Poems
I've written a bunch of poems in various places over the years. A lot of other stuff was written on Google+ and Pluspora, now defunct (I hope to add them here soon). What you see here is a collection of some of the other poems I've written.
Haiku
Studying
The professor hands back grades.
What the fucking hell.
Traveling in Space and Time
Travel time is 3 hours
Time dilation
You Meant Cosine
Silence falls in the classroom.
Whispered words: “Oh . . . shit.”
Inspired by a mistake by another student in Differential Equations, Spring 2012.
Computer Graphics
It's really hard I hate it
Pretty pictures tho
Double-Dactyl
The Double-Dactyl / Higgledy-Piggledy poem style is a two-stanza verse form that encourages clever / tongue-in-cheek writing, often featuring a made-up word or two and a twist. I have made a collection of double-dactyls written by a myriad of authors, including myself. For more information about double-dactyls and the collection, see the supplementary info.
My own double-dactyls can be found both in the collection and mirrored here. Some previously published have been removed or remain unpresented, for egregiously not fitting the form (generally for being early efforts).
Finals
by Stephanie Dimpfel, Agatha S. Mallett, and Shane Wilder, 2013-04-28 11:29:30 UTC-0600, revised (by me) laterHiggledy-piggledy
Finals approaching, we
Pray for a miracle,
Brace for the worst.
Study’s prescribable;
Teachers unbribable;
Acing this final, I'll
Come out in first.
Co-written with the above individuals, fellow students at UNM.
Astrobiology
by Agatha S. Mallett, 2011-10-03 at 12:13:06 UTC-0600, revised laterHiggledy-piggledy
Astrobiology,
Arsenic lifeforms are
Quite apropos.
Stellar vivacity,
Found with audacity—
Where is the evidence
I’d like to know?
Quantum
by Agatha S. Mallett, 2011-10-03 at 12:13:06 UTC-0600, revised laterHigglevent-pigglevent
Quantum entanglement
Infinite multiverse
Growing like *that*!
Probabilistically,
Anti-heuristically
Causing confusion and
Screwing a cat.
Voldemort
by Agatha S. Mallett, 2011-10-03 at 12:13:06 UTC-0600, revised laterVoldemort, Voldemort
Harry your plans does thwart.
How are you able to
Smell through your nose?
Wizard cup, diary,
Gained notoriety:
Constantly failing to
Potter sure blows.
Twilight
by Agatha S. Mallett, 2011-10-03 12:13:06 UTC-0600, revised laterStephanie Meyer writes
Edward, the vampire
Swooning a teenager,
Lacking a cape.
Constantly making out,
That’s what it’s all about?
Why don’t you care that it’s
Legally rape?
In the Twilight novel series, the main character is a 17-year-old girl in an innuendo-laden-but-maybe-not-immediately-sexual relationship with a plainclothes vampire.
Jesus
by Agatha S. Mallett, 2012-04-15 at 22:47:45 UTC-0600, revised later“Jesus of Nazareth,
What can I help you with?”
Cross-wise I’m nailed, so my
Day’s going swell.”
“Be optimistic—it’s
monotheistic! Christ,
Tell everybody they’re
Goin’ to hell!”
College Bureaucracy
by Agatha S. Mallett, 2012-04-22 at 23:53:50 UTC-0600, revised laterHiggledy-piggledy
College bureaucracy
What does it take to get
Signed up for class?
Score (less two) credit bound
Campus-wide runaround
Too many heads are just
Shoved up an ass.
Soccer
by Agatha S. Mallett, 2012-04-29 20:52:50 UTC-0600, revised laterHiggebub-piggledub
Manchester’s Football Club
Latics’ resurgence is
Viewed to be fluke.
£800 million
Versus . . . ambition? These
Powerplays ’cross the pond
Cause me to puke.
One of my college roommates was really into soccer. I aggressively didn't (and don't) care. Also I called it "Soccer" instead of "Football" as a troll.
Wigwams
by Agatha S. Mallett, 2012-04-29 20:52:50 at UTC-0600, revised laterHiggledy-piggledy
Wigwam Menominee
Natively living is
Most apropos.
Antihistorical,
Technicalogical
Gadgets make living here
Easy, you know?
Firefly
by Agatha S. Mallett, Earlist record 2013-03-24 20:01 PT, revised laterFirefly, firefly,
’renity in the sky.
Fleeing from Reavers is
Rather astute.
Girl’s schizophrenia.
Paranoid mania,
Wash killed by spearpoint just
Doesn’t compute.
Firefly II
by Agatha S. Mallett, Earlist record 2013-03-24 20:03 PT, revised laterHiggledy-piggledy
Medicine stolen; bye!
“Jayne you big traitor, just
Whom did you call?!”
Simon quixotically,
River’s lobotomy,
Searching in hospitals
Takes lots of gall.
Good Omens
by Agatha S. Mallett, Earlist record 2013-03-24 19:59 PT, revised laterHiggledy-piggledy
Book with some prophecies.
“Where is the anti-Christ?”
“Why do you ask?”
Crowley, Aziraphale,
Points about dolphin-whales,
Stopping Apocalypse
Is your Nice task.
This is positively dripping with allusions to Good Omens, a book that was very popular in the honors dorm at my undergrad.
Helicopter
by Agatha S. Mallett, 2013-04-28 11:29:30 UTC-0600, revised laterHiggledy-piggledy
Hating a ’copter that
Flies during midnight all
Over the dorm.
Antiacoustical!
Screw ‘mission-critical’!
Piloting noise-buckets
Takes lots of gorm.
Across the street from Hokona Zia dorm at UNM, there is a hospital; this is (rather uncharitable) grousing about the noise its helicopter makes.
Higgs Boson
by Agatha S. Mallett, Earliest record 2013-04-28 11:29:30 UTC-0600, revised laterHiggsledy-piggsledy
Z-five discovery:
Coupling bosonically—
Mass is complete!
Higgs, supersymmetry,
Franco-Swiss LHC;
Finding this particle’s
Pleasing for Pete.
Composed on the occasion of the discovery of the Higgs Boson, at some release where it was announced.
Black Cauldron
by Agatha S. Mallett, 2013-08-05 11:28 PT, revised laterHiggledy-piggledy
Cauldron demonic, black,
Entry deactivates
. . . leave?—I have doubts.
—Dumb undeniably,
Since topologically,
It’s flat—there’s no telling
Inside from out!
In The Chronicles of Prydain, the black cauldron is a magical artifact that converts the dead into undead minions. However, if a living soul enters, it dies and the cauldron is destroyed. However, as the poem suggests, the cauldron is homeomorphic to a plane.
Mountain Shadow
by Agatha S. Mallett, 2016-02-10 13:42:14 UTC-0700, revised laterHiggledy-piggledy,
Amber soliloquy:
Sunrise’s shadow is
Cast on the clouds.
Cumulonimbical
Mountain matutinal—
Beauty so early should
Not be allowed.
Composed in response to a picture my mom took during her morning commute on that day. My guess is it was about 45°34'13.89"N 123° 2'45.56"W looking east at Mt. Hood.
On Creating the Double-Dactyls Archive
by Agatha S. Mallett, Written 2023-06-06 at 18:41 PT, revised laterPhilo-dactylly,
Agatha, programmer,
Wrote up some scripts for to
Download some prose.
Database-potpourri
Somnambulistic, she
Manual grunt-worked cor-
-recting her rows.
To collect poems from the (defunct) collection of Roger L. Robison, I wrote a web scraper to download stuff. However, the data quality was quite poor, and required lots of manual fixing.
Fitting in an Apartment
by Agatha S. Mallett, 2023-06-08 at 11:16 PT, revised laterHiggledy-piggledy,
Jtiai the Finlander:
Moving apartments, he
Pondered his stuff.
“Why not Procrustian
Discard-downsizingly
Packing-efficiently?
You’ve got enough.”
Composed on a Discord server at user "jtiai" (which I'm choosing to pronounce, probably incorrectly, as "JAY-tai"), who was checking if his stuff would fit into a new apartment.
Relay Checking
by Agatha S. Mallett, 2023-06-08 at 18:00 PT, revised laterClickity-clackity
Brenda of Erickson
Surveys electrical
Drawings unclear.
Deadlines approaching, she
Chaparonistically
Logical-relay work
Re-engineers.
My mom works as an aircraft engineer at a company afiliated with the mentioned.
Shelley
by Agatha S. Mallett, Written 2023-06-10 at 15:12 PT, revised laterHiggledy-piggledy
Percy Bysshe Shelley, the
Free-loving atheists’
Spirited knife—
Sailing italically
Mari-dramatically
Perished ironically
(“Triumph of Life”).
Percy Bysshe Shelley, melodramatic, free-loving, atheist, died at sea in a storm, leaving his work "Triumph of Life" unfinished.
A Fire Upon the Deep
by Agatha S. Mallett, 2017-06-01 at 07:15:44 UTC, revised laterHiggledy-piggledy
Cosmic catastrophe:
Godshattered hero(-ex)
Straumli arrests.
Call it “perversion”: ga-
-lactic aversion to
simple mis-steps such as
omnicide zest.
(See A Fire Upon the Deep.)
It Felt More Like Three Years
by Agatha S. Mallett, 2024-06-02 at 09:44 PTHiggledy-piggledy
Lucien, graduate:
Painfully Muddy, took
Physics and Dance.
Smog-stained, grade-conscious, they
Hyperscholastically
Pondered attributing
"Five 'C's" a chance.
My younger sibling, Lucien (they/them), graduated from Harvey Mudd College, and won't shut up about it. (They only spent three years on-campus, due to the pandemic.)