Our numerical nomenclature,
Our open love letter to reason,
A muse, a confidante, a precious gift,
The infinite and divine thread through,
The simple, mundane, and immediate,
Lofty geometry and imminent counts,
The squares that dance within our sight,
Tickle at the foretaste of perfection,
And draw upon a silly smile: five five -
The perfection between the hands.

Returning to our symbols,
At the jest and wit of such orators,
They open up the wisdom of their time:
Dishevelled hair and awkward smiles,
That hide a fierce humanity spent,
In pure pursuit of abstract riddles,
In boyish sprints and sagelike seats,
With friends and walking far alone,
With books that make the monuments of the past.

The world I'd love to share,
Gives tactile form to fantom gears,
Like clockwork rendered with a pen,
All its life is both so you and yet transcends,
You're ever facing reason in so grand a match:
The folly and the wisdom,
The roadblock and eureka,
The apprehension and abandon,
It seems too strange and yet rings true,
That I am just myself but so estranged in these deep games.

Running where I used to walk,
Through abstract problems compromised,
With countless tactile fractures that,
Lay out a garden path to the very heart of things.

Onwards to the depths,
Of furious functions just constrained,
Leviathan sewn into the far flung edges of this plane,
He etches shadows of grand myth on obscure space,
All contours seem to breathe with every chase,
The maddened sprawl to infinity in its breadth.

Dusting off a past-flung puzzle,
Pieces calling out to forgotten homes,
At once a primal pattern match finds a face,
A symmetrical and piercing visage,
Filing itself among the subliminal records of the mind,
Folding from one plane of order to the next.

Too many pigeons and other such nods -
Such colour to an abstract thought,
The subtle smile that hangs upon a face,
Unannounced at its coming yet lingering as the furniture of the mind,

Funny pictures that we care to draw,
Place fingerprints on the edifice of wisdom,
Nestled in the grooves from ancient hands,
Bearing forth from before time's dawn.

Inducing all these little proofs,
Scattered constellations self-imposing,
On my mind. Powerfully aloof,
Winks into light at every closing,
Of my eyes. Drawing up a varied booth,

Projecting on its walls the myriads:
Dinner drinks and friendship webs,
Network maps and river beds,
All tumbled out and hung to dry,
'Till underlying threads lay flat.

Sedentary within the folds chairs,
Encasing sprawling chasing thoughts,
The smoking trail of ink makes ware,
The sharpened sight and pupils taut,
Recoiling at the sharpest proof,
Descending on the droves of pretty pictures dressed in symbols.

Pen and paper brewing,
Becomes obtuse and blackens,
Its still and so painfully wakeful,
Stirring but folds fog upon fog,
Until scattering the light to dimmer motes,
A task to be lengthily tolerated,
Culminating in an empty cup,
Fuller thought piercing to the rounded edge.

*(Revised 13.11.24)*
I see you stand intent,
To fill my head with proofs,
Give lemmas in their plenties,
Comingling with force to stand,

Up then - a deck of cards,
Intricately groomed to the point of horror,
Tethered to the heavens in conspicuous vainglory,
Ascending upon wax wings,

I thought the ornate pillars card but no:
Encased in stone, those which
Ungrounded show the ground,
Much higher than I saw in ignorance.

The shadow of the almighty,
Marches through the deepest depths,
Structures of logic marked with divine elegance,
Imposing what cannot be strangely conceived,
Yet crying out beauty ever louder,
Drowning restless monologues within.

I never knew so many ways to count,
But lately I've been finding that,
To count is quite a science and an art,
Demanding quite an effort of abstraction and taxonomy.

Probable madness confronted,
In the depths of ancient domes,
Entombed on metal gratings to
The quiet flicker of pages and some distant steps.

Factoring fun to find the fun factor,
Unseaming composite numbers at the weave,
Although the inelegance of the cut belies,
We're dealing with some test coprimes.

Scaling now the mountain that I faced,
Of esoteric symbols and requests,
To prove the trivial and the cruelly quick,
To find the words when symbols fail to tip the tongue.

Awed and fizzled out I stand,
When I begin to see afresh,
How study of mathematics too can praise,
How good logic with its taxonomy,
Cry out the wonders of the Logos.

Boxing up all manner of things,
Propositions crammed in boxes,
Labeled and abstracted well,
Taped closed in all manner of reason,
Contracted to their meager symbols,
Implication and necessity split at seams,
Diagnosed with a case of severe rigor in their application.

Deeply lost within a fantastical land,
Embraced by forests of esoteric games,
Abbreviations of what I hardly know dressed up in leaves,
Perhaps I'll find a way to waltz upon the plains,
Firstly I must find a map to chart the trees.

Inequality but not the tragic kind,
Instead invoke the nifty sign,
Familiar to some and strange to most,
An echo of a crocodile's boast,
I scarce care for crocodile meals,
Instead just how he stomachs all the reals,
How does he flip and intersect,
Under my full arithmetic set,
Inequality but not the tragic kind,
Instead invoke the nifty sign.

Unorthodox algebra, quite did you say?
The symbols that I've know,
Are different but the same,
Struck out from shows,
My methods without legs lie lame,
I see! Just wait! and give me time,
I'll find upon the rhyme a game,
And in the game a dashing rhyme,
To give me legs to rule and reign,
Algebra unorthodox but delightful I do say.

In scathing light of problem puzzles,
To taste defeat but cry: just yet!
This very day I fall but I will stand,
Another morn' the puzzle banished from my eyes,
In clarity cast upon the mast of darling reason,
Bearing fast upon the storm until I'm through,
Just yet! I will see the problem through.

Find the symmetries of a curve,
A tool to hammer out a sketch,
I'll add it to my belt although I find,
I miss half a swing for each I hit,
My arm grows steady with the time,
As all the memories I swifter fetch,
And grow the satisfaction I preserve.

Met a question in the heavy air,
Glanced upon the clock - there's give for time,
"Would you care to answer to my mental court,
To make your case upon my mind?"
Then melding molding merging into space,
All tangled up in air it seemn't care,
"Oh quick and simple! come be clear,
I'll tug you loose but never tear!"
And tugged it was till in straight lines,
A jolly fellow sound as beams of wood,
"Good gentleman, I see your riddle,
Clear as courts have shown what could."

Brewing over a mug of equations with a friend,
Carving out a graph beside stark circuit lines,
Weaving up a story to encapsulate the fact,
Cooking up an abstract thought of tiny things,
That make up all the ticking clocks and buzzing air -
Our plane is ready to depart.
Tomorrow we make our escape from all these eager pictures.

A practiced fluency I've gained,
To walk in languages and symbols vast,
To follow steps of giants in the wake
Of history and its captivated minds.

Their fantasy and genius care to show,
In objects of reason borne in Greek script,
Wrapped up in varied meanings -
A model of computation and its simple alphabet.

Oh the winding spools of tape that coil upon the winds,
Drawn out beneath these marching machines -
Automata of the dreamy kind.

The elegance of these reasoned facts,
Expressions in no uncertain terms,
I've come to love to read such symbols,
Cutting to the core of things,
Stripping off obscuring particularities,
Until all that's left is quickened fact,
To which I soar and glide upon,
And make an engine for my mind,
To bolster thoughts and make them run,
To chug along in boiling fluency,
Until the quickened facts cascade,
Into their pretty consequence.

The bulwark of my curiosity,
This canvas hanging on the wall,
And likewise countless through the ages,
A far time stone then black and white,
Come bare these workings on your coat,
Come take on symbol and this meaning,
Come solve with me my many proofs,
I scribe a script - you write on me,
An exposition of reason intertwined,
I look to see what we have made:
A saga in black characters.

A pseudo-holiday,
Lurks in rippling outer blue,
Casting shadows in open water,
From the expanse I see first its teeth,
Yet then a present in its bite,
Promises of a tussle with reason,
With empirical data sprints and hurdles,
With models of the world and joust,
With proofs and complex facts a toss.

Tests that turn out better,
Gladly swinging into fun,
Cruel tricks to gentle teasers,
Friendly symbols in a sea
Of foreign words befuddled,
Even those dastardly questions,
That hide their shades behind
My incompetence hold signs,
To give a flash of inspiration
To hopeful shots into the night.

Maths art,
Dazzling beauty described in little symbols on my screen,
To dream of cardioids,
Contours from the depths of Plato's world,
Now becoming lines upon my screen,
Blues flash gorgeous purple as I wrote,
Bubbling out in rounded strands.

Eigenvectors,
Do walk along the threads of space,
They see the stars grow old and die,
Yet do not err their course long set,
Such proper fellows marching on,

Where to I ask - where to they know,
They do not share their mysteries,
For in sharing one has walked their path,

Such paths that put such words to shame:
As far, long, weary alabaster,
Shattered early on their very road -

Eigenvectors,
Do walk along the threads of space,
They see the stars grow old and die,
Yet do not err their course long set,
Such proper fellows marching on.

Equations coming out my ears,
Then turn to earings for my mind,
Such beauty in their description,
An elegance to convey their symbol,
They hold meaning like precious gemstones in their bezel settings.

Maths inside a pouring day,
I fill the boards with pen like rain,
Cascading down to pool in merry little fractions,

I fill my mind with tools like water,
That sits pretty until you let it fall,
Through darkest rain clouds down, down,

And strike the earth and make it soft,
From the mud the bridges rise aloft,
The silicon chips from flowing silt.

'Math Challenge'd,
I scribble away,
Racking my brain,
Racking the lead,
To crack the codes,
To grasp the shapes,
To shade circles as they said.

Tinkering with nuts and bolts,
And slotting screws into hollowed out holes,
And flinging tape round plastic parts,
Recording lengths of sloping sides,
Talking physics, maths and tech,
Not in too much depth I stress,
But still very interesting nonetheless.

Time to talk about my tongue today,
Roaming round my mouth it stays,
Inspecting all the teeth it says,
Yet I just think it all day plays,
And often sits still and obeys,
When I just want to think away,
The maths problem on the pristine board,
That I shattered with my ordered numbers,
Just like this very rhyme, you say?

Dusted done,
Completed quick,
And all has said its last for now,
Dusty falls will sprinkle anew,
And in time older hands will dust off again,
And pick up exams and maths galore,
And dusted done it shall be once more.

A helping hand received,
By words on a screen,
To aid a friend in need,
In mathematical madness to see
-Reason to the many dancing threes,
And other numbers of course,
Denoting countless probabilities.

On the clock,
My hand's not motionless by the side,
It wiggles and squiggles,
A firm pen in its stride,
And a stream of logic pours out from my mind,
Hopefully correct most times out of five.

And off it goes,
Reasoning with symbols,
Considering the knowledge bestowed,
Be glorified by such things in your heavenly abode.