Rules: Write a poem for national poetry month on the topic or form described. Each poem should appear as a separate reply to this thread. The goal is to, at the end of the month have written 30 poems for National Poetry Month.
Topic 27: Write a poem inspired by numbers, equations, or codes.
I've decided on a mathematicians suicide.
I measured the height of the building dee
Ive assumed gee to be constant over such
a short dee but something feels off with tee.
You see I want tee to be longer but to do that
I need to increase dee which means the building
needs to be taller or my body needs to go slower.
Maybe tee shouldn't be that important to me.
Ive proven the equation works then added a theory
of my own. By reducing dee and almost eliminating tee
I might only sprain my knee, what will be will be.
The Samaritans? No they can't help me
safety in numbers is what they see.
If your undies fer you've been smoking through em, don't peg em out
If Curtis is six-feet tall and 180 lbs.
and consumes four 12 oz. Budweiser
in under one hour.
Then solve for
if he should visit his bitch ex-wife,
Susan.
If he leaves the bar at 2 AM,
and travels to her home
at an average speed
of 25 mph in a curved line.
Then solve for
If his 1982 Ford pickup will crash
into a steel fencepost.
Extra credit: Will his head shatter the front glass
of his windshield? (Use the attached
statistical model to determine seat belt usage).
If Curtis discovers the secret knock
by banging his fist in alternating patterns
against the solid core door,
or the password, which is a combination
of his ex-wife’s name, and some words
from a George Carlin routine.
Then solve for: If his ex-wife will open the door.
Extra Credit: Is his stepson holding a baseball bat?
If two trains leave the station
traveling away from one another
so fast that the clouds melt
against a smear of dirty sky.
Then solve for
If and when the trains will cross paths,
assuming a track 1000 miles long
and circular.
two words
three minutes staring into space
four bites on five cuticles
six is an unlucky number
which must be lucked by seven
eight was the shape of her body after
nine months
ten closes the circle
Take two dice, both honest
that is, each displays
numbers one through six
as frequently when thrown.
Yet when thrown together
rank imbalances appear:
seven shows one time in six
while two and twelve appear but rarely.
Whence this surprising trend?
If one is red, the other green
when thrown together, each
watched by itself
behaves impeccably - one to six
no bias. What’s the story?
Story, yes: researcher bias
for, without a thought the watcher
adds the two together
which are unrelated otherwise.
This is not Heisenberg uncertainty
but performance of an operation
on the data which
cannot be justified
resulting in erroneous reports.
Now tell us about
homogenizing temperature records by
adding and subtracting numbers
without evidence or notice
just to fit expected trends
in derived anomalies.
one time in six - just checking to see if you're awake (I'm not)
Rather large-ish comments vis-à-vis Don Q's and Duke Alien's entries:
(04-28-2017, 09:20 AM)Donald Q. Wrote: ENIGMA
Cyphers (my preferred spelling) that conserve four-letter words are eminently crackable...
but are, considering their conservation of amusement, much to be preferred.
(04-28-2017, 09:40 AM)dukealien Wrote: Take two dice, both honest
that is, each displays
numbers one through six
as frequently when thrown.
Yet when thrown together
rank imbalances appear:
seven shows one time in six
while two and twelve appear but rarely.
Whence this surprising trend?
If one is red, the other green
when thrown together, each
watched by itself
behaves impeccably - one to six
no bias. What’s the story?
Story, yes: researcher bias
for, without a thought the watcher
adds the two together
which are unrelated otherwise.
This is not Heisenberg uncertainty
but performance of an operation
on the data which
cannot be justified
resulting in erroneous reports.
Now tell us about
homogenizing temperature records by
adding and subtracting numbers
without evidence or notice
just to fit expected trends
in derived anomalies.
one time in six - just checking to see if you're awake (I'm not)
When lives can depend on iodine
vapours discovering ink,
when words invisible are writ
there’s a depth we hope they don’t sink.
Because our General needs to know
the many secrets that they think
we pray that their spies are all eunuchs:
may they never think of the pink
petaled ladies who, giggling, would help
them squeeze invisible ink from their dinks.
Not a code, sorry, but secret writing. Since I have a handy little book called "Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing" where secret writing is equal to the other two, I maintain that my submission fits the guidelines. So there.
(04-28-2017, 11:20 AM)rayheinrich Wrote: Cyphers (my preferred spelling) that conserve four-letter words are eminently crackable...
but are, considering their conservation of amusement, much to be preferred.
Well, if anyone wants to have a go cracking it feel free to check in with me to confirm a solution!
A better example would be the perfectly equivalent process of taking the *difference* between the two dice in a normal pair rather than adding them. That yields 1 in nearly a third of all throws. Add one to all results and you get 1-6 but very "dishonestly" distributed.
Somewhere around here I have a box of dice with faces numbering from 4 to 20. Both the extremes are quite difficult to throw, IIRC.
My medical records recite my weight
in December to have been 103 kilograms.
I recall in high school competing briefly
in the 103 pound class. Do the math?
Bullshit, don’t ever do the math.
The results are too . . . inescapable, too . . .
encapsulating. No fuzz left, no damn
ambiguity left at play, no welcome gray
amid the black, or black amid the gray
as the case may be, and I see clearly now
that over the years I converted pounds
to kilograms – my life’s work, apparently
a converter – and that’s a fact. Tomorrow’s
question - is it easier to quit cigarettes or apple fritters? [Spoiler alert- do the math].
Would it be narcissism to say this is the worst poem is history? The odds are against such self-indulgent thinking.
How many poems are wastes of breath? In particular, this poem sux. I get ten points. I'm already winning.
Start with the number of poems that you have written that are childish whines in adult language. Subtract the number of poems that are halfway decent. Multiply by pie because it's delicious. Add another ten because that joke is overdone, like most of your metaphors. Multiply by nine because they say that one in ten is probably at least passable, and somehow that makes sense to me. Find the square root and you'll have the number of nothing useful at all.
Don't do math. Math is depressing. Writing is hard enough. Go forth then and write 90% crap, you beautiful poet you, who cackles at actuarials like the blissfully insane.
She wondered if a calendar
done in Braille
would help him to remember
Birthdays & Anniversaries
but then just thought it better
to get her own
personal planner
and mark off
every day
with a great big X
![[Image: astrobabe.jpg]](http://wordbiscuit.com/im18/astrobabe.jpg)
![[Image: Enigma.png]](https://s15.postimg.org/pcs60k6yj/Enigma.png)
![[Image: 0-11-twelve-sided-die.jpg]](http://wordbiscuit.com/im18/0-11-twelve-sided-die.jpg)
