainer...
the **** is the point
running a treadmill without
generating energy?
you can't suddenly explain
to a chemist:
your pill aren't worth popping!
well, that's one way of saying
the currently exploration
of the impotence of antibiotics...
that worked...
but what's the point of telling
a chemist to suddenly "dig the groove"
of divorcing himself from
synthesising synthetic mimics?
- and instead analysing analytical
precursors?
a chemist is not going to suddenly
rephrase his quest
to agree to:
a futility his own work -
culminating in an effective
plagiarism of nature isolated...
but then popularising biology
and physics reduces chemistry as
being the Quasimodo of science,
a hunch-back ugly-face of endeavour...
a science crucified in terms
of modern ethic...
once the only adventurous
branch of science,
now the most ethically conducted
patron of rigour...
it has truly become nothing
short of a farce...
something worth being ridiculous,
but not inclined to be subject
of ridicule.
Dec 9, 2017
Dec 9, 2017 at 9:13 PM UTC
Sophistication stems from subtle simplicity
So stop sophisticating simplicity
Silken streams of sense swirl silver shadows deep
Simplifying the sophisticated, in slumbering silence keep
Dec 6, 2024
Dec 6, 2024 at 7:19 AM UTC
Which is my church with its green leaves, brown grass
and pine’s bark, all foresting in one motion.
I shall forest rituals of sacrifice,
but without Catholicizing faces drawn
from dark Crusading and my exiling.
Annaling to mark the sun’s solstice for Eastering
and holying days, the dew
coalescing upon the darkening and browning grass
at midnight and cooling air
arching constellations
and the mooning of the night: the cue
to lying for rest
by the small pool in this placing or
to strike, savaging at prey.
Owling as it does, darting as it does,
from a bed of branches, crying,
soundlessly shooting at a forest mouse, leaves
rustling for this night’s Nativity,
this one lifts its butterflying wings
like the soul’s silhouette
taken by an angeling force to heaven.
After owling, angeling, butterflying,
one must create Jesus as a verb.
Having witnessing these things,
limits are paining, as are knowings and doings.
The mouse must have been distracting
this owl from its offspring, thus it was Christing:
sacrificing itself for its children, thus fathering.
Seeing angels fluttering under the moonlight,
Hairshirting is my Church after living here,
after travelling through East of Eden in daylight.
Simplifying the Word---so heartwrenching---near
dawn or dusk, being as a penumbra’s cusp
I am Giotto’s halo in human form, keeper
of the haze, smoke, storm, and most of all, cup
from my own despairing.
Always there more to God than pain.
Churching myself is my work, thus by expressing
this foresting, owling, angeling, butterflying,
I narrate my life’s kingdom.
Only beautiful words for my Beatrice, Florence,
and re-Edening.
Jul 5, 2016
Jul 5, 2016 at 7:33 PM UTC
The deception of reality
Distorts and purports a dystopian image
Contrary to the utopia of our imaginations
This contradiction necessitates a division
And separation from the here and now
To the then and there versions
Of ourselves that depict and depreciate
In awareness of the real issues
That can move a generation to greatness;
To achieve the unachievable,
To tear down the corrupt walls
That constrain and obtain your identity
From the beautiful world around you
Simplifying your nature into a collective
Herd of obedient beasts
That never questions reality
Or its obscenities
Jun 7, 2016
Jun 7, 2016 at 9:45 PM UTC
Simplifying
helps you reach
a solid ground,
and the blue sky
behind
Drawing patterns
of life,
with a tips of fingers,
mixing colors
on a palm,
without having a strength
for a firm grip
knowing things,
deliberately letting go
And, why asking
questions, when
everything is so simple?
Even the blue sky,
highlighting
all around
Just ask, simple
why?
Dec 30, 2022
Dec 30, 2022 at 3:44 AM UTC
(It’s that vernal, infernal, tax season. How about a tax avoidance vignette? It’s poetic—in it’s own way)
Some students at a table near us in the dining hall were discussing America’s financial inequities. One guy was saying that we ought to “tax the crap” out of billionaires and their billions—and there was agreement all around—the consensus was downright mob-like.
I had to chuckle though, because these guys have no idea how wealth is managed in the world today. I bet, for instance, they think Musk has 200 billion dollars in his basement somewhere, but no, Musk’s 200 billion is his ‘net worth,’ the theoretical value of his stock portfolio (or his unrealized assets).
Just between us chickens, I’m related to a few ‘filthy rich’ people, (no, NOT my parents) and I’ve met many others and I can assure you, dear reader, that the ‘filthy rich’ have nothing you can tax. Now, I’m not a finance major. Everything I know, I learned from my Grandmère and my parents who thought a girl ought to know about money. So anyway, just for fun, here’s a quick (I’m condensing and simplifying), lesson on how taxation and wealth work in 2025.
The wealth of the rich lies in their assets—the value of companies they own or stocks they’ve invested in. Those “paper assets” can only be taxed when they’re sold—or, in tax terms, when their intrinsic value is “realized.”
Now instead of selling off (taxable) assets to live, the superrich use those assets as collateral for “securities backed loans” which are nontaxable. Elon Musk, for instance, takes no salary. He uses his ($94 billion) Tesla stock as collateral for loans he uses to fund his lavish lifestyle and provide ready cash as needed.
Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos—to name a few billionaires we all know of, take little or no salary—their compensation comes in the form of untaxable stock options they can leverage.
If you think this can’t go on forever, you’re wrong. Even when these billionaires die, the value of assets gained during their lifetimes are immune to taxation. At that point, some assets can be sold by heirs to pay off the outstanding loans, again, without worrying about taxes.
TA DAAAA. Now you know how the rich do it. How they avoid taxes in both life and death, and manage to leave massive fortunes to their heirs.
.
.
Songs for this:
Done Changed My Way of Living by Taj Mahal
Run On by Elvis Presley
Mar 20, 2025
Mar 20, 2025 at 11:30 PM UTC
When a girl loses her hope,
She becomes the most dangerous creature.
Fairytales and happy endings
Have lost their appeal.
'Mr Right' has been buried along with
All the other prince charming's from her childhood story books.
She visits him only in her dreams.
Boys with smooth tongues and gripping fingers trail after her.
Her bright smile and piercing glare
Spell the words: "enter if you dare"
She will laugh at all your jokes and burn your skin with her touch.
And her hands, oh they're so soft and gentle,
You don't even notice your arm is on fire.
Cheap compliments spill out of your mouth one after the other
And when she does not say thank you,
But instead chuckles to herself
You cannot help how enticed you are.
Every word she utters is
Daring you to come closer.
You see the way she's looking at you,
With those cumbersome doe-eyes
And you think you know what
She wants
And you think you have what
She needs
And you could not be more wrong.
She knows exactly the right witty remark to make, how to bat her lashes just right and how to laugh with just the right combination of coquettish and cute.
Stupid boys always like to think they can save girls who in their minds are 'too adorable for their own good'. Stupid boys are always trying to make themselves gentlemen by simplifying a girl to being 'pretty'.
The hopeful little darlings will swallow all of these unsavoury sentiments and store them in their naïve little hearts.
But not this girl.
Beware of the girl with no hope left.
To her, this is a game that she cannot lose anymore.
To her, you are nothing but a pawn;
Replaceable
Invaluable
She is a luxuriant forest
drenched in gasoline
A beautiful disaster waiting to happen.
She is so deceiving, so alluring,
You simply must have a taste
And you may.
But take warning:
She will light up in flames,
devour your little boy soul
and burn both of your bodies
to the ******* ground.
Jun 19, 2016
Jun 19, 2016 at 4:09 PM UTC
The letters I never sent still sit and collect dust.
An novels worth of thoughts filled with you.
The time taken, conveying something not so easily read aloud.
If by the time I do send these letters your thought will still be present.
Sealed with the accordance that I imagined your lips before licking and sealing it shut.
Of course not every letter is of a serious tone.
There has to be some silliness somewhere.
Smiles scribbled to and from the end of the flap.
Letters nicely tucked, a hint of cologne still lingering about.
Words floating from one page to the next.
Hoping you see my face in every line in the letters I never sent.
Simplifying the significance of how much I thought of you.
Facing a blank sheet of paper soon to be filled.
Attempting a million and one ways to confess all the unique and special
things that make you, well.
You.
No one is you.
Remember that, as by the end of this letter I'll imagine placing my lips against your forehead.
That's enough for me.
As the letters I've never sent will soon become a novel devoted to the many times I've sat and thought of you
Nov 16, 2016
Nov 16, 2016 at 3:44 PM UTC
for my darling jan
I woke at 2.30am and left you sighing gently as you slept,
checked the trap but found only droppings on the floor
I set the trap again and hoped the rats would leave –
I would prefer not to **** anything.
The dog mawed and moaned at its fleas
rubbing against the rail on the back verandah,
it settled when I whished it back inside to sit
(my mouth made that wist noise, the one you know the dog will hear but won’t wake the sleeping).
I lay on the red couch in the study and read Ray Carver.
A return to Carver simplifying me. If not by sleep I was
comforted by his weave of innocence and knowledge.
Ray started writing poetry in the year I was born (1957),
I don’t know why I mention this, perhaps I feel him like a kindred
spirit and am warmed by even the slightest connection.
Between the living and the dead are the sleeping. However being at rest
is no excuse for ignorance. Ray is at rest - some 18 years.
His poems like me are alive and breathing.
The magpies begin their morning carol as I return to bed at dawn.
Your breath and skin have waited for me.
When we wake, I tell you,
I am grateful our poem continues.
MChallis © 2010/2014
Oct 13, 2014
Oct 13, 2014 at 8:10 PM UTC
Simplifying
helps you reach
a solid ground
and the blue sky
behind
Drawing patterns
of life,
with a tips of fingers,
mixing colors
on a palm,
without having a strength
for a firm grip
knowing things,
deliberately letting go
And, why asking
questions, when
everything is so simple?
Even the blue sky,
highlighting
all around
Just ask, simple
why?
Dec 30, 2017
Dec 30, 2017 at 5:16 PM UTC