All through school
Most of my friends and I were
To quote Pope Bob:
‘terrorised by mathematics –
persuaded by incompetent
teachers that
‘I just can’t understand that
stuff’
And there you now sit
7 years old but tearing at your hair
Over dots on a page
Diagrams and pyramids
To explain to you these are just ink on
Paper
And not the end of the world
Would be futile
The teachers continue now
30 years later
To drum it into you
The depth of hell awaiting
Your adult life
Should you
Fail to subtract the correct integer
And still they employ the teachers tongue
Not that of the real world
Of the petulant child or hormonal teenager
It is broken English used within a
Fractured system
Rules handed down from on high
Unquestioned by those raining it all down
Onto your exercise book
‘…maths is everything’ you tell me
Only half-knowing what that means
I argue the point that in fact physics is most things
And that it includes math
I felt a failure at age 16
Because bumpkin teachers
Who broke up their smoke breaks
By teaching us second rate sums
Lead me to feel that way
And now the politicians structure more rules
Build more frames
Scaffold your mind into a new yet
familiar shape
I try to remain impartial
‘maths is everything’
Indeed
But all at once a million other things
So luminous they cannot be conceived of
Within even the
Highest number.