Clunky System

twelve-twelve-seventeen,

perimeter forty one,

very close to right

 

what is the real here?

abstract truth or function truth?

sixteen ruler marks

 

no end, no repeat

is the truth of the abstract,

the square root of two

 

multiply the root

by the egg carton contents,

so close to the whole

 

but function triumphs,

point nine seven, no tick mark,

rounding rules apply

 

Americans think

in terms of tens and dozens,

system dependent

 

tens for fractions and

decimals, metric measure

and counting money

 

dozens are custom,

feet and inches, ounces, pounds,

minutes, seconds, hours

 

the home improvers

have corner'd the metric meme

into nothingness

 

or maybe it was

collective apathy on

America's part

 

twelve-twelve-seventeen

is the same in the custom

or metric systems

 

the same ratios

that is, even though units

vary, wide and great

 

the perimeter

is still forty-one units,

no matter the length

 

and that's not the point,

they attend to the look of

precision mostly

 

precisely in the

realm of the sixteenth unit,

because it is so

 

evens and odds on

opposite sides of the street,

it is convention

 

tradition matters

despite the clunky system,

we like the pretty