weed, w = 1, e = 2, d = 5: I almost want to pretend this is some vague stream-of-consciousness thing like james joyce's Ulysses but I definitely just used the autocorrect after the first word of every line on my phone to see if I could make something that sounded vaguely coherent, and also I threw in some punctuation, also I made a bad weed joke because it fits with the spirit of this poem (april 20th)
spoilered because it sucks
Spoiler! :
you can get a lot of things if you are a little too serious, about the same as the other person who has a good time because I can't tell you how much that'd cost to be fair enough in the end
and for every single person that was the one thing that would be pretty good to make up for the conversation, say anything about prices and the straps
on the other hand it is a very important thing for the conversation about the future to be honest with the people who are going to be rather uncomfortable around you when you get the sense you threw into making the right decision even if you don't have to be able enough to get a good deal (and the only thing that caught me was the fact that I don't think)
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
"I've got dreams like you--no really!--just much less, touchy-feeley. They mainly happen somewhere warm and sunny on an island that I own, tanned and rested and alone surrounded by enormous piles of money." -Flynn Rider, Tangled
((7^7)/(7^6))*3: I'm not good at naming poems and I think I've reached the point where I'm not going to try to (april 21st)
I'm not sure how I come up with ideas - it's almost like a drop of water falling into a lake, or knocking over dominoes to make some kind of shape, or shooting neutrons at uranium to start a chain reaction
except, instead of causing ripples or making a smiley face or powering a factory, it just keeps me up long after midnight, gears in my head still whirring long after my limbs have gone to sleep
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
the integral from 0 to 22 of 1 dx: aaaaah I have finals in a week and a half aaaaah (april 22nd)
i keep trying to see if i can fit the whole world in my head, talking here in this basement to nobody but myself while I repeat equations for the thousandth time - n * lambda = d * sin(theta), Nj/No = Pj/Po * e^(-delta E/kT), dP/dt = P (a - b ln (P))
and i can't stop myself (because in my head i'll either know something in or out, or i'll never have heard of it) and i swear that one of these days i'm going to break something and then i won't be able to start
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
46/2 (ugh prime numbers are inconvenient): thinking about living forever, because that's not on my mind for any reason in particular (april 23rd)
we like to tell ourselves that we don't want to live forever - our loved ones would die, our homes would burn down or get crushed under asphalt, that familiar places, familiar names, families faces, that our identity would get ground up under sisyphus's rock as he rolls it up a hill day after month after year after decade after century after millennium after kalpa after eternity
but I think a lot of us (and maybe me included) would drink from that fountain or eat those peaches or get bitten by that vampire
we spend our whole lives running to the finish line because we tell ourselves there's no point in walking unless we want to trip and fall on our faces so the people behind us laugh and forget there's anything more than the body lying in a ditch just past the tape
and it just so happens there's a lot less of a difference between walking and running across the Atlantic Ocean
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
(2 * 4 * 6 * 8 )/16: brown building, because I liked how last year's poems were all thematic and I'm concerned that all of these poems are weaker because they're not really connected (april 24th)
I remember sitting on an orange couch, resting my feet on a gray table while I grabbed papers from my backpack, and looked past the floor-to-ceiling glass windows at the crowds of students heading to and from class on the brick street by the cafeteria and the dorms, and past the steel and concrete and past the snow-covered dead grass that made up the steep brown hills I'd be running out of breath on soon, to the purple mountains caught in the afternoon sunlight
I didn't think that I'd be leaving anytime soon, and I didn't think that street would ever be empty, that I'd ever run from the mountains
then I pulled out my phone, checked my notifications, and read an article about Wuhan (I think it was on BBC - this was back when I still liked british newspapers), and how it was going into lockdown, and for the life of me I thought that half the world away was far enough, and that I wouldn't be spending my nineteenth birthday cooped up in the basement, books and blankets and papers forming a little circle around my laptop, like I'm trying to keep everyone else away
I guess hindsight really is 2020
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
3^2 + 4^2: just finished reading the final chapter I'll ever have to read for o-chem and if stockholm syndrome were a thing that actually existed and it would be me and that class (april 25th)
I think I'm more nervous about the end of the semester than the start; it's a lot harder to see when you're coming out into the light at the end of the tunnel, if only because it takes a little longer to figure out what you're looking at (but you'll see it, whether you like it or not)
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
13^2 - 170: imagine if I had anything to say (april 26th)
it's always weird how I feel most awake before I'm going to sleep; that the only time I feel like I can do things is when I've cleared my head, taken a few deep breaths, and told myself that I'm not going to do things
one of these days, I hope I can tell myself that I'm not going to do things a little sooner
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
you don't know where you're going, but you've got nowhere else to go; the cliffs are just a little too high, the creek behind you is just a little too big for your boat, the sand on the shore has a few too many jagged rocks.
grab the back of your boat and push, grunt and groan as it moves inch by inch, feel it thwack against the surface of the water, throw yourself onto it before it sails off without you
pull yourself up, look up at your friends waving at you from the edge of the cliffs, waving handkerchiefs and wishing you the best of luck (you hope that you'll run into them again, once they set sail and crash their boats into yours, wherever that'll be or however long that'll be)
take the oars under your feet and thread them through the holes on the sides of your boat, ignore how your muscles burn as they fight against the ocean, ignore your lungs gasping for air as they fight against the sky, and tell yourself that you'll stop as soon as the current picks up to pull you into the sea, wherever that'll be or however long that'll be
don't look behind you, because there's no point in stopping to see something that's fading behind the mist, less than a memory, the vague feeling of something familiar (warm or cold) before you journeyed out into the endless ocean, where there's nothing but a rock or two jutting out of the water, gray clouds always hanging low at the horizon, and the sinking feeling that one of these days something's going to punch a hole in the bottom of your boat, and you'll slip and sleep beneath the tranquil sea
but you hope you'll catch a glimpse of another set of cliffs, see new friends waving their handkerchiefs at you and asking you what took you so long, what with a smooth, sandy shore, a creek wide enough to fit a boat twice your size, and a dock just waiting for you to run into it, tie your boat to it, and explore this new land for the long while before you find yourself on another voyage, wherever that'll be or however long that'll be
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
I haven't commented on your poetry in awhile, but...wow. I keep thinking I found my favorite out of your poems, but then I read another and realize that I like that one even more than the last. You have a knack for writing deep poetry, and I really love the combination of them and the numbers/titles.
(That being said, the first poem that made really go "whoa" was the April 21st poem - it was really relatable to my own writing experience, and was just written in such a beautiful way.)
Thanks! I've been pretty busy/stressed over the last month, so this has been a nice opportunity for me to let out some emotions.
14 + 7 + 3.5 + 1.75 + ...: share the same fate (april 28th)
I'm always smart when I agree with you - I always make sense when I'm telling you what you've told yourself.
Otherwise, I'm too emotional, I haven't done enough research, I'm too biased, I don't have the perspective.
None of the awards matter, none of the letters of praise matter, that research and those sources aren't important to you.
You've spent so much of your life holding a mirror in front of your face and telling yourself that you know how the world works.
Nobody knows how the world works, and anyone who thinks otherwise will wake up one day with a busted lip and broken mirror.
I can only tell you what I think, and I think that you'd be so much better off peering out from behind that mirror.
And maybe you'd understand what it's like to learn again, to love again, to have friends again, to stop being the judge, jury, and executioner to nobody but yourself.
We will both die having figured out nothing, but I think I'd like to keep giving it the old college try so I don't spend all my time looking at my reflection and pretending I've made sense of a world that humbles everyone.
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
I think that maybe I probably it seems like you could I'd like to mention I should mention I believe that it feels like I'm not exactly sure because it might be better to say I feel that I believe that isn't exactly right that possibly maybe somewhat reasonably theoretically potentially ideally this could be why I feel that you could probably say like you said as you mentioned earlier for example for instance as evidenced by I'm not sure about that the textbook mentioned something else the teacher was talking about this concept the TA said he was going to do this you're not necessarily wrong but I agree with some of what you've said and let me check again because maybe I like that you brought that up that stumped me, nobody talked about that well you could look at it this way you might even say that I might be misreading that not sure unsure exactly precisely particularly what you're trying to say here? but however I understand where you're coming from and in this specific case that would make sense otherwise perhaps yeah yes still I can't say I can't tell I don't know if you probably know more than I do yep no problem thanks you're welcome let me know if you have any other questions
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
the indefinite integral of the derivative of 30: spring waits for no one (april 30th)
cw: death, references to self-harm (mainly in the spoiler)
Spoiler! :
this poem series, and this poem in particular, was loosely inspired by Gwendolyn Brook's poem To the Young Who Want to Die. There's not anything I can really say (or write) to do the poem justice - I would highly recommend reading it, if that's something you're comfortable with (because yeah, it's pretty heavy, but not in a bad way).
And thanks to everyone who's been reading along - it's been a heck of a month, but I'm happy that y'all took the time to sit down and look through these.
I always see the trees for the forest - my eyes scan up and down the bark looking for any sap leaking out, any bent branches or dying buds, holding a magnifying glass over every little crack because I'm afraid one of those trees will catch fire if I'm not looking, and take down the whole forest with it
I am spring, the bridge between all the grace and poise of fresh snow gently settling on a field, and the radiance of sunlight filtered through a leafy canopy; I am spring, the bridge between the wrath of ice coating the roads, snapping off branches, sending cars sliding, and the wrath of a sun that makes cooking pots out of blankets, turns cars into saunas, leaves leaves to wilt and die
but what is the point of pretending that I am cursing or blessing these trees that grew from saplings long before I did, and will crash down to the earth long after I do
what is the point of pretending that I can make my coffin out of these trees, that I can live my whole life having never seen the forest, that I should wait for a fire I know that I can handle if it ever flares to life
I am spring, and this is my forest, and one of these days I will accept that and embrace all of it, thorns and roses alike, and I will make my way to the tallest tree, climb up it, and watch the sunrise
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
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