Introducing a new series of poems by Julian Matthews. Julian is a writer and Pushcart-nominated poet published in The American Journal of Poetry, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Borderless Journal, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Dream Catcher Magazine, Live Encounters Magazine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal and The New Verse News, among others. He is a mixed-race minority from Malaysia and lived in Ipoh for seven years. Currently based in Petaling Jaya, he is a media trainer and consultant for senior management of multinationals on Effective Media Relations, Social Media and Crisis Communications. He was formerly a journalist with The Star and Nikkei Business Publications Inc
Link: https://linktr.ee/julianmatthews
By Julian Matthews
Maybe you were just the square-root
of some equation that never got solved.
Picture this: god’s mathematician calculating
the possibility of you, trying various methods,
his Hagoromo chalk scribbling furiously across
heaven’s blackboard, testing the limit of the
stork’s patience: “Come on, get on with it!
I have a full route today, so many places to go!”
“I just have to balance this one out. It has unknown
values, non-linear, complex variables, requires
higher math, chaos theory. He’s a tough
nut to crack!” replied the mathematician.
And so the stork waited, his load backing up,
increasingly grumpy as time went by.
“Eureka! I got it! But wait, what’s this…
something’s not right.”
“No time, no time! Stick him in the 3D-printer.
Let’s go!” And the stork, stabbed the red
button with its beak and within minutes,
out you popped. It zipped you up in a courier bag,
slung you on its back and flew off.
And the mathematician, sat back in his high-back
leather chair, his mind racing: “What did I miss?
What did I miss?” knowing the monthly apprentice
audit was just around the corner, and he had fallen
short twice before. His job was on the line.
One more flub, and he would be fired.
They would find out he had faked
his credentials just to get into the math pool.
He lied that he was a stable genius.
He leaned over for the mug of piping hot
covfefe. He always wanted this dream job.
He wanted it so bad. He wanted it bigly.
Now, only hell awaits.
First published in Orange is Not a Colour: Poems Against Totalitarianism by editor Fin Hall, Scotland and available on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/1300302674/
