Tag Archives: mathematics

Five

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Five

Of odd and even, the figure of natural man.
If an open hand equals five, what, then, is a fist?
The number of fear, of strength and severity.
Pressing the thorn into my thumb, I redeem.
Wood subdues earth.

Of Ishtar, the talisman of magic, the quintessence.
After the fall, the five.
Earth conquers water.
An outstretched body’s form: the pentagon.
Charred flesh, death in the air.

Of perfection and man’s limits.
Five wounds, five mysteries, the pyramid’s representation.
The hamsadeflects an evil eye.
Water extinguishes fire.
I close my eyes and see.

Of cone/cube/sphere/water/ether.
Metal cuts wood.
The staff serves time and pitch in music.
From waves to vibration to nerve impulses.
Nexus of the cardinal directions.

Of balance and harmony; the center.
Product of the first female and male numbers.
The Szechuan peppercorn confuses the tongue.
Fire melts metal.
When multiplied by a factor of itself, the end.

 

Numbers fascinate me. “Five” was published in the 2018 summer edition of The High Window. Many thanks to editor David Cooke for taking this piece.

 

Odi et amo (Zero)

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zero sign

 

Odi et amo (zero)

How I fear what you contain.
Reaching through,

I find only more you,
but when I multiply your being,

the result limits me.
I add myself to your body and obtain

only myself. If nothing is something,
how, what, may I claim?

Your beginning and end, a line
become circle, become identity.

I enter, and entering, depart.

 

zero MGD©

“Odi et amo (Zero)” first appeared on the blog in December 2015, and was published in The Basil O’Flaherty in October 2016.

Palinode (Hands, Hours, Light)

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xhand

P A L I N O D E ( H A N D S , H O U R S , L I G H T)Consider the hand, its breadth, its history in mathematics and limitation. 27 bones, two strokes. Distal phalanges spanning gaps.  You turn and wave at the winnowed tunnel and the drops feathering the glass. The sinister endures tasks of life; right blesses power and assuages guilt. Presuming inflection, I use both hands to tally the absent. Later as we drive through the checkpoint, our way greased by fluency in the language of coin, heaven’s oblique arch recedes and I praise the passage of hours.

I praise the passage of hours measured in terms unknown to some: beyond two, many. Returning, we see streets guided by lampposts, bent trees and the uneven drizzle of sidewalk mendicants blurring through their days. A hanged man’s dessicated hand (pickled in salt and the urine of man, woman, dog and mare) forms the Hand of Glory, unlocking any portal the bearer desires opened: a direct tool of consciousness. Lacking the fat of a gibbeted felon, I cannot properly light the way.

I cannot properly light the way, but we  observe facets in differing terms: the hand, lips, and mouth claim more neural innervation than the rest of the body combined, perhaps a consequence of the primacy of making and sounding. Candles smolder and yield to shadow through dancing hand stories. The wave of acknowledgment, a finger across the lips, the open hand proclaiming innocence, expressing, grasping, creating, constraining, releasing. Extinguishing.

This first appeared in Hermeneutic Chaos, Issue 11.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

N Is Its Child

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N Is Its Child

If darkness produces all, from where do we obtain nothing?

As a line becomes the circle, becomes a mouth, becomes identity.

In mathematics, n signifies indefinite; in English, negation.

The no, the non, the withdrawal, the taking away.

A heart with trachea represented zero in Egyptian hieroglyphs.

My mouth forms the void through the displaced word.

Conforming to the absent, the missing tongue serves soundlessness.

Aural reduction, the infinite unclenched: n plus n.

Shiva, creator and destroyer, defines nothingness. As do you.

One and one is two, but zero and zero is stasis.

Pythagoreans believed that all is number, and numbers possess shape.

The letter N evolved from a cobra to its present form.

One may double anything but zero.

Unspoken thought, disorder. The attenuated voice swallowing itself.

 

* * *

“N Is Its Child” was first published in Issue 4 of Reservoir. I am grateful to editor Caitlin Neely for accepting this piece.

 

That Number Upon Which the Demand Lieth

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That Number upon Which the Demand Lieth

Overcoming duality, yet binding: the trinity.
Beyond the contrast of two, it initiates the concept of many.
Albertus Magnus claimed that three lives in all things.

Becoming; being;
disappearing.

In Old Saxon, the month of May is named trimilki, season of three milkings.
Number as quality depends upon the visual field.
The ancient Egyptian sign for the plural requires three strokes.

Points; lines;
angles.

Lao-tzu said the triad produces all.
Acronyms, sports, and traffic lights reflect our ternary culture.
The devil may appear in the form of a three-legged hare.

Witness; testament;
tribute.

Representing the unknowable: I, you, and the beyond.
The figure of completion, the number of the cube.
A Sumerian number sequence began “man, woman, many.”

Curse; liturgy;
blessing.

The scale as a succession of thirds.
Imperfection implies the concealment of perfection.
Shiva’s number, his eyes, his braids, his place.

Root; third;
fifth.

The triangle in Euclidean space.
I walk the three roads to the commonplace, preferring rhetoric.
Three to through, it penetrates the personal, unhinges that door.

The law; the land;
the world to come.

 

“That Number upon Which the Demand Lieth” was published in Posit: A Journal of Literature and Art in September 2017. I am grateful to editor Susan Lewis for taking this piece.

 

Poem Up at The High Window

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My poem “Five” is included in the summer edition of The High Window. Many thanks to editor David Cooke for taking this piece. The issue is spectacular – I’m delighted to have a poem appear in it.

N Is Its Child

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N Is Its Child

If darkness produces all, from where do we obtain nothing?

As a line becomes the circle, becomes a mouth, becomes identity.

In mathematics, n signifies indefinite; in English, negation.

The no, the non, the withdrawal, the taking away.

A heart with trachea represented zero in Egyptian hieroglyphs.

My mouth forms the void through the displaced word.

Conforming to the absent, the missing tongue serves soundlessness.

Aural reduction, the infinite unclenched: n plus n.

Shiva, creator and destroyer, defines nothingness. As do you.

One and one is two, but zero and zero is stasis.

Pythagoreans believed that all is number, and numbers possess shape.

The letter N evolved from a cobra to its present form.

One may double anything but zero.

Unspoken thought, disorder. The attenuated voice swallowing itself.

* * *

“N Is Its Child” was first published in Issue 4 of Reservoir. I am grateful to editor Caitlin Neely for accepting this piece.

Numbers numbers numbers: NINE

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Numbers numbers numbers: NINE

Early on in my other life I was hand-picked and hired to assist with budgets, to work with numbers. One of the higher-ups remarked that my spelling score was quite good for a “numbers person.” This amused me to no end, as I’d no inkling that a) anyone in the world considered me fluent with numbers, or b) that the mundane labor that comprised my livelihood had been noticed, much less evaluated, by someone beyond my small, three-person office (certainly no one noticed the writing I’d produced and published). More than a quarter century later, I’m still amused. And still working with numbers, which even now remain mysterious, magical, and even inspiring.

Take the number nine. Multiply it by two, and you get 18. Add the two digits that comprise 18, one and eight, and you get 9. Multiply it by three: 27. Total the two digits forming 27, and you get, yes, 9. Multiply it by four, by five, by six, by seven, eight or nine. Add the digits that comprise the sum and you return to nine. Interesting, no?

It appears everywhere. In Islamic cosmology, the universe is built of nine spheres. In Ancient Mexico, the netherworld consisted of nine layers. The magic square consists of nine parts. Beijing was designed as a center with eight streets. Hindu temple foundations contain jewels and nine distinct grains. The human body has nine openings. The number also appears in both sacrificial and healing rites. The River Styx bends nine times. I could go on (we haven’t scratched the surface), but will refrain.

And if this piece piques your curiosity, you might find this poem inspired by zero (a truly fascinating subject) of interest:

http://www.cladesong.com/okaji.withtheseninefigures.html

Or this one, “That Number upon Which the Demand Lieth,” which takes up the number three.

Odi et amo (Zero)

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zero sign

 

Odi et amo (zero)

How I fear what you contain.
Reaching through,

I find only more you,
but when I multiply your being,

the result limits me.
I add myself to your body and obtain

only myself. If nothing is something,
how, what, may I claim?

Your beginning and end, a line
become circle, become identity.

I enter, and entering, depart.

 

zero MGD©

“Odi et amo (Zero)” appeared on the blog in December 2015, and was published in The Basil O’Flaherty in October 2016.