What Has Maths Ever Done For Me (Or How The Arguement Should Have Been In 1986).

The argument ran thus;

“What has Maths ever done for me?,

I mean it’s not like I even pretended

to take notice of the sex life

of the binary equation

and the evening antics of bisect,

the washing lines of Bicester not safe

when bisect was around, I haven’t given a toss

about trigonometry or the centimetre

since I discovered word play,

a cuboid is a Star Trek legend,

to estimate is for friends

the formula is a sport I don’t follow

a nine sided polygon is just

a parrot who has let himself go,

mean, well some of the girls in the class can be,

mode, I walk everywhere, that’s my transport,

a parallelogram is what the Romanian girl

excelled on…but before my time Miss,

X-Axis, the dirty Nazis and their

collaborators sir,

the locus, well the way City have played this season,

it will be the only team

we have got points from…

what exactly has Maths ever done

save be a lesson in which

I could be reading instead in?

 

It has changed the world,

so you say

but it has never

given me the confidence to go up

to a girl I fancy and say eh love

the square root of that large number,

man what a blasting chord mix that is, Nor

has it given meaning in the dead of night

as I sit with headphones on

and the volume turned to the point of

beauty and have me think

I could write a noir story about

integers on a train,

never once did I use the phrase

Absolute Values Apply

when talking about Phil Collins’

debut solo album

and the only areas between curves

I care about sir are those attached

to my latest crush…

A fraction by any other name

can still boggle the brain,

see my point sir,

what exactly has maths ever done for me.

 

Now of course computer geeks,

the Maths base ten proud owners

of the world and the collector of

amorous kisses from their supermodel

girlfriend, who count in double digits

whilst I still sing songs from four

decades past…

well they’re welcome to it,

they will never know the joy

of teenage romance in the 1980s

when a Progressive Rock song

would bring a beauty queen

to her quivering knees.

Ian D. Hall 2016