[Jeffrey]

Lucretius at the Gates of Enheduanna

Numbers have sex appeal; functional
groupings of Platonic cause & effect
get us excited, then exhausted. Hwæt:
we brandish spears and wage war on pure thought,
caught between the four walls of curling space,
a smile curls on her face, she bends low
to drink from the Euphrates. You watch her
from the reeds, knees damp and skinned, eyes blinded
by sudden insight. Something will prove right:
axioms or these experiences,
irreconcilable. Your grand council
meeting in a wet bicameral hall,
votes and fists flying behind your bright gaze.
Equations done in private, in silence,
word problems calculated hopelessly,
as if you'll pine your way through these pages
to find the rabbit-hole that fits your stride.
Her mouth is dry; you remain muddy. Now:
arithmetic fails you: a goddess is here.

[Jo Mo]

You know, I have never been good at Math. This would be my situation in a math class. I get distracted by something or someone. Then I lose interest in numbers.

[Jeffrey]

I want to be good at math. I mean, I received good marks until late high school. When I stopped having to take math (senior year, and then I tested out of all the math needed for my degree) I lost my taste for it.

Now I'm trying to regain a passion for it. I've bought some textbooks and am working my way back through it.

But poetry, which can never do the magick that calculus can weave, is so distracting. Perhaps because reading it and writing it seems so easy.