square

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.

June 26, 2021

REAL TIME

He can spend hours on the wooden bench in the small square in the center of the village. There he is but a statue, staring up at the giant clock face that looms over the square from the turret of the Village Hall. He likes to watch the long hand, arrowlike, make its slow, but inevitable movement, circling the blank outward gaze of the numerals. He does not care much for time, has too much of it some say, too little left, he knows. But here, as he stares fixedly, it stops. There is no motion in that instant, there is only the instant of time. It is no longer real, it is a thought lost or forgotten, and there is only the single moment in which he sits on the wooden bench in the center of the village.

January 11, 2020

MONOCHROME

It is an admittedly odd sign
of my age that I recall clearly
when bathrooms were tiled mostly
in monochrome, black and white,
and it was a mark of quality when
each tile was hexagonal, a hive
of ceramic cells, impenetrable.

Now tiles are square or rectangular,
come in a rainbow of colors, often
intermixed to achieve looks
unimaginable back in my youth,
and walls a painted with any color
you can imagine, not the eighteen shades
of white from which my parents had
the choice for our new house.

But change can be for the better,
and in proof of that you need only
look around and see that bathroom
fixtures are mostly white, occasionally
black, not sickly green or peach,
and, thank the gods, no one has
avocado appliance these days.

May 14, 2018

DREAM ON, MY GOD

Good night, Sisyphus
try to get some sleep.
It’s been a long day
and you already know
the rock will await you
when you arise in the morning.
I suppose by now
you’ve come to realize
there is no percentage
in pissing off the Gods.
Think of this as a personal
re-education center
where right thinking
is the lesson of this
and every other day.
Did you really think
they would let you stand
in the middle of the Square
openly mocking
all of their edicts.
Sleep old fellow,
we have all the time
in the world, it is
one of the benefits
of immortality.