Posts: 1,139
Threads: 466
Joined: Nov 2013
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: Probably the most challenging prompt. Explain a scientific concept, and possibly use it as your central metaphor. The more niche the concept and the more accurate your explanation or use of it, the better.
Form: Iambic meter
Line Requirement: At least 10
Posts: 254
Threads: 137
Joined: Feb 2022
Raisins in bread
don't change size,
the dough, expands
around them.
Infinitely, unceasingly,
the raisins growing more distant
more sparse, severing connections
between raisin to raisin.
Raisin mites may never
talk with flea beetles.
Raisin mites,
may never reach another raisin.
Posts: 894
Threads: 176
Joined: Jan 2021
We’re in the wind my friend,
tiny flakes, bits of oil,
shedding our entire skin every month.
Do our psyches shed? Disjointed fragments
of dead anger, do they join us
in the wind? Then there are the ghosts,
what bits of their spirit might drop away
into that breeze out of the pecans?
We create our own ghost shirt of dead skin
amid the secret pollens of these other worlds.
Posts: 695
Threads: 139
Joined: Jun 2015
Golden
Tornadoes, cones, and hurricanes-
their spirals swirl around, and ‘round.
The petals forming flowers- shapes
of shells, and snails, and cancer cells-
the galaxies that twirl in space.
From fingerprints to honey combs,
the Fibonacci numbers show
exacting ways that nature grows;
displays of subtle elegance
create a chance for all to dance.
Posts: 1,185
Threads: 250
Joined: Nov 2015
Archimedes
The lever principle
is quickly stated: that
force pressing on one end
will lift the other in proportion to
lengths of respective arms.
In general
or philosophically
one thus trades one desideratum for
another: force applied
for distances supplied.
But force is not the only quantity
that may be traded:
it can be speed, a shorter lever arm
(such as an axle)
will turn a longer (its wheel’s rim)
much faster.
So too with ropes
and pulleys, wedges, inclined planes
and blades:
a scalpel’s handle moves its point
much smaller, more precisely.
In cameras we trade lens area
of glass for short exposure times
and given costs of making bigger ones
pay more for shorter snaps
which also could be gained with faster film
but greater graininess
worse resolution.
See, it’s all leverage:
we trade one thing we value for
another that we value more until,
as Archimedes boasted, we each move
the world in one dimension at a time.
Non-practicing atheist
Posts: 952
Threads: 225
Joined: Aug 2016
Approaching the speed of light,
time slows almost to a stop.
Living on a mountain peak,
spins faster than a valley.
We could live a lot longer
if we don't run from the cop
who might ask us why were sneak-
ing through this dark alley.
Peanut butter honey banana sandwiches
Posts: 1,139
Threads: 466
Joined: Nov 2013
04-21-2022, 02:53 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-21-2022, 02:55 PM by RiverNotch.)
Island Biogeography
Typically creatures migrate from landmasses
larger to smaller. Distance
and size of which location is the smaller
determine the diversity of species
taking hold in the latter:
long trips are tougher to survive by chance
while competition's tougher when the space
one fights for is too small to start with.
Maybe these observations can be used
describing vital facets of the human,
but fools too often make us less than beasts
by letting nature's custom to compete
take over our resourcefulness in fighting
chance through cooperation, lack through kindness.
Posts: 471
Threads: 204
Joined: Dec 2017
Gold
The yellow metal's rarer than one thinks -
for all the gold that's ever been mined,
from before the time that Egypt had a Sphinx,
to when Cortez was robbing the Aztecs blind,
till now, when native populations have rights,
would fill but three Olympic swimming pools.
O, the yawning Superpit's a sight,
and Grasberg, mountain dismantled with tools
of excavation. The grade being one in a million,
millions the tonnes the rocks
that must be crushed in the Chilean
or Peruvian skies. The shocks
from ammonium nitrate prill in the mountains,
water carts for dust suppression spraying fountains,
and black suited accountants
counting every penny of profit and loss
for their shareholder boss -
all for the love of element 79,
noble metal that never
loses its shine.
