You're So Smart!

[Stephen Whiteside]

You're So Smart!

The heptagon has seven sides. The hexagon has six.
The pentagon has only five but, still, it's in the mix.
The triangle has only four, which hardly seems enough,
Yet still, it fights above its weight, with bluster and with bluff.

What's that you say? The triangle has not four sides, but three?
I always am the last to know, or so it seems to me.
I'm always in the slowest lane. I join the longest queue.
I'm placed so very poorly in comparison to you.

How do you do the stuff you do, and do it every time?
Even when I'm pretty good, your efforts are sublime.
You cover all my movements. I am half a step behind.
What makes it extra galling is, you always are so kind.

You never snigger when I get things wrong. You never scoff.
You never try to cover tearful laughter with a cough.
You never writhe hysterically, convulsing on the ground.
All of your responses are considered, sure and sound.

In truth, I often wish you were not such a blameless soul,
But rather, just like me, you sometimes stumbled in a hole.
I'd love one day to find a way to even up the score.
Are you certain that a triangle has three sides, and not four?

Stephen Whiteside 21.09.2014

[warooa]

Wow - a maths poem. On a Sunday too.

I'm not one to take sides (or indulge in piss-weak puns) but any mention of isosceles, equilateral or Pythagorus (sure the resident Maths teacher can correct my spelling) sees me shaking and convulsing in the corner in the foetal position.

Having said that what is the difference between a quadrangle and a rectangle?

Cheers, Marty

ps. I know what has two sides . . . next Saturday's Grand Final
pps Go Hawks!

[Heather]

The quadrangle is where we had to line up for school assemblies Marty. I think it was a rectangle.

A poem like this would be good to help kids learn the number of sides in all those angles... just like one, two buckle my shoe, three four knock at the door etc

Heather

[Stephen Whiteside]

It drifts a bit off message though, doesn't it, Heather?

[Heather]

It does Stephen which is why I said "a poem like this" and not "this poem". More practice required Stephen.

Heather

[Stephen Whiteside]

Thanks, Heather.

[Neville Briggs]

Oh dear ! Stephen I hope you are not becoming infected with post-modernist unreason.

[Heather]

You're welcome Stephen.

[Stephen Whiteside]

Probably, Neville, probably. (What is it, by the way?)

[Neville Briggs]

Postmodernism is a mood that affects a lot of things in our daily lives.

One example is those rock videos where reality and dreamlike sequences cross over and the distinction between what is real and what is fantasy becomes uncertain.
Postmodernism is that business where a pile of bricks on the floor is a "work of art " that sells for vast sums of money.

The high priest of postmodernism, Jacques Derrida tried to preach that things did not need to be "either/or", things could "be and not be" at the same time. His example was zombies that are both alive and dead at the same time.
He didn't seem to find it unscientific that zombies are things of fiction.
So Derrida brings in the postmodernist idea that affects us a lot; the notion that truth is subjective. Truth is what is true for you and truth is what is true for me, even if we have opposing truths. What counts is what each decides is truth. Truth can be and not be, at the same time.
You may not have meant it but your poem seemed to be heading in that direction.

It's remarkable, but postmodernist ideas of subjective truth don't seem to fit when a surgeon is performing a life saving operation. "either/or" works much better.