Challenge: Five Poems in Five Days.

[greenmountaineer]

Hope at the Hair Salon

When you haven't the means for foie grass,
It's time to do something, Marguerite.
Fennel seeds, cumin, or coriander.
Soak falafel beans overnight
And eat brown rice if you have to.

Tomatillo, be a dear
And add a bit more color this time.

Breakfast is the worst time, Marguerite.
Realizing midnight came and went,
Eleven years years without Bill
Somewhere now in the Orient,
Nairobi or Beijing, I think.

When he called me darling
It was more than habit or pretension.

No, of course not,
That was just his passion.

 

[greenmountaineer]

A Pound of Flesh

Later in his traitor cage
The occupying army made
He cursed the family radio
America would listen to
To get the news on World War II,

But in pellucid moments
He liked that pissant cage
Where he wrote his cantos
Waiting for his prison fate,

And even in the pissoir
Everyone would notice
Ezra in the Pisan sun,
Making jurisprudence,
And perhaps the hangman, wait.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Luc Left at Dawn to Save Jerusalem.

"How now, Marie,” she said but to herself,
“to keep his promises like poems and shelve
them upright insofar that I was laid?
But only wives would hope that peace is staid
among men. Ah, Idiote! Thou wouldst wait
until Moors are blue in the face, for fate
of men is to kill each other laying claim
to God or gold or penance for some shame
in war against dark men I must denounce
for a pope whose name I can not pronounce.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Measuring It

Don't we all just love to count
or calibrate dimensions
like how far plutonium's reach is
or how long uranium hisses.

But ask how long eternity is
you may hear infinity isn't
infinitesimal calculus
in fathomless abysses.

So unless we can smell or hear it
like bears that shat in the woods
or a tree that fell in the forest,
It doesn't make any sense to us
and therefore It probably isn't.

 

[Tzara]

I thought there was a comment thread about this thread, but damn I could not find it, so here:

I count five interesting poems, gm, so you are done, and well done. All of them are interesting, intelligent, rather provocative, but always worthy of reading.

Which is what this whole thing's about, eh?





I may have something to say about that last bit, y'know? Perhaps we understand Cantor differently. Perhaps SJ, who actually is a mathematician, might have a go at it. Be interestin', actually.

Good job, good job, though.

 

[greenmountaineer]

I thought there was a comment thread about this thread, but damn I could not find it, so here:

I count five interesting poems, gm, so you are done, and well done. All of them are interesting, intelligent, rather provocative, but always worthy of reading.

Which is what this whole thing's about, eh?





I may have something to say about that last bit, y'know? Perhaps we understand Cantor differently. Perhaps SJ, who actually is a mathematician, might have a go at it. Be interestin', actually.

Good job, good job, though.

Thanks. Admittedly, I took alot of poetic license for "infinitesimal calculus" under the assumption that most would understand as much as I do about it, which isn't even infinitesimal.