"subtraction" poems
Strange strings of thought.
Thoughts of loyalty and love,
thoughts of friendship and of ambition
and my condition;
thoughts of submission of subtraction and addition.
Unravel the secret of the continent,
oh how you are persistent.
The road uncoils and I uncoil down the pavement.
Off i go.
Twisted days of golden glow.
Off I go, into the black hole
of the road.
Jan 9, 2014
Jan 9, 2014 at 1:08 AM UTC
Is there an order?
In there an approximation of pi
circling our first awkward flirtations?
Does a dragon curve lurk hidden as I
caress the curvature of your spine?
Where does Euclidean geometry fit in to the
first time our lips met?
Does the Pythagorean theorem detail our most intimate
love making?
A quadratic formula for the shameful
discarding of punched in picture frames?
Is there a golden ratio that best expresses
hurried apologies and frantic entanglements
between our sheets?
I know for certain there was
a simple subtraction
on the day your tears added up everything
and finally said goodbye.
Some would say there is order in this
chaos disguised as order disguised as
chaos
Continually debating pattern recognition
or butterfly effects
But I’d like to think
We were more subtle than that
May 1, 2014
May 1, 2014 at 6:00 PM UTC
I need a distraction to delay my reactions. If I could explain it to you in fractions, I would.
Addition.
Subtraction.
We're just an equation that couldn't happen.
I was less than
You were greater than
I ever could be
You're in a different division.
But I just multiply the visions.
A mathematician couldn't solve me.
Jun 9, 2015
Jun 9, 2015 at 4:43 AM UTC
forgive me my darling
hollow beauty
but seeing you so gaunt
with
sunken dark eyes
and skin like gray soap
makes me feel
your easily breakable
already so close to death
my **** could crack your pelvis
and bird delicate ribs
inspired skeleton dancing
your body exclaims to all
a sensual exhibition
of slow suicide
my bloodless blossom
brave breatharian
your favorite math
subtraction
by multiplied
delicious starvations
you may need a strong man
deaths final instrument
who will love you
with tender crushes
darkly ******
come naked
spread wide my lovely grotesque
nestle in my arms
coffins embrace
to be bruised
while tremulously kissed
i will turn you to crumbles and powder
to finish sweetly
what you have started so long ago
Feb 2, 2017
Feb 2, 2017 at 12:41 PM UTC
I just want to ask one question
Is the human race obeying the mathematical rule called BODMAS?
Just a refresher...
Brackets, Orders, Division, Multiplication, Addition and Subtraction
We have created different brackets
where we enclose people like casket
He's black, she's white, they are rich,
those are poor, she's educated, he's religious, he's fat, she's slim... Brackets
People are treated differently
Based on the class that we've put them in
Some are raised to power like exponents
Others are trapped in like square roots...Orders
The segregation has only intensified our division
I don't fit in here, I belong over there
My group is stronger, those ones are losers... Division
Disunity and absence of love has caused
A multiplication of our problems
Threats, deportation, persecution
We don't like them, we'll bomb them
War, insurgency, terrorism, hate speech... Just problems Multiplication
Every second, our population is experiencing several additions
Our population keeps growing while
Our natural resources are being exploited
And depleting at a rate faster than our population growth
Our resources are experiencing severe subtractions
I just want to ask one more time...
Aren't we obeying BODMAS?
Nov 21, 2018
Nov 21, 2018 at 8:01 PM UTC
Add
But Lose
Subtraction is addition
More is less
Love is hate
Forever is never
Oct 5, 2014
Oct 5, 2014 at 9:22 AM UTC
I can name you
The exact date
On which he was shot:
June 28, 1914.
Who killed him?
Gavrilo Princip,
Member of the Bosnian Nationalist
Movement: The Black
Hand.
Suddenly this montage
Of bullet chambers
And dead wars
Shift -
Hands. You. Me.
Your fingers,
Which I long to hold.
Your voice,
Which I long to hear.
Which I have forgotten -
Sometimes it is hard
To trace the annals
Of history. Our
****** pawprints
Make the trail of
Arms and hatred
Harder to keep straight
Than sin and so
We walk backwards.
****** trail of footsteps
Perhaps stepped
Into
By a meandering
Mao, or ******
Or Tojo. Muddied further
By the presence
Of an Alger
Hiss -
Your voice
Is a whisper,
It sings to me in
Secrets - I do not
Know you but I
Am in love,
You are beautiful and
I don't know why
But there's a
War. In my heart.
A war of attrition. Subtraction
Of causes. And the Archduke,
Well the Archduke
Is glad to see you.
Hear his dates blur
Into yours -
History tests,
And love notes
Crumpled away folded
And stored
In the same junk
Folder.
I imagine his hands
To have folded
Quite slowly,
Searching for something
To latch onto.
Like mine.
Empty palms flickering
Amidst a trail of
Blood and dust -
Oh, and yeah
The history lessons
Of course.
Feb 20, 2015
Feb 20, 2015 at 2:12 PM UTC
Dear Calculator
I am in love with you for no reason
My palm slowly touches you
Hardly press you
Again and Again
Again and Again
Finally you bring smile in my face
A smile that could give another smile
or no smile
If no smile is given
Literally I put you down
And face palm
if yes still catches you
Softly and gently
Calculation of taxation to Addition
Pain and sorrow with division to subtraction
My beautiful love with Interrogation
The Chemistry of Derivation is simply Awful
Equation of love is really useful
Yes! Calculator you make my life thoughtful
And the result is always Fruitful
©Saujan Gyawali
11 November 2014
Nov 8, 2014
Nov 8, 2014 at 10:10 AM UTC
A star of blood you fell
from the point of the hypodermic
singing of fabulous beasts &
spitting out the *** of vowels
Your poems explode in the mouth
like torrents of ***** on a night
full of zebras & bootheels
Your ghost still cruses the river-
fronts of midnight assignations
in a world of dead sailors carrying
armfuls of flowers in search of
your unmarked grave
Your body no sanctuary for bees,
Death was your lover in a rain of
broken obelisks & rotting orchids
In the tangled rose of a single heartbeat
I offer you the shadow of a double
profile,
two heads held together at the bridge
of the nose by a nail of *****
smoke
in the long night's dreaming
& memory of water poured between
glasses
In my mailbox I find a letter from
a dead man & know that for every
shadow given
one is taken away
Yet subtraction is only a special form of
addition and implies a world of hidden
intentions below a horizon of lips
thin as your fingernail sprouting
mysteries in the earth …
The ace of spades dealt from the bottom
of the deck severs the hand which
retrieves it & the eyes of Beauty
sewn together peer over a black lace fan
in the ****** sunlight of a Spanish
morning without horses
The Belt of Orion is loosened
before you as you remove the silver
fingerstalls from your mummy hands &
kneel to plunder the nightsky in a shower of
bitter diamonds.
(Somewhere under a blanket someone weeps
for a lover.)
Peace to your soul
& to your empty shoes
in the dark closets of
kings with no feet!!!
Apr 17, 2013
Apr 17, 2013 at 4:06 PM UTC
Derive the joy, magic and warmth of addition by connecting your soul to another's, yet remain independent as singular souls.
Meet the interference of envious, bitter and resentful subtraction which gives the process of separation from the souls you have connected to.
Both opposing forces with obstinate motivations coordinate unconsciously for the creation of an entrance-exit cycle in human interaction.
The pinnacle of human interaction is interceded by multiplication who compounds the congregation of the independent souls into a cohesive unit called groups and eventually society and nation.
Nevertheless met by the malevolent, destructive energy of division which ruthlessly breaks apart the products nurtured by multiplication, smashing them with propaganda, discrimination, and segregation.
O' how I exclaim that division is the truly nefarious power.
Apr 21, 2016
Apr 21, 2016 at 8:22 AM UTC
My mother is dying.
It is a process. Days pass,
She neither eats or drinks,
Yet she lives on.
I watch each labored exhalation,
A subtraction, a countdown.
It is as if she was returning each singular day,
Every prayer uttered, answered and unanswered,
Every word e're spoke, every dream dreamt,
She ever possessed to the atmosphere,
For sharing, for recalling, for retelling,
One breath at a time.
~~~~~~~~~
Lipstadt-Roth, Miriam née Peiman, 1915~2013,
passed peacefully Sat. July 20th.
Critic, speaker, writer,
her fiercest feat,
her leading role, creator.
A near century of memories
her legacy, memories that
linger not, for incised,
chiseled in the granite of the
books, papers, and poetry
and the very being
of her descendants.
Her faith in Almighty,
unflagging, for he did not
forsake her in the time of
her old age, when
her strength failed.
Jul 20, 2013
Jul 20, 2013 at 12:53 PM UTC
There is a state of existence,
where a person is neither A nor B
he's inbetween--
he's the addition, the subtraction, the shove and retraction,
I've spent my life "+"ing and "-"ing
building empires of handshakes,
floating from bar to bar with drinking pals,
crowbarring ice off queens of black venom,
I'm the distortion in the middle, but I can't see the end--
I never promised answers,
but the soft hands, the wet eye'd, and the widows
cry out for closure,
I get edgy and the "+"ing turns to "x"ing
Instead of answers--
I take the As and Bs,
I inhale their the white-knuckle moments,
I simmer in their fading passion,
I glide through their dying beds,
Instead of clear answers--
A x B x A x B x A x B x A x B
=
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Best Laid Plans
And in the grey of early morning,
they look at the equation,
they look at the proposed solution,
and inevitably the As and the Bs
say to me,
"Now, simplify it."
I get edgy
I get edgy
I get edgy.
May 12, 2012
May 12, 2012 at 3:19 AM UTC
Just an equation,
A Simple theorem.
A little misbehaviour,
Outside the decorum.
.
I add and provide,
Hoping we never divide.
At the geometry, I stare
Just a mindfuck of a square.
.
A slight cross multiplication,
To bond upon this attraction.
To help develop the postulates.
Of your mere subtraction.
.
I integrate & derive,
It's the formulae I'm deprived
Of. The questions always lead to me and you.
I always end up in my four sided cube.
- Aks, in math classes.
Dec 4, 2014
Dec 4, 2014 at 4:38 AM UTC
Which Is Greater?
I break a vow.
A serious vow.
In a place, in this site,
Where the fluid pain
Is the water of the world,
The element that is crux,
The amniotic liquor of creative flux,
The morning juice,
The afternoon caffe,
The first beer of the day,
The liquid that we rinse and spit out our every day,
I will write about pain,
Arrogantly, as if there is any unused combination of
Letters, vowels and consonants left unspoken, *****
Having sworn not to, for pain is cumulative.
Asking myself,
Which is greater?
The pain of creation, inception, origination and birth,
The pain of wreck and ruin, destruction and death.
Homework Self-Assignment: Compare and Contrast
Suddenly, I am expert.
Creating a poem a day is very painful.
A poem that is the sum of
Reflection, research, and purging.
Once I wrote:
*The poem is the afterbirth,
A conflicts resolution, an outcome,
Battlefield debris, the residue of
An exacting vision, a sentiment surging,
And your army of words, inadequate to the task,
Fighting to capture that insight flashed,
Each word a soldier, disheveled,
Crying, let me live, let me be saved,
Let me make a poem,
Let it be inscribed upon my victorious flag.
The poem is the sweat left upon the brow,
Having exercised the five senses,
The salt of struggle and debate,
It's completion, each word,
Both a victory and a defeat.*
Suddenly, I am expert.
My mother is dying.
It is a process. Days pass,
She neither eats or drinks,
Yet she lives on.
I watch each labored exhalation,
A subtraction, a countdown,
It is as if she was returning each singular day,
Every word e're spoke, every dream dreamt,
she ever possessed to the atmosphere,
One breath at a time.
Is that painful?
It is for me.
Now you complain. They're different, not to be compared, et cetera.
Pain is pain,
Whether it is in the service of creation, or
Creative destruction.
Once I wrote:
*With each passing poem,
I am lessened within, expurgated,
In a sense part of me, expunged,
Part of me, passing too,
Every poem's birth diminishes me.*
So, one and the same?
Nope. Yes. But. Cannot one be the greater?
Yes, one is greater.
When I lay on my deathbed,
I will exhale the answer
Into the atmosphere
For your retrieval.
Jul 19, 2013
Jul 19, 2013 at 7:06 PM UTC
impractical is the path
where wrath meets satisfaction
with hands too fast to smack
we are the captors of our actions
not adapted to the math
understanding the subtraction
with a stand that is my last
i am ****** by my exaction
with a plan so crass
like a romance with reaction
impractical is the path
where wrath meets satisfaction
Nov 19, 2015
Nov 19, 2015 at 11:05 AM UTC
In school
calculus comes to
you in 10'th std
Life is same as
maths.
If you live a lower
form of life
like 1'st standard
you get small problem
like addition and
subtraction.
the more you move
to higher form of life,
you get
problem like calculus
………
understand the problem,
it say, where you stand
in the world.
Dec 13, 2015
Dec 13, 2015 at 11:42 PM UTC
You could die for it--
love,
or refuse it altogether
and know nothing
except the urgency
of youth. Men
have been
solitary
for ages
carrying the
stoniest of hearts
in their broad chests
while we women
begin too early
brush the brown leaves
from our shoulders, go
from bloom to fade
as soon as
we see the sunrise
We let our eyes go first
Then there is the limp lolling
of our hearts from side to side
the tongue we cut away
the blind kiss on the backlash of night
the giving giving giving of skin
As women
we blindly wish
past the ****** of passion
as we vanish into a world of men
whose ribcages we were scraped from
Perhaps we are born of seeds
our essence crawling up the stem
to feed the bees.
Perhaps
every flower you see
is a woman
and when
she's in bloom
and when she is blooming
red
and when her leaves are wingbeats
of green in the autumn wind
beating wings of green, yes
even as the wind tries to humiliate her
it fails because
she's in love
and only she would die for it
2.7k
humans born a mess,
messengers carrying blank notepads, sheet music,
brought from within to the without
a baby-sized handful of historical residues retained,
garnered from all too brief a prelim existence,
arriving possessing hints of what may be
most emerging crying,
crying over loss of the womb security,
for seers all, all see unaccountable futures clouded
by an inevitable chance of rain
and death
all of us, no one excepted,
covered for months in **** stained fluids ,
a holy, ***** combination
of amniotic nourishment,
and our own waste
a hint of what is to come?
human then spends the rest of life
cleaning up after himself,
mostly with tasks of addition,
punctuating by the occasional cleansing of
elimination subtraction
making room for the next love,
labored birthing of a baby poem,
from your womb, midwifed,
haunting ghosts of three note tunes,
begging for a set of lyrics and a
great chorus everybody can sing,
a completion competition
going along, all along, to the goings on,
all our routes preternatural crooked,
lived a life of pretense, a straightened out life,
which is the nuanced, connected summary of our components
which are all curves, dots on a line
and the composition source,
the secret chords employed,
tech installed just prior to birth,
effacing glorious sadness, glorious joy,
the human building blocks,
with the certainty that
*everybody knows,
that's how it goes
everybody knows,*
only fools believe,
you'll live forever
but live at least long enough to sing and write of
a man cleaning up his own life's messes,
and perchance, after our absence,
leaving the world better for it
Jan 7, 2017
Jan 7, 2017 at 10:49 AM UTC
Daddy belongs to
an exclusive club,
out beyond
the rules of atmospheric
pressure.
On our precocious little fingers
we count,
on tracer paper
Mommy checks our figures.
Being she was never clever
with math,
she consults with the slide rule.
No crystal ball needed,
we all know where Daddy's been:
at the apogee of his ride,
hanging out in zero orbit,
checking
on his own figures.
He must be
lonely up there, fishing off the dock of a satellite,
until the moment he reels one in.
He does his best philandering
once we've shuffled off to school
and Mommy's found her solace
underneath
the hairdryer.
She's stopped looking up
at night
to observe the starry heavens.
They only made her cry,
which, in turn, made us cry— for her.
One time we heard Mommy tell Daddy
she knew all about his long division
and how he misused
his slipstick.
With the cruel turn of a smile
he reminded her
her math is routinely
wrong.
"Usually...but not always,"
Mommy whispers in her sleep.
Tomorrow is lift off again
for Daddy,
hunting exponentials
from
heavenly bodies.
For us,
the ones left behind in the wake
of his rocket trail,
it's
addition by subtraction.
Dec 21, 2019
Dec 21, 2019 at 11:46 PM UTC
although the voices in my head may not be real
i still listen to what they say , and even feel what they feel
so if you too had dreamt what iv'e dreamed
It would all be surreal
but its a nightmare, which derives from memories
life is what you make it
we all have similar tendencies
its simple mathematics
you start with parenthesis, experience the exponents
and multiply the time wasted, divide that by zero
and your in the same situation
it a numbers game in addition to the subtraction
Numbers
are the only thing go on forever, its a LimitLess attraction
Aug 22, 2014
Aug 22, 2014 at 10:03 PM UTC
814
One Day is there of the Series
Termed Thanksgiving Day.
Celebrated part at Table
Part in Memory.
Neither Patriarch nor *****
I dissect the Play
Seems it to my Hooded thinking
Reflex Holiday.
Had there been no sharp Subtraction
From the early Sum—
Not an Acre or a Caption
Where was once a Room—
Not a Mention, whose small Pebble
Wrinkled any Sea,
Unto Such, were such Assembly
’Twere Thanksgiving Day.
1.9k
this verbal wishing well, appreciated,
a nut of good intentions but drives me
deeper into de-spare-ing downing detentions,
for it is only the article's genuine genius,
that elevates the human spiritus, to godlike status
no ditty this, but a wail, shriek, for
human touch is gift so greatest,
that any day passing without
either, neither but both, 'tis one
truly wasted,
a deduction on our
calculus of inited^ human intuitions,
a failure of our greatest inventions
a subtraction of our
gainful living, a purposed ecstasy
our one and only inexact
measure of measurement
that defies pedantic notions of
things of weight or volume,
but extends our own existence
sans
the armies of embrace,
the electric elected syncing,
of the shocking sharing of
closing the borders of divided spaces,
a soft contusion, a realized illusion
a de minimus of our days,
a lessening of our lessons,
a loss of earning livingness,
a nail in our coffined basket,
and here to cease without surcease,
the elemental incalculable numbered
members of our total human races,
that so tragic in a twenty four expiry,
that the bonding of affection goes
unexpressed...
offer you my armory of arms,
cleanse us both with showered kisses,
inform you thus of our emboldened connection,
voiding these lowlife separators of lineage divisors,
what matter color, gender, chosen god nomenclature,
any of this nonsensical human inventions for distancing
divested human beings from each other
tho eyes closed, and all our senses flaring,
when we confirm what we were born knowing,
there is nothing greater than the human touch
PostScript
my first and best poem of the day,
how it came to me goes unbeknownst,
but will practice what is preached
with any and all willing encountered souls,
and perhaps, come-end of day, will write,
once more, one more, re heaven on earth
7:02am
Tue Sep Thirty
Two Thousand and Twenty Five. nml
Sep 30, 2025
Sep 30, 2025 at 7:13 AM UTC
Boys, I warn you, you are not
to look at Twinkle Girls;
I, Glum Master of the Universe, command
that none of you boys
look at those Shiny Girls who
are Bright as Stars
and so are called Twinkle Girls –
remember, you are not to look at
or wink at Twinkle Girls.
You can, O you immature boys
you can chase butterflies
and climb trees and fall off them and break your legs
but chasing Twinkle Girls,
no – I expressly forbid you from such a pursuit.
Twinkle Girls always come with a chime and charm
still, when they pass by and their scent gets into your mind
you are to poke your noses into your books
and you will contemplate the secrets of addition and subtraction
and the intricacies of algebra
until they pass you by…
Look, boys – you can have computer games
and you can play role-play games
and you can twitter and text
and you can steal cookies from the pantry when mom’s not looking
and you can spend the whole day
at websites your parents told you to stay away from –
but looking at Twinkle Girls,
that, I, Glum Master of the Universe,
I expressly forbid
And what will I, Glum Master of the Universe,
do about it if you ogle at those Twinkle Girls who giggle?
I’ll amend the Books that Surely Lead to Heaven
so boys like you will all end up in Hell…
So, if you want to go to Heaven and eat for free
without mom nagging at you to be neat
and you want to play computer games for all eternity –
boys, I warn you, you are not
to look at Twinkle Girls…
Sep 21, 2010
Sep 21, 2010 at 2:39 PM UTC
There was this season for many reason
A failed ambition or bad decision
Too much subtraction, no single addition
Pictures of low resolution, everything in demotion
But surely... Life must go on...
Days of self damnation because of wrong position
Flowers that need attention for admiration
Head that was full of delusions that needs calibration
Victims of disqualification without any consolation
But definitely... Life must go on...
Minutes of demoralization, hours of depression
Roads of devastation no clear relocation
Eyes shed in repetition because of hard reason
Goodbyes to all special persons for their final destination
But simply.... Life must go on.....
Written: October 23, 2014 at 11:35 PM
Jul 29, 2015
Jul 29, 2015 at 7:39 PM UTC