Standard Deviation

by Poet on the Piano   Sep 6, 2012


You are these statistics I'm trying
to formulate, but no calculator or histogram
can graph what went wrong.

What changed?
I confessed that I had looked
at time with more shy counts, and less
of talking hands giggling then
diverging

upon a road no one wanted
to praise as being my own.

You are dusk I crawl on top of
when I don't know anything about
mean or median or IQR or
keeping you.

I'm lost, with a pencil by my
side but no sight of an eraser.

I don't know what's next.

*written on September 5, 2012 at 10:54 pm.

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  • 12 years ago

    by Courageous Dreamer

    You have to be one of the most versatile poets to write about soo many subjects. I vaguely remember studying standard deviation but it sounds familiar. My guess is you wrote this out of frustration ha, sounds hard! I feel as though this poem can read two ways.. in a mathematical sense or trying to figure out the right path in your life. Interesting piece :)

    • 12 years ago

      by Poet on the Piano

      Thank you guys!! I just wrote this 'cause I was frustrated for a minute and thinking about how we took notes on standard deviation last night.... We had to solve four steps to get an answer, all with numbers in the calculator, and then our teacher said she'd further explain it's purpose later. So I just connected doing all those calculations to me changing over a period of time and the other person not wanting to understand why and blocking our friendship....if that makes any sense lol

  • 12 years ago

    by Nema

    Haha I second Chelsey's words on the mathematical part.
    I'm really intrigued to know the real story behind this piece :) I didn't even know what IQR was, so thanks for adding some info to my pathetic mathematical knowledge haha.

    "upon a road no one wanted
    to praise as being my own."
    ^
    This so much reminded me of
    "I took the one less traveled by,
    And that has made all the difference."
    Frost's, of course. Which made your poem even greater!

    "I'm lost, with a pencil by my
    side but no sight of an eraser.

    I don't know what's next."
    ^
    This seemed more of a dark poem to me, I'm not sure why. Is it because writing sometimes really does scare us to the point that words become killers?

    Lovely piece Maryanne =)
    Write on~

  • 12 years ago

    by Decayed

    Haha what were you thinking to incorporate the 'statistics' stuff into your piece?
    Nonetheless, you made an awesome job using each term poetically.

    And between 'formulate' & 'changed' .. the subtle rhyme created something magical in the intro.

    stunning!

  • 12 years ago

    by Chelsey

    Sweet Lord Maryanne I bet your staring at school books and this idea just came to mind huh? You can pick anything and create this metaphorical master piece. Im in love with your brainnnnn!!!

    Can't say I loved the mathmatical words just because I sucked at math, however I thought it was incredibly unique the way you incorporated them in this piece.

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