measure

March 14, 2023

NEWOLOGY

I have decided it is now time
and I am establishing a new
field of study that blends
mathematics and political science,
which I have named idiometry.

Simply put, idiometry allows one
to measure just how close one can
take the statements or promises
if any politician and square
them with the actual facts.

Then you repeat this for all
of the statements of that politician
and you inevitably find the square
unattainable, there simply are
no perfect squares yet achieved
in idiometry, for no politician
ever seen on a public stage
hews perfectly to facts, always
veering off into self interest
or blatant ideology, so perhaps
idiometry isn’t worth it, telling us
what we already knew full well.

December 17, 2022

BENT ARROW

He would never understand how time developed a flexibility that defied the laws of physics. An hour, a minute, a second, they were all standard measures. Each the same as every other. Yet lately they had changed, flexed. For the most part they had gotten shorter, shrunken. He knew that wasn’t possible until he remembered Einstein’s famous quote.* But perhaps that Einsteinian law applied only to those of a certain growing age, like his.

*Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.

May 8, 2021

HOUSING CRISIS

I laid it out
with great care, insured
that it comported both
with my idea and sound engineering.

I drew it with
a draftsman’s pencil,
measured each dimension
at least twice, visually
tested every joint.

It ws the culmination
of a lifetime of trying,
my final success, after
which I would stop,
there being no need
to improve on almost perfection.

Building it took time,
but I completed it,
finished it, and readied
it for display to the world.

The dog walked over,
looked in, looked quizically
at me, and raised his leg
at the neatly arched entrance.

March 6, 2021

ENSO

In the interstitial moment
between birth and death
a universe comes into existence,
something that never before existed
and existed always, new
and well-known, unseen
and visible for eternity.

Measure it well
for it is incapable of measurement,
and ends without warning
and precisely on schedule.
In the momentary breath
that marks the transit,
we proceed nowhere
and cannot return to where we began.

Reprised from March 27, 2016

August 25, 2020

TICK TICK TICK

He awoke this morning to discover his mortality.

This was a concept he had never before
considered, it had never crossed his mind.

He had never been to a funeral, came from
a small family, an only child, his parents

and grandparents still living, not that he
ever saw them, he valued his solitude.

But this morning, while everything was the same,
something was radically different.

He had always recognized the passage of time,
but it was a finite measure backward only,

forward, time was an endless expanse
of possibility and uncertainty, nothing more.

Yet this morning he knew nothing had changed,
but he was mortal, that his time remaining

was not only finite, that was sad enough,
but it was ever so slowly shrinking.

He knew he had to get on with his life, so
he set about his day as though it were any other,

but he couldn’t get the thought of mortality
out of his mind, it was like a smothering shadow

that accompanied his every moment, he focused
on it obsessively even as he stepped off the curb.

April 7, 2020

LITTLE LESS THAN GODS

It hardly seems all that long ago
when we were immortal, when
we measured our days by the number
of dares we undertook, each
with its own level of stupidity
which we took, mistakenly, for courage.
We are older now, we would like
to think far wiser as well, but the line
between truth and illusion is thin
and almost impossible to discern.
We now measure our days in open rooms
with small clusters of neatly arrayed chairs
and the odd table piled with magazines
that have faded with time and disuse,
occasionally a fish tank where it
is hard to tell who is less interested
we or the fish, but they, at least,
aren’t waiting for the nurse to call us,
take our vitals and say in a shocking display
of honesty, “the doctor will be with you
eventually.”

February 19, 2019

RULER, PLEASE

You search without end for a way
to precisely measure life in all of its aspects.
You will not be dissuaded by the fact that you can no more
control its span than you could control your need to breathe.
You say you picked the sperm and egg,
that their union you carefully orchestrated.
You believe all things can be measured,
if you can only identify proper metrics for the task.
You know precisely how tall you are, how much
you have shrunken over the years,
how much your waistline has grown.
You can count your good deeds, have a rating scale
that says your next life will be karmic payback hell.
You are taken with measurements of all sorts,
so much so that you often forget to fully live.
You say that this loss doesn’t matter much,
for living boldly, thoroughly, gives you
far too much more to measure.

February 2, 2019

WITH THE GREATEST CARE

She looks carefully, not
wanting the others to know what
she sees, for she needs her secrets.
She wanders over, the others follow
totally unaware she has a goal,
that she will not be satisfied
until she attains it, and that she has
a determination that would give them pause
and no small measure of wonder.
As they stop to talk, she
slides away, still in sight, and they
ignore her, as she assumed they would.
They are predictable, and she uses this
to her advantage, day in and out.
She laughs loudly, insuring their attention
as she plops down in a large puddle
on the driveway, her onesie and diaper
soaking up water, as they feign horror
and then, laughing themselves, concede
she has, as two-year-olds
always will, bested them all yet again.