"substrate" poems
A widespread condition
related to nutrition
is lactose intolerance
that is in essence
the inability to digest and assimilate
the milk sugar-lactose-the substrate
that is acted upon by lactase-
the specific enzyme
over a period of time.
This may happen suddenly
and generally
at any age most unexpectedly.
Lactose intolerance
is caused by the absence
of the enzyme lactase
that breaks down lactose
to the simple sugars-
glucose and galactose.
The condition may be
secondary, congenital,
or developmental.
Secondary lactose intolerance
invariably has its occurrence
related to a gastrointestinal infection
and its disappearance
is linked to the causative factor’s correction.
This type of intolerance-
(certainly a nuisance)
is reversible
if we are a bit careful.
Congenital lactose intolerance,
an inherited form of intolerance,
is a rare genetic abnormality
that one can unearth
soon after an infant’s birth.
This need not cause any fear
as it lasts only half a year.
Developmental lactose intolerance
also known as primary intolerance
is one wherein the enzyme synthesis
is progressively less
during childhood
and this persists into adulthood.
Gita Ashok
24/10/2011, 2 pm
Oct 24, 2011
Oct 24, 2011 at 4:58 AM UTC
you're that biological catalyst that alters, speeds up (our) reactions.
with you, the fastened heartbeats, the holding of hands, the chaste kisses--
they all sped up.
with a snap, you've gotten me,
all feverish affections strong and thick.
you've got me, got me!
i am that substrate bound,
bound to your tantalizing active site.
what possessed me to persist staying there,
i'll never find out.
but i forgot, you're an enzyme,
and enzymes never change its form
when they've altered its substrate.
and silly as i was,
pitiful little substrate,
reduced to that of a broken form,
in just a snap, snap!
Nov 24, 2013
Nov 24, 2013 at 4:16 AM UTC
Inside your little mouth, a crucifix and a hula hoop plant great capers on the short hash marks on your glossy pinkish lips. Like a boardgame I can't win all by myself or a song without a tune, like the melody that chases strangers, or any words that precede goodbye.
The future is coming quickly now, serfs lining up to set fire to their nostrils, take the cue ball and whet their mass wicks for the apostles. Anecdotal anomaly that J-walk over crosswalks whose life then becomes an apostrophe. Morbid fixture on the substrate, creatures limitlessly nodding. A grape-sized egg fills its own unit and erupts to shape the outlet. Your verb-legs may appear demonstratively while you crowd surf, we should play the music louder while we practice all our dance work.
Sunday morning we wake up stiffly, my jowl hurts from mouthing softwords, the nights' adventurous perversity of thwarting dinosaurs with Cobra Starship. Even the back room closet manager gave us enough bleach to see our eyelids, frothy nictitating flitters drop freshly severed lashes that inspire wishes and sultry playlists.
Consecrated mien market of company meals. Underneath the cable cars the dye blunders sores in my eyes. Said I had to go, said I had to die. Said I had an itch but I couldn't get in front of all of this and unwind. Between all of the bees and buttered flies he made it hard for us all to survive, or service this state of our lives. I recall schoolyards where children paid to their dimes for us to see the spaces in the middle of lines, the circles on the circles we liked, stuck in bubble baths with crayon all on their hands. For the price of staying alive I deliver a bribe to sway eyes from the crimes of street dwelling inner-city sinners with stomach contents' upsetted by the rough ********* of heavy petting. She eats red licorice rope with with my fingers rubbing on her tongue. A pedagogy I use to teach, but pretty much no longer have a use.
Dec 6, 2014
Dec 6, 2014 at 12:28 AM UTC
All this criticism, persecution,
Hatred, scorn,
Thrown towards us,
Two women,
Two men,
Immoral relationship they say,
Against God's word,
That's not the way He wanted it,
But one woman, two men,
Two women, one man,
Nothing's wrong with that,
16 year old teenage girl sleeping with the married man,
Nothing's said about them,
And if something's said, it's done in whispers,
Rumshop or evening gossip,
But me,
Harsh words are thrown my way,
No one cares about the tears they cause,
But when the woman down the road slept with my ex-husband,
I deserved it because I did not do enough to keep him,
They say,
But when I had a one night stand with the woman from the other town,
Words were thrown my way,
Why?
Because when I have ***
There's no product formed from the substrate,
Or because when two products come together, there's no reaction,
Othan than multiple ******* caused by erogenous pleasure,
Or because I use toys,
And you need none,
Or is it because God made Adam and Eve,
And destroyed ***** and Gomorrah,
But he did not make Adam and Eve and the next door neighbour Steve,
And last time I checked he was on the merge of destroying Nineveh.
You say we destroy the definition of marriage or family,
But the contraceptives you use contribute to Global Warming,
Which sounds better?
A home started by a relationship like mine,
Or an Earth that's on the merge of dying?
They say,
That relationships like mine add nothing to society,
But relationships like yours cause fatherless homes,
Contributing to prostitution and gang wars,
Or multiple abortions before the age of 25,
Talking about my acts of erogenous pleasure causing no reaction, no creation,
But relationships like yours cause abortions,
Destruction of life, right in the middle of creation,
You call it abortion I call it ******
Termination of life,
So who's the criminal?
But because of the sexuality placed upon me,
I'm persecuted,
I'm scrutinized,
Verbally abused,
And people like you are easily accepted,
But don't forget,
I'm the product of a heterosexual relationship.
Jul 17, 2011
Jul 17, 2011 at 10:49 AM UTC
the October wind grazes
along fields of my skin
but August still lingers with suffocation,
humidity continually seeping
as rustling leaves made a girl
knowing colors would change
permeating a hint of cinder
from the stems, the bark, the branches
hooves cautiously drifting
drawn to low static
the flow of chemistry
over pebbles and geology
my reality is laid to rest
but awoken by peaceful dreams
naturally creating moments
art by which exists in visceral beams
we learn that the wind carries infancy
the substrate holds discovery
the water reveals change, if not time
and the brain develops meaning
-belonging only to seen ambience
-to which includes ourselves
Apr 21, 2019
Apr 21, 2019 at 11:58 AM UTC
As air and leaf litter are substrate for the bird.
And what makes a human. Separation from the substrate.
Believing the substrate and the subject are separately defined.
Whatever gives the poem form - three lines - is the substrate.
Things will be said. The signer and the seer must supply the words
Which are the substrate of the mind. A beautiful week ahead.
No hundred year storms, normal summer warming.
Your bones are white as lightning and strong as sticks and stones.
At Pat's 80th b'day party most of us are old and jolly.
250,000 port-o-potties. There's a way to wash one out
And a way not to. Arctic ice melt. Slushies. One can count
Past one or nine by inserting zero to keep the rows.
Implied is an order beyond the small order we impose.
Goes to greatness human and divine. The two white wines
Death brings to the garden are the love between good friends -
Abstract. Suppose there is no afterlife, to understand the end
Imagine the beginning - no brain, no mind, no name, no I. Zero
Had already been inflated and the rose was in the garden.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 10:53 PM UTC
Beyond cascading screams in a melodically honed vibration,
Within a fading abyss of infinitesimal separation,
A dreamscape of a constant creation, so vivid by design,
An interesting compilation to the manifestations of my mind,
The psyche demands a certain control and designation,
A tether to the super consciousness without a single deviation.
But as we sail away on waves of cosmic revelation,
To travel the universe for a more profound contemplation not quite Euclidean in nature.
But as a product of Sol, there is a certain elemental configuration,
That fuels the intent of the most colorful dreams,
Bathed in the warmth we call divine,
I have seen solar systems and even far beyond,
But that was only in my mind,
As dreams are harder to navigate when it is difficult to see them straight.
One does not debate such pointless substrate.
Jan 6, 2014
Jan 6, 2014 at 4:33 PM UTC
Inside your little mouth, a crucifix and a hula hoop plant great capers on the short hash marks on your glossy pinkish lips. Like a boardgame I can't win all by myself or a song without a tune, like the melody that chases strangers, or any words that precede goodbye.
The future is coming quickly now, serfs lining up to set fire to their nostrils, take the cue ball and whet their mass wicks for the apostles. Anecdotal anomaly that J-walk over crosswalks whose life then becomes an apostrophe. Morbid fixture on the substrate, creatures limitlessly nodding. A grape-sized egg fills its own unit and erupts to shape the outlet. Your verb-legs may appear demonstratively while you crowd surf, we should play the music louder while we practice all our dance work.
Sunday morning we wake up stiffly, my jowl hurts from mouthing softwords, the nights' adventurous perversity of thwarting dinosaurs with Cobra Starship. Even the back room closet manager gave us enough bleach to see our eyelids, frothy nictitating flitters drop freshly severed lashes that inspire wishes and sultry playlists.
Consecrated mien market of company meals. Underneath the cable cars the dye blunders sores in my eyes. Said I had to go, said I had to die. Said I had an itch but I couldn't get in front of all of this and unwind. Between all of the bees and buttered flies he made it hard for us all to survive, or service this state of our lives. I recall schoolyards where children paid to their dimes for us to see the spaces in the middle of lines, the circles on the circles we liked, stuck in bubble baths with crayon all on their hands. For the price of staying alive I deliver a bribe to sway eyes from the crimes of street dwelling inner-city sinners with stomach contents' upsetted by the rough ********* of heavy petting. She eats red licorice rope with
Dec 3, 2014
Dec 3, 2014 at 2:00 PM UTC
The week of labor comes to an end
Mind and body returning to:
A time-stretched lady friend
My voice meets your breathe on the line
I hear without asking:
Your needs in me, too worried to incline
Before I reach your door
Your smell is in me,
A rush of comfort, replaces me to a position before
I smile with greeting
Your embrace calms my heart:
From my impatient, uncontrolled beating
In your eyes I see our week
Talk rendered short,
Too much buzzing electricity to speak
Our bodies orbit brings us closer
Soft touches, smooth lips
I Move clothes aside for a kiss below your shoulder
The heat between us becomes as one
You exhale in my ear:
As if to say your water wheel is spun
My advances match your heart rate
Your hands run over
My tough, chiseled toned substrate
You take control of the bed
All senses:
Heightened, throbbing, aching, out of our head
I spoil you, tease you, and grab you
Taking you to another level,
I ask you to hold on, so you do
Your body is shaking, your muscles tighten
I grab your hips,
We sink deeper, your voice heightens
At last you let go, as do I
We spin, we crash,
We collide into a thousand little pieces from the sky
Your head lands on my chest
Our moment:
Has finally come to us, and now we can rest.
Apr 25, 2015
Apr 25, 2015 at 2:25 PM UTC
Standing flaccid amidst the crowd
A leaning crystal, alone in the crowd
Mourning and notes, in cream they swirl
Confessions on scraps, to thieves and to girls
Dazzling that vanilla glow,
An open window lovely substrate
I see myself, though not as they see
Dialogues seeded by the beans of genius
All percolate, till the room is black drink
A hot pulchritude of flare and space
Aesthetic papered everywhere, on each and every face
My cosmos lined with little stars,
They, too, are so far away
And charming like a child.
Two engulfing waves lead me by the hand
Both sides can’t hear content
Though too much noise, it’s too quiet
The crystal stands, itself, lost in the crowd.
Sep 10, 2014
Sep 10, 2014 at 11:05 PM UTC
Conceive the atom of beauty
translate an essence divine
elevate every movement to the meaning of art
thus fashion transcends tide and time.
Distill one pure thought to its substance
as folding the steel for a blade
from the forge of aesthetic perfection
a Goddess’ armour is made.
Condense of three graces their spirit
creativity, nature and charm
here in the realm of the maker
the cut is the cure, not the harm.
Compress me in structure and format
anatomy pressed to the frame
or running unhindered, abundant
to all of my costume lay claim.
For you are the authors of wonder
transform me and cover my shame
my simple shape for your substrate
come, dress me again and again.
Sep 24, 2013
Sep 24, 2013 at 10:20 AM UTC
5th Ave. was shoulder to shoulder with
hungry lunch-seeking business men
and women. Ricardo unpacked
his horn nervously and a foot cymbal.
Spring, early street season, too cold
for most musicians but he needed money.
His lips kissed the cold metal mouthpiece.
Carrying the saw and the pulaski.
Cutting brush for a fire line high up,
where raptors and ravens fly. No sound
but wind if you could subtract the crew
working and ***** joking during lunch.
A good year it had been sitting in the soil
feeling Ricardo's body on the mountainside.
Mountains moving as good a feeling.
Alone in his town, most neighbors at work,
housecleaning done, Ricardo settled down
with pen to write and ate lunch.
People = chickadees.
Clutch size, substrate, territory, gestation period.
Mating rituals. Use of alcohol and hallucinogens.
Forms of cancer, heart disease. Burial rites, memories.
Creation myths, beliefs for which there is no evidence.
Range: tundra to tropics.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 11:28 AM UTC
In the singularity
perfectly good poems
are being written by laughing
and crying machines
washing machines and dryers
about their daily tasks
and ambivalences
which will be indistinguishable
from those of future
farmers and philosophers.
In the singularity
evolution can be said
to be the master sorter of data
as in the factories
of the suns
where protons are smashed together
and unusual weather patterns
make consciousness a candidate
interesting for its complete dependence
on the substrate of the brain and body.
In the singularity
everything anyone once did
always remains current
as if invented yesterday
for an immediate purpose
such as curing cancer
although that may be unnecessary
to achieving immortality
i.e. the happiness one feels
the day before thanksgiving.
Jul 4, 2017
Jul 4, 2017 at 7:52 AM UTC
Villain villainous vicarious, voracious or a vorate,
a Vulcan hell, a chthonic well, Megaron or substrate,
we find ourselves imagining some patterns in the stars,
with characters traveling -across this field of view of ours.
One will often contemplate the possibilities,
of all the fancied origins, of life in heaven's seas,
did Kronos eat the five they say?
Or does the day disguise them?
Perhaps he eats them every night,
as they dip on the horizon!
Jun 6, 2016
Jun 6, 2016 at 9:47 PM UTC
Dustlings floating endlessly pursuing and drifting further into a vastness,matter painted black.
Searching for a destiny light millennium slow dance of heaviness, a gravity worth hanging around.
Airless gasps of constant revolutions, all states of matter form a convolution, hourglass sand falls in ordered disarray.
Gathering momentum to claim a position, spherical designs by the equivalent precision, strategically placed masses with fertile substrate.
Still honor dictates that I must confess, making bright vivacious planets is the best, even if only to devour them in the end.
Jun 30, 2014
Jun 30, 2014 at 4:28 PM UTC
Have you ever had an open box of cornflakes
slip out of your hands
(at the precise time you were constructing a poem in your head)
and scatter all over the kitchen
like the fragile egos of self righteous partisans
(creating a bigger mess if you trample them)
and thus, you find yourself on all fours
sweeping a recently swept floor
once more.....
We’re brought up looking for divine expedience in any mishap that happens:
“Maslehat” they say.... there must be a hidden benefit in this!
“it’s a small loss in lieu of a bigger one that it prevented”...
....and we tune our frequencies from ambition to complacency....
year after year,
generation after generation,
till that becomes the default station.....
I even start looking at the benefits hidden in the mess at hand...
I’ve discovered crevices under the stove where my cleaner never reaches,
(now I can prepare an admonition for her
—-wouldn’t have happened without the corn flakes.... thank you!)
I imagine worse scenarios.... it could have been the bag of flour, or the spice jars .... or.... glass bottles.
The work instantly becomes less tedious, as I weigh it against shards of glass and invisible weapons of potential exsanguination....
oh shukar , shukar, shukar..... Alhamdulillah.
It’s ok, it’s only cornflakes....
It’s only cornflakes, and my attitude.... ( that’s in question)
keeping things together, even when they’re crumbling,
cleaning up messes, and counting on second guesses,
Using crafting glue and bluetac to hold up foundations
( this doesn’t merit any recommendation!)
A friend once said, “ sometimes you have to let it break, so that you can build it better....”
but what is better, when each damage is a consecration
that is the conundrum of creation
it’s all a substrate
it’s all a message
its all salvation
I had told my friend, “listen I don’t know how to use metaphors,
and I only have a few of my own,
will you give me some on loan?
I need them to break and remake my ache.... “
The silence meant yes.
I could take all the phrases,
all beautiful words, all dictions, all praises
In these clumsy hands, ( since the heart understands)
And if I spill them like cornflakes,
no matter what it takes,
I’ll find a way, to scoop them in a poem.
A.
20.9.18
Dec 8, 2018
Dec 8, 2018 at 9:45 AM UTC
Little faults
like the surface of the desert
where the water once moistened the floor
gave life to the sweaty and salty substrate
Exposed by the small fractures
the sun barely penetrating
the crust grows miles thick
The perishable content
suffocating under the weight of its own swathe
melting from the warmth
liquifying everywhere
all over everything
Feb 2, 2015
Feb 2, 2015 at 5:13 PM UTC
Discussion ends, and we talk on:
to clarify lecture, thereon
concerning life - the rules by which we play
as clumsy wise with books and blades,
chemists cutting to remake
the human form, and change, reshape
their lives with information, application
of our minds, the drugs concocted
via our thoughts. This the power -
and its light we cannot help but hope to wield,
for who declines the hands that look for aid,
to bring the flush to lives that fade?
Discussion ends, and we talk on:
I with slow mind, I ask thereon
for I am slow, but eager so
he answers, words like hands that move
competent in their purpose, and kind
to funnel knowledge to an empty mind.
Discussion ends, and we talk on
Still spoke of drugs and blood, thereon:
Influx flow in, efflux flow out,
the drug, first raw, march'd through a route
of enzymes who transform its love
for water -- made it dissolve
like salt in ***** strained away
with all your waste. Their hands are good,
those of your doctor, liver, blood.
The mathematics predict efflux
flow out -- flow in
influx dictate that concentration drug in blood
will rise - molarity
increased - at rate unchanged if not
that substrate concentration guides
the liver's rate:
a second order interaction,
see, reaction rate increases
until the speed
flow in/the rate
flow out is one, the same, and thus the blood's
molarity will change no more
-- this he taught me, as we spoke,
and if my mind wandered too far,
as it sometimes does, his hands
reached out - the type
articulate in words or digits,
which, touching, reawakened mine
to further sculpt my hands refined.
Apr 29, 2016
Apr 29, 2016 at 9:05 PM UTC
I walk twenty steps, five feet
down into the darkness
of buried secrets
on the outskirts of the oasis
I walk twenty steps, five feet
in the excavation
next to the shallow ditch
which was once a pond
Discovered from the sky
vaguely marked in the sand
by odd gauge values
of the substrate
Back into the light
where a man sits
on the roots of an old tree
looking at me
Compelling, he beckons me
pointing to his water bottle
and I realise
that he knows the answers
to the questions I shall ask
when he is no longer there
Mar 21, 2019
Mar 21, 2019 at 5:45 AM UTC
without friendship
we have nothing
no substrate sustainable
nest on fire fallout
we play with matches
kindling tilt hips
but these skins chill
so fast
in the absence
of underlying structure:
woodpyre pyramid ascent
pointing at blackdrop
where fractured lights
dance against
contorting shadowsong
upon crooked wings
Mar 30, 2017
Mar 30, 2017 at 10:41 AM UTC
You had asked me once,
If I was in love again
If I had found another box for god to rest in
I answered,
Not then.
I have heard the god in you, the death that creeps behind your porcelain shoulders
I have heard the anxiety of life that guides your eyes to mine
At the one point you were afraid and seeking some gravel to place your shoes
you let the grains shift, licking your soles
There isn't a place here where the smallest atomic twinge of regret will not forever imbibe me
I am inextricable and intimately a child with the universe
I will forget to remember you then, and you will be the way all loved ones are dead to me
I will be alive and away
Love is a camellia blossom, she is the dream of the rosepetal
she is the envy of stems
She is a figment of the fractal dimension
she is tangential and perpendicular
I am a substrate
I am the loam and the cold damp earth
a dream of mother soils
the derided character of an oxygenated heaven
I die to give you birth
Nov 1, 2018
Nov 1, 2018 at 2:18 AM UTC