"statistical" poems
I whatsapped you through my nokia
And is it your existence I crave?
Or does my mind order
What is beyond the border
Unseen like the little light bulps in the sky
I whatsapped you through my nokia
And is it your fingertips I need?
Spending minutes on
Semantic and hours on our news feed
And high lights of our day
See my days are all the same
I ask myself questions and I find answers
In the shape of instant messages
Vibrating through my phone;
And as if it’s exhaling some deadly poison
It rings and rings and rings and rings and rings and rings and stops…
I whatsapped you through my nokia
Asking you
“you there?”
But you never answered
Because your iphone cannot show any whatsapp notifications
Coming from hopeless thinkers trying to figure out the typed mysteries of life….
Because your blackberry
Is too black to turn into a satisfactory vision
Of what your future should be;
Because your android
Is practically messy
And willingly complex
Like meteor showers hitting your phone
Every time the truth vibrates
In the shape of unanswered questions
For the answers are there…
But our phones are so smart they hide it;
I wahtsapped you through my nokia
Asking myself
Is my nokia a primitive technology?
A shameful scar on the scale of science
Like syringes ******* all the blood from the unstoppable sweet rush of statistical knowledge
I whatsapped you through my nokia…and all this comes out
Is it me being silly, or us being shallow?
Please do not whatsapp me the answer
For am tired of green screens
And boxed spaces
I need clean streams
Of fine faces
And eyes that glimmer
Rather than phones that shiver…
I shall remind my phone
To remind me
That I don’t need it anymore…
Apr 17, 2013
Apr 17, 2013 at 8:54 AM UTC
Today in speech
I learned
that May 4th
to September 2nd
is the season
for breakups.
I can't say
it surprised me
to know
that even my heartbreak
was ordinary.
Sep 4, 2014
Sep 4, 2014 at 3:49 PM UTC
I am somebody
Shot in the Head...
Found the bullets.
Coroner Said.
A child of God struck dead.
Gang related disputing Fools.
Aiming cowardly bullets right at you.
I guess praying prayers just won't do.
There is no safe in these hard knocks realities' Truths.
Our Sista child!
Our mother child!
All the while the bodies pile.
Her body now adds to that 'the shootings aren't as bad as last year' body count.
Can't even stand anywhere in your city NOW?
Something has to truly give.
There's a plague of rigid legalities, relaxed moralities, and political realities stealing the 'safe' from our dying breed.
The Black man withering away in siphoning inequalities.
Doubling unemployment stretches outward like a statistical wild fire....
Our present fact.
There is a genocidal component to these criminal acts.
Copyrighted (C)
Published in the 2018 Edition of the Reconstructed Literary and Visual Journal at Governors State University.
Aug 19, 2018
Aug 19, 2018 at 11:30 AM UTC
The probability of me being improbable is highly definite.
The statistical occurrence of randomness
Is proportional to the flow of consciousness.
May 3, 2014
May 3, 2014 at 5:19 PM UTC
Radness
The Philosopher’s Stone is not just a spiritual metaphor but an actual substance that can transmute lead or mercury into gold. The Stone is a product of Alchemy. Unlike chemistry, which only deals with physical matter and energy, Alchemy makes use of etheric and astral energies to reconfigure matter at the quantum level. Alchemy is to chemistry what a cube is to the square; it is a superset of chemistry and is capable of so much more.
How Etheric Energy Overrides Physical Laws
Alchemical achievements require successfully gathering, concentrating, and multiplying etheric energy. When this energy reaches a critical threshold, it overpowers the normal laws of physics and allows seemingly miraculous processes to take place. I believe it does this by biasing probability. By amplifying the probability of minor quantum effects, which are normally limited to the subatomic scale, they manifest on the larger atomic scale. In this way, one element spontaneously transforms into another.
The world around us is made of subatomic particles that regularly undergo unpredictable jumps, teleportation, bilocation, superposition, and other strange quantum behaviors. Why don’t everyday solid objects do likewise? Because the random quantum jittering of their subatomic particles collectively average out to zero. Think of a large crowd of people; seen from the air, the crowd as a whole is stationary, even though individuals within the crowd move in seemingly random directions. It’s because their movements are random and uncoordinated that they average to zero net movement on the whole.
The world we see around us is merely a crowd of subatomic particles whose individual quantum jumps aren’t apparent because they average to collective stillness. Physical laws that govern our everyday world, known as the deterministic laws of classical physics, are merely the laws of the crowd. These laws are what’s left of quantum physics after the unpredictability is removed through statistical averaging. They are not absolute laws; they are just the most probable manner in which matter and energy behave.
Physical laws can be bent. While the probability is incredibly low that enough coordination and coherence develops among the quantum jitters to manifest on a collective scale, that is exactly what etheric energy does. It alters probability and thereby skews the laws of thermodynamics, gravity, electromagnetism, and chemistry.
Alchemy does not violate the laws of physics, nor does it always follow them, rather it bends them as needed. It operates upon the quantum foundation from which these laws arise in the first place, via etheric energy affecting the probability of quantum events.
May 28, 2013
May 28, 2013 at 8:59 PM UTC
Not an enigmatic smile
Like the constipated, condescending smirk
Adorning, and inexplicably adored, on the Mona Lisa's smug face;
But a smile to justify God's existence;
A smile that, when dazzlingly bestowed
Upon one fortunate soul, caught rabbit-like in its
Wondrous radiance, infinitesimally, and cumulatively,
Increases the World's joy. Where every living thing -
Whatever exists on the planet, imperceptibly hums
To a new, more celestial pitch -
An effervescent vibration celebrating Life's mysteries:
A reason for existence.
It's a smile to make an Alchemist cry -
Turning a leaden heart to gold in an instant.
It's a smile to make a mediocre poet struggle
To articulate an adequate description
Using all the hyperbole, simile and metaphor at his limited disposal.
Inestimably more brilliant, and more valuable,
Than the most flawless diamond ever found -
And, perhaps, just as rare.
Thankfully, a renewable resource,
Enabled to enlighten and heat
The recesses of any beneficiary's
Heart and invigorate their soul.
Helen may have caused a thousand ships to sail,
Destroying a nation as a consequence;
And Cleopatra nearly caused the collapse of an Empire;
But Tao's smile, unleashed in all its glory
Could melt the Antarctic ice-sheet -
Drowning us all in its magnificence.
Mayan's have a myth that states such a smile
Only comes around once every twelve thousand years,
In the Great Galactic turning.
Einstein's General Theory of Relativity
Is often mistakenly considered to concern gravity,
But is, in fact, concerned with one's relative position
To Tao's smile - an inescapable vortex of pleasure.
No music conceived of the fabled Celestial Spheres
Compares to the silent, ethereal harmonies tattooing my heart
Whenever, beacon-like, that smile flashes fleetingly in my direction.
And Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle has not a Quantum core,
But revolves around the statistical uncertainty of being blessed
With the ephemeral thrill of a benign grim.
Mar 6, 2014
Mar 6, 2014 at 9:49 AM UTC
The power of Averages,
it means a lot
if you can
understand Means, a lot.
Assuming a Normal Distribution,
A Standard Deviation, or σ
defines where about 68% of the data falls;
roughly 34% above and below the Mean.
Two Standard Deviations
defines where a further 28% of data lies;
14% above and below 1σ and -1σ.
Positive 1-Sigma is one Standard Deviation above the Mean
Negative 1-Sigma is one below;
The range from -2σ to 2σ includes 96% of data.
The implications are astounding.
Within 3 Standard Deviations, one finds 99.7% of the data;
Within 4σ, 99.9%, 5σ, 99.999%,
the remainder are generally outliers and other improbable results.
To illustrate:
Suppose we had a group of 100 people,
and we wish to determine average height:
If our Mean height ends up being, say, 180 cm,
with a Standard Deviation of 20cm,
We can suppose that of 100 people, on average,
with a certain Margin of Error that is inversely proportionate to our Sample Size, or n
(for sake of argument, the Probable Error, or γ, is 13.49cm)
4 are taller than 220cm
14 are between 200cm and 220cm
68 are between 160cm and 200cm
14 are from 140cm to 160cm
4 are shorter than 140cm
--
Statistics is the parent of Probability;
Statistics is the Art and Science of Forecast,
Statistics paves the way for modern Science
Statistics is a powerful weapon in the fight against Ignorance
Statistics, however, are generally and intentionally misrepresented and thus misunderstood.
For increasingly accurate figures,
one must have a larger Sample Size
and a Sample group that is a representative subgroup
of the Whole
*This is intentionally abused
by most of the News
you read or see each day on Paper and Screens alike.*
If a "Statistical analysis" does not include at least
Margin of Error or Probable Error,
Mean (Average), Standard Deviation, and Sample Size
do not take it as accurate.
Depending on the source,
it could even be deliberately malicious.
Arm yourself with Knowledge.
May 7, 2013
May 7, 2013 at 6:14 PM UTC
200+ Temperature records set worldwide in the last two days;
430+ Temperature records set worldwide in the last seven.
The heat record in Death Valley is 134 degrees Fahrenheit;
it has been as close to that as 124 degrees the past few days.
Believe what you will about the inconvenience of the dire truth;
Statistical Anomalies are becoming the new Norms
Jul 3, 2013
Jul 3, 2013 at 5:12 AM UTC
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
In statistics we learn that certain events
have undeniable independence,
which allows us to predict the success or failure
under certain circumstances
and I couldn't help but catch myself wondering
what the probability was that an attempt at taking my life might have
and I considered calculating the chance of success,
part of me hoping that parameter exceeded its counter part
while the other part silently prayed and dearly hoped
that the chance of failure knocked success out of the picture.
But these are independent events
and even after analyzing past trials
the only way to know for certain
would to be to carry it out myself.
Mar 5, 2014
Mar 5, 2014 at 5:40 PM UTC
It doesn’t matter what language you speak because all screams sound the same
It doesn’t matter what your skin color is because all blood runs muddy red
It doesn’t matter if you are afraid because everyone has the same fear
It doesn’t matter what god you worship because even the gods run in the end
It doesn’t matter how big your eyes are because they still cry the same tears
It doesn’t matter if your ears can hear because it’s always rumors and lies
It doesn’t matter what clothes you wear because we are all stripped of humanity
It doesn’t matter if you are smart of stupid because we are all suffering from insanity
It doesn’t matter if you **** now because we all die the same way
1 death is a tragedy
1,000 deaths is a statistic
May 30, 2014
May 30, 2014 at 9:58 AM UTC
True or false, when you stood behind me with your hands on my face and mouth to mine,
I was sitting on the floor, but my feet were no longer on solid ground.
I wonder if the distance between us is not from something as innocuous as miles or hours
but the more discrete variable- past open legs leading to closed hearts.
I'm not asking you to open your front door to me, unwittingly there is no need,
you've already found a spot in the sheets from me- conveniently forgetting you've already let me in.
And while you are speaking in operational terms to create what we are not,
you have quietly defined what we are.
Counting the statistics of it all, if we are the 95th percentile in our sample size of damaged goods,
5 percent is still unaccounted for- I place my hope of you among the population of those still yet to fall.
I can count those invisible scars when my lips are on your neck and you remind me it's too hard,
but when placed elsewhere the rule is no longer valid.
True or false, it is only too much when my breath can trail thoughts closer to your heart
where my intimacy is harder to un-feel.
True or false, some distances are so deep within our heads they become simply not real.
Jan 17, 2014
Jan 17, 2014 at 2:40 PM UTC
The oxygen that we breathe
in
and
out
every minute of every day
is not lost
but shared
re-used
recycled
recirculated.
If we are in the same room –
or sealed hermetically for hours
in the cabin of a plane –
we breathe continuously
the same air,
the oxygen goes from me to you
and back again.
But air currents,
prevailing winds,
the jet stream,
cyclones and anti-cyclones,
all move the atmosphere further
and further still,
so that even if we are
on opposite sides of the globe,
separated by oceans,
it is a statistical certainty
that I still breathe in
atoms of oxygen
that were once
inside
you.
Do they carry your thoughts,
your feelings,
your poetry to me,
or mine to you?
Who can say?
I can but hope it,
as I thank you
for keeping me alive.
Jan 25, 2016
Jan 25, 2016 at 3:09 PM UTC
Dragged out screaming, senseless from the hallows of martyrdom
My father's mother's wayward brother
Baptized in propaganda and searing lead
Kamikaze death machine to paranoia fever dream
A noble experiment in utter catastrophe
Half measure, interstellar tourniquet
Stem the free flow of blood like inconvenient statistical evidence
Dripping down born-again ****** America's chin
Vector-like, everything explodes outwards
And on trajectories like these only friction is holy
Murphy's law in ecstatic altercation
A furious life lived under an anachronistic magnifying glass
Truly the only thing worth decaying for
Dec 23, 2014
Dec 23, 2014 at 3:38 PM UTC
Communion of Soft Fingertips
speak, modern world
we are sketched in languages of digital bits,
parity shading certainty with probabilities of truth
giving us form and existence across distance,
distilled to series of warm, invisible numbers
frequencies divided step-wise, as Fourier found them
in noise amalgamated as information heterodyned,
left to be separated out, reordered
by advanced statistical protocols
that trace our borders with delicate, unseen fingertips
a description of new beings, relationships between them
uncertain at first in the short trails
of data they create
but there eventually - by the law of large numbers
or acts of successive approximation
we'll find them
revealed, like a pointilist painting
or seemingly random collection of string
whose elements are alone meaningless
unless we step back to see an entirety of mass
which we recognize immediately
as true love and intimacy
Dec 1, 2011
Dec 1, 2011 at 8:57 AM UTC
I open the blinds and see the world - in return, what
does the world see? It sees me, and all my splendid, split
personalities, living these amazing times, of amazing
pleasures, in which we tweet tweets, and post posts re
ego-trips and copyrighted links, videos and things; and,
as stray dogs, we ramble randomly, and all the time,
living in our infinite worlds, of infinite lanes, till infinity;
yet we suffer so much pain.
Our Shih Tzus take us on extended walks, firmly leashed
to our Koss plugs, as we drone cool tunes on multihued
iPods, iPhones buzzing ringtones of tittering babies,
stolid kings and hyperactive frogs, which would all make
my eighty-six year old dad want to gag; we fly
ultralight megaplanes at the sonic sound of speed,
through virtual and real space, connecting dots at low-
cost prices, while we belt-up, gear-up, gulp Gaga and
gorge heat-inducted meals of deer, horse and over-
promoted crap; and then, wow surprisingly, we are all
so unsatisfied.
We consciously all move-in together, and **** on end,
like statistical sheep, pre-married, unloving, and broken
up, and justify it all, to ourselves, with our fully
stretched spandex morality, over low-carb brunches
@Starbucks, two 14” screens of separation; we paint
pornographic images of virgins, all called Mary, in the
name of art, and, white-clad, **** babes and alter-boys,
and penetrate each other, first with our fingers, deeply,
then superficially, without even wondering, for a
zeptosecond, why we can’t stand one another any
longer.
We crank-up dependencies, like high street mainliners,
shamming and slaughtering for neurotoxic fixes of
smileys and Crystal on billion-dollar Kogo yachts, while
we all just pedal on, dispassionately, down and over
interior canals, to the core of our hocked, abbrev lives,
chronically connected and severely distracted, in
aromatic polymer bubbles, heedlessly cruising through
comic-strip farms of mock vegetables, surely to nowhere
and towards no one; and quite frankly, the world laughs
at all this, and sobs, and so do I.
May 5, 2012
May 5, 2012 at 4:08 PM UTC
sticks and stones
may break my bones
(but words will never hurt me)
people stare when we hold hands, they glare and point and scream in whispers behind cupped palms. sometimes they applaud or congratulate us, but i hate that, too; i don't want to be brave or strong or special i just want to kiss you without glancing left and right first. boys in parking lots shout and whistle, cars honk but WE'RE RUBBER YOU'RE GLUE, IT BOUNCES OFF US AND STICKS TO YOU so guess what- you're the ***** you're the ******* you're the freaks, you have to change the pronouns in your poetry, you are afraid of churches, you were listed in The Diagnostic And Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders as a "sociopathic personality disturbance" until its seventh edition. if i had a nickel for every time a mother hurried a child away from us on the street, i might have enough money to sue one or two of you for harassment and hate.
s.h.
Jul 13, 2014
Jul 13, 2014 at 2:35 PM UTC
An insane man decided to jump
Not off a building
Or into a lake
Merely up and down
Within his room
He stopped after a while
And the nurse came to visit him
None of the other patients act quite like you, you are only one of many
He replied
With the only thing
He had ever known
But sanity is not statistical my dear..
He pushed aside
His bed violently
Threw himself
At the door
Broke his only chair and table
Against the wall
And as the nurse left the room
He threw his only book
They had given him
Out the door behind her
SANITY IS NOT STATISTICAL
The nurse ignored it
And moved on
To the next patient
As she opened the door
A book came flying at her
Its pages were in shreds
Later that day
Books were turned inside out
And ripped apart
At the spines
For all the patients
Found the book
To be beautifully tragic
But the tragedy
Out weighed the beauty
Just as:
Sanity is not statistical
Sanity is not statistical
Jul 2, 2014
Jul 2, 2014 at 10:18 AM UTC
Dear DSM,
There is so much I want to say to you!
There is so much you ought to know!
You who live high up on medical Olympus,
You who live so that others may also live,
You who look down on us mere mortals,
You who look around and all you see is misery,
You who stand above the dark clouds of our minds,
You who stand for all that is noble,
Tell me, is my name written on your pale-white page?
Tell me everything is going to be OK!
There is so much I want to say to you!
There is so much you ought to know!
You who hold the secret alchemy of melancholy,
You who hold the keys to life and death,
You who preach a gospel of salvation,
You who preach though not all heed the call,
You who sing a song for the broken,
You who sing our song,
Tell me, will my soul be saved?
Tell me everything is going to be OK!
There is so much I want to say to you!
There is so much you ought to know!
I who long for your protection,
I who long ago gave up hope,
I who waited all my life for answers,
I who waited in long New York winters cloaked in bitter fear,
I am here now to testify,
I am here now my soul to cry!
tell me, what have you to say?
Tell me everything is going to be OK!
There is so much I want to say to you!
There is so much you ought to know!
We who float adrift along the edge of the abyss,
We now live while tomorrow no one knows,
We who wear many, many faces, though all are faded,
We who crowd the halls of hospitals and slaughterhouses,
We who call ourselves survivors while we still can,
We who are hopeless, helpless, sleepless and blue,
Tell me, who are we to blame?
Tell me everything is going to be OK!
There is so much I want to say to you!
There is so much you ought to know!
All things that must be said and done,
All things will fall into place at last,
All things we’ve salvaged, and all that we’ve lost,
All things we’ve left behind,
All these things that I must say to you now!
All these things you really ought to know!
Tell me now, will this voice be heard someday?
Tell me everything is going to be OK!
Dear DSM,
Until then,
THE END.
Jun 5, 2015
Jun 5, 2015 at 2:58 PM UTC
Lets not construct anything then
and bypass analyses altogether
lets just seem to be
foam that fizzes above the Gaussian sea
momentarily
then splash back to be pure statistical chance
So I see this guy stop in front of me and smash his radio against the lamp post
earphones still dangling from his face
and I wonder if he bought it at the $1 store.
It is night time and the street is dry
perhaps it is summer.
Jan 13, 2013
Jan 13, 2013 at 5:41 PM UTC
Semi-
——-
Something new, in our years of partnership,
during
the early morning semi’s, the half awake, yet
mostly asleep, passageway from rest to wake,
as per usual, I am awake before her, to write,
to think, to read, to do my variety of early morn
chores, but today, her semi is populated by a
new concern, an alert, mind programmed, silent,
no chirp, no beep, just human punctual new instinct,
let us
check if my man is alive and breathing, rub his
thankfully copious-headed hair & air supply,
rub-a-dub,
once, repeat twice, thrice, sense his beating brain,
confirming the night passage, always dangerous,
completed safely, for she feels my warmth, hears
my eyes-crinkle smiling, and ascertains, the
continuation of my existence and the statistical
probability, (her occupational hazard and habit)
that when
she crosses fulsome into the living day,
awakensgladly, that her not-too-hot-black
coffee, will be
mister milkman delivered on schedule with
a bedside delivery like clockwork-blonde, with a
half sheet of enwrapping paper towel within some
morning fruit, to ensure that her coffee will have some company…
while she dances a beloved tango in her semi-,
I am:
*in my only~pretending post-tense,
semi complimentary state,
mentally scrambling scribbling half a dozen
eggs of new poem ideas, mad pursuing these
very words, my way of saying good morning girl,
my beating heart muscling me to be sure I-remain,
in the good company of the Oompa-Loompas,
and yours too*!
Jul 31, 2023
Jul 31, 2023 at 7:44 AM UTC
Your heart is not an object you can give away
Metaphysical
Its something you've forgotten
Analytical
It's all in your head
Psychological
Love is just spontaneous
Chemical reactions in your mind
To future the human race
evolution
It's natural selection
And a probable, statistical truth
You'll find someone you
Relate to
Serotonin pumps
Testosterone too
Then oxytocin to complete the brew
And you fall in love
Glazed eyes will connect
Start writing poems about
How she's so perfect
But then my friend
If this were true
Why does my heart yearn for you
Why do i have sleepless nights
This isnt right
If these were chemicals in my mind
Its been a year
Surely they'd disappear..
Aug 17, 2011
Aug 17, 2011 at 8:51 PM UTC
Short and stocky
White bearded
Balding
Grumpy
Blue marker streaking across a dirtied dry erase board
A seemingly never ending lecture
Words, symbols, equations
Statistical theories
Is now an appropriate time to use the term, "mumbo jumbo?"
I sit here
Half listening
Copying his hand written problems into a document
Peck peck peck
Wishing that math and science were not so intertwined
But also that I will someday call myself a scientist
A scientist with a firm grasp of math
Email open in the background
Switching windows incessantly
Snickering at the memes you've sent
Reflecting on the previous days
Trying to understand your ways
Your words so specific yet so broad
Do I know you?
Do you know me?
Why is this so hard?
Will it ever be easy?
Apr 4, 2013
Apr 4, 2013 at 2:29 PM UTC