LPiA-25 Nov. 15

[Tiger the Lion]

Let's Pretend it's April - Nov. 15
Rules: Write a poem for LPiA on the topic or form described. Each poem should appear as a New Reply to this thread. The goal is to, at the end of the month, have written 30 poems for the month of November. (or one, or six, or fifteen) Prompts may be revisited at any time. All members are welcome.

Topic : Write a poem inspired by the Scientific Method. 
Form : Any
Line requirements: 8 or more

Feel free to reply with comments or kudos as you wish. 

Questions?

[MidaPoems]

My hypothesis


If I mix these two,
I should get you.

To titrate -
My liquid nitrate,
That screams your name
In vain.

The hot plate scorching,
The xenon flickers blue,
A glow I chase,
Never to follow.

Beakers tremble,
Glassware cracks.
Nerves - fragile -
As I swirl the solution,
I see no dilution.

The reaction turns,
Mixtures curdle,
Colors fade.
It heats so much,
Yet cold to the touch.
The glass slips -
I feel it before it
Ends on the ground.

My hypothesis - a failure -
Wildly benevolent,
Like how it shattered
My own logic.
Never were you meant
To be man-made.

Your shape takes form,
Contamination blooms
From the breath held -
A single exhale
Undoing a life's work.

Reactions stall,
Mixtures cloud.
A hypothesis collapses -
You were never meant
To be produced.

As compound and profound as you
Cannot be born
From disfigured hands -
Shaking too much,
The splinters, still visible.
Hands that can't tell
Where the glass begins
Or ends.
That's where they
Start to bleed.


Formed by imperfect hands
That tremble
At a single
Glance of glass.

---

I tried to make it longer than usual, and it worked alright.

[CRNDLSM]

Out of my league,  id challenged a master
Im in over my head, a sestina?
This isn't going to work half-assed here
Going to disappear like John cena
Figure maybe if I just post faster
To make up for my lack of depth

To break through the incessant writers block 
Out of the ashes rebuilt and reborn
Figure skating on a burnt broken clock
Im wondering if I would be forlorn
Going day to day hawking all this schlock
This bogus utter lack of depth

This challenge was a test to push myself
To try something new mixed with something old
Going to grid and organize the shelf
Out of the chaos layering neat folds
Im the constant tested on someone else
Figure out how to reach the depth

Figures pouring out one line at a time
This method of extricating  new words
Im digging digging deeper in my mind
To at least find something ive never heard
Out of all the forms this one's worst for rhymes 
Going ultimately for depth

Going to make up arbitrary rules
Figures that only i would care about
Out to humuliate myself the fool 
This failure in the struggle for what, clout?
To impress with unsolvable puzzles?
Im for one thing out of my depth

Im   forfeiting this duel it was cool though
Going    to write a limerick anyway
To   those of you reading give it a go
Figure   out a new way to have your say
This    experiment was fun, just so you know
Out    do yourself, length width and depth

Im saying, poetry is depth 
and even though we may not have it now
Somehow, We're going to figure this out

[rowens]

Custom Dagger

If there is one eye,
despite nose,
it will see
with as many eyes
as that eye
can define
and smell with.



....

I surrendered the eight-line requirement.

[dukealien]

Sonnet Found on a Lab Bench


Have you not told me, James, how science works?
That error mustn’t be confused with fail,
mistake upon mistake builds to the Grail
of heart’s desire, in bafflement truth lurks?

Do you believe, as you have said to me,
incomprehensible results are best–
that try on unsuccessful try is blessed
with hard-earned knowledge, mystic alchemy?

You’ve sought me, James, in mountains, by the lake,
with flowers, chocolates, and with champagne;
you prize me as a token of success.
But should you come to love for my own sake
as I, perhaps, love you, and ask again,
your next proposal’s answer may be “Yes.”

[brynmawr1]

not enough is made
in this day and age,
of the wisdom, the sage,
hard to evade advice of never
asking why, when or what,

only how, never promising the truth,
only its pursuit.

[Todd]

Peer Review

Death speaks with the wrong voice
from a wrong number.
You ask her to repeat it,
as if the words would change
and you could forget
that you heard them.

It is like driving and suddenly
being there,
at the destination,
hands on the wheel,
no streets behind you,
no miles, no signs.

There is only the classroom,
the fluorescent lights, other faces,
you speaking to the instructor,
the words muffled
as if from far away,
an echo of a conversation
you already had.

The need to leave is the only point.
You turn without knowing
if you finished speaking.

I was told later that I was smiling.
They saw it before I did,
and I never got to correct the hypothesis.

[busker]

Sonnet Found on a Lab Bench


Have you not told me, James, how science works?
That error mustn’t be confused with fail,
mistake upon mistake builds to the Grail
of heart’s desire, in bafflement truth lurks?

Do you believe, as you have said to me,
incomprehensible results are best–
that try on unsuccessful try is blessed
with hard-earned knowledge, mystic alchemy?

You’ve sought me, James, in mountains, by the lake,
with flowers, chocolates, and with champagne;
you prize me as a token of success.
But should you come to love for my own sake
as I, perhaps, love you, and ask again,
your next proposal’s answer may be “Yes.”

it must've been hard to resist rhyming 'lurks' with 'Turks' 

Loved this one.

[busker]

Josef Mengele was a scientific man,
a methodical sort was he.
His experiments all followed a plan
noted down in his diary.

That didn’t make him superior to the Han,
or the best doctor in Germany,
though some say he was, like Steve Bannon’s nan -
there let’s agree to disagree.

My point being, science is overrated.
Progress has its logical end
in group by group by subgroup hated,
and the extinction of all that ever mated.

Josef drowned, but at seventy seven.
Being catholic, he’ll go to heaven.

[Mostly Holy]

"Radium Girl" (sestina)

In Warsaw’s grip, she learned to swallow grief,
Where knowledge was a shade, not a glow.
Russian tongues erased her native light,
But she memorised science like a law.
Smuggled thoughts in books beneath the dust,
And fed a mind too big for fear or home.

The strangers made her exile from her home;
She measured out her meals like rationed grief.
She borrowed books, scratched equations in the dust
as she studied journals by candle's glow.
Every minute spent under study’s law;
She came to Paris starving for that light.

Then Pierre: Not lover, but kindred law--
Aligned in wisdom, discipline, and dust:
A panacea for her father's grief,
She his foundation, he her guiding light.
Together, they built a love-filled home;
From mutual respect, true romance would glow.

They sought the hidden pulse within the glow,
The secret of an undiscovered law.
The world withdrew from their tranquil home
until they caught the phantom in the dust.
The world was awed; they tasted fame's keen light,
Their greatest joy before their greatest grief.

The cart obeyed the natural law,
Its crushing wheels ground his bones to dust.
She buried her love in a daze of grief,
Begged for God to return his guiding light.
She locked herself within her funeral home
and cried herself to sleep without his glow.

In hopeless grief, her work had lost its glow,
But for love's sake she self-imposed a law:
Her laboratory would become her home.
Every breath drew in lungs of deadly dust
as she strained failing eyes by wan lamp light;
The cancer ate her bones, and then her grief.

Her home is sealed behind thick glass and dust,
Her light still burns, but not without her grief;
The glow she left illuminates life and law.

---

This took me so long and it is so bad! Omg I hate sestinas

[Keith]

Chromatography

You unfolded your laboratory
as an artist would their brushes.
I was a fixed constant
that would later be considered
to be critical to the results.

You mixed the solution
on a heated spoon
and removed the insoluble with a cigarette filter
then used your own blood as a carrier.
I watch the toxins separate in your eyes.

I mixed your solution
with a frantic phone call
and cleared your vomit with a finger
they pushed you into an ambulance carrier.
I watched the colours leave your mothers eyes.

[dukealien]

Sonnet Found on a Lab Bench


Have you not told me, James, how science works?
That error mustn’t be confused with fail,
mistake upon mistake builds to the Grail
of heart’s desire, in bafflement truth lurks?

Do you believe, as you have said to me,
incomprehensible results are best–
that try on unsuccessful try is blessed
with hard-earned knowledge, mystic alchemy?

You’ve sought me, James, in mountains, by the lake,
with flowers, chocolates, and with champagne;
you prize me as a token of success.
But should you come to love for my own sake
as I, perhaps, love you, and ask again,
your next proposal’s answer may be “Yes.”

it must've been hard to resist rhyming 'lurks' with 'Turks' 

Loved this one.

Figured I was already on thin ice rhyming "champagne" with "again." 

[rowens]

Ruach-Nephesh-Guph

Great intellect and knowledge are like tattoos,
even sweet, chic airheads have them.