Politicising the Slynog

Posted on by
Reply

The Slynog took umbrage and a pot of Earl Grey
and envied the surname Gorringe

not only from cricket and leaders in war
but because it rhymes nicely with ‘orange’.

The policemen took lumps while the Sylnog took two.
Unlike them, he dropped his in his tea.

A broadsheet account gave the Slynog a clue
on the heights of pols’ audacity:

He twigged now how bravery among politicians
comes after the fact, and the skirts

among which they hide till the shooting dies down
are the curtains from whence they then flirt

with the Owners and Losers, society’s classes,
of which pols pretend they are lords

while knowing they’re not, and in fear of the masses
of both groups: their stones, cash and swords.

Pi Eyed

Posted on by
Reply

When I tell you this, that pi’s not algebraic,
you say ‘prove it,’ thinking that I take the pi’s.
Although I can’t, I find it elegiac
and, like Grey’s churchyard, simultaneously wise
and useless thwarting warts and evil eyes.
While it’s difficult to think that we should care
about math more than CK underwear
the latter leaves us less than meets the eye
while the former’s models muddle everywhere
because what’s algebraic is not pi.

Fibonacci poem

Posted on by
Reply

This
form
forces
fine feelings
into abstruse lines
each longer longing to affix
a meaning to creations made live by febrile minds
and for this new spring trick I thank both you and SlashDot. Well done. Though if continued cumbersome.

(The thank-you in this poem is to Gregory K. who in 2006 wrote on SlashDot: “April is National Poetry Month (and, it turns out, Math Awareness Month), and on my blog, I decided to get people writing poetry based on the Fibonacci sequence. The poems are six lines, 20 syllables long with the syllable pattern 1/1/2/3/5/8, though they can go longer, obviously. I’ve been calling ’em Fibs, and people have been writing them on pop culture, politics, math, and more.”
Gregory K.’s Blog is at gottabook.blogspot.com/2006/04/fib.html )

Non-U Socialising

Posted on by
Reply

‘I am old,’ said the Durac, ‘and riddled with charm,

so I live all alone in The South.’

The Slynog replied, with a sound like it cried

though it moved not a part of its mouth,

‘You are eusocial, Eugene, eugenically broke;

you give over too early to wrath.

You keep seeking the reeking unriddling of All

though you look for it only in Math.’

‘Am I truly eusocial?’ the Durac essayed.

It pleasured him slightly to toy

with the sensible Slynog whose ‘sensitive’ seethed

under bedclothes of logic to buoy

up a billow of bubbles of misapplied thought.

‘I’d have thought that a taut skein of cells

in the skin or the blood were eusocial while I,

like an unaxoned neuron or bells

unadorned by book, candle or swung-about cat,

am waiting alone though we meet.’

The Slynog, who nurtured its own hermit past

with plunges through bloodstreams to eat,

said the Durac was right, and remarked that the light

was marvelous this time of the day.

Then they parted imparted with illusions they’d shared

a moment. Each went on its way.

Orthogonal

Posted on by
Reply

I read until the math eludes my grasp.
I give up, do not go on to page two.
Page one has brought me rationals that rasp
away until their complements shine through
sufficiently to persuade me it is is true
that angles must be right to be correct.
I draw some, making straight lines intersect,
and on these axes try to classify
the books I’ve read, although when I inspect
my groups they are irrational, like pi.

Denial in The Line’s Din

Posted on by
Reply

A one dimensional line evolves its point
to two, a pair that like dilemma horns
go separate ways before one can anoint
either horn as better. Both are thorns
that trouble staunch denial, as they’re bound
to do, uniting, by their binding, lots
of intervening space the dye has cast
a pall upon. The space itself is sound,
although unasked for by the man God wots.
The man sees both points threatening the past
existence he’s been used to all these years.
The line the points draw leads him into fears.

What is this dye that our traveller wants to stow
(reversing “wots”) away so that its hue
can’t cry explosively and splash and glow
so brightly that it forces him to view
some to-him-unfamiliar forms of life?
What is the point escaping from the din
to which he is accustomed? Just a dot?
A dot of dotage, small in size but rife
for an expansive future, brings a grin
to Wot’s not-yet old face. He says he’ll rot
rat cheer and thanks the points not very much
for spreading out to where they’re hard to touch.

Applauding Your Taking the Pi’s

Posted on by
Reply

Applause, sir, for your fine defense of fie.
With your complexes one can simplify
raw algebra to what I analyse
as your take on geometric squares of pi’s.

Does ‘complex’ stand in for ‘imaginary’?
Like a miner mourning death in his canary
with something of self-interest in his tears,
I tread with trepidation on my fears

that should I weigh in with the kitchen sink
asserting that these ‘complex’ numbers link
entirely different parts of higher maths,
you’d ask me how, and I’d fall on my aths.