Pick any number.
Multiply it by itself.
Divide the multiple in half.
Subtract the divisor.
Add the number that preceeds the number
That you picked first.
In this way, can you determine why you picked it?
What exactly does a number stand for?
What do the answers of these equations mean?
Where did numbers begin?
How high can you count?
Are numbers infinite?
The thing about numbers is that they are definite.
They do not change. If you asked them to line up
They'd line up each time exactly the same.
They do not care how you feel
Or what it is that you are after.
Yet so much of our lives depend on numbers.
Exchanges of money involve arithmetic.
Time itself is a mathematical system.
If it weren't for the laws of physics, we'd float off the world.
The world we live on is a geometric shape.
A geometric shape in the space/time continue-um
In which everything is relative.
Nothing else matters.
But even to say the word 'nothing' invokes mathematics.
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Author Notes
This is a simple play on words piece, in which the world is reduced to the meaning of words, and their connotations. At the time this was written, I was heavily influenced by the poetry of Jack Anderson, and this is very much in the vein of poems of his like The Mysterious Sound and Cafeterias. It is a type of poetry that is very dependent on images, and their ability to take you away through various interpretations into all kinds of worlds and possibilities. Here, there is a somewhat sarcastic look at the rigidity of mathematics, juxtaposed with the more fluid soul inside of us that interprets hopes and dreams and possibilities very differently. estory
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