“How to Know if Your .89 is Real”: Synthesis 8 and 9.

school

 

Today’s poem actually synthesizes the first seven poems in the “How to Know if Your .89 is Real.” I gave myself a challenge this morning to compose a synthesis poem from the seven others in under thirty minutes. I finished in twenty. This is not meant to impress you. Does this impress you?

 

#8: The Essay Portion

 

“You have thirty minutes to synthesize your ideas into a coherent response that serves to answer the question: “How to know if your .89 is real. Begin. . .”

 

Exordium: 

 

There is only one of five answers
from which any one of us

can select at any time.

 

And one of them is E.

 

Sometimes. . .it has to be E.

 

If there really is

“all of the above.”

 

Narratio: 

 

I am not one of the all.

 

They’ve always called me “Al.”

 

One letter short

of being complete.

 

It limits what I can–

or what I should be expected–

to give.

 

I miss, more than many,

the loss of .11. It hits me hard

 

a stinging swarm of B’s.

 

.11 are my two arms raised in surrender.

 

I will never fit

into one of these circles

even when I stand in the center

sweeping my arms in wide arcs

in an attempt to fill the space.

 

Confirmatio:

 

I see my .11 later

on the evening news.

 

It is early fall.

 

A reporter says we are failing.

 

He is missing an L.

Right after the F.

 

All of us miss this.

 

Refutio:

 

The math is simple:

 

.89 of “all.”

 

Show your work.

Remember your units.

 

 

He’s another Al

on a television screen

pointing to fronts

and systems

and pressure.

 

We are analog orphans

tuned in and turned away.

 

We point our #2 pencils

at a score sheet thinking

the channel will change.

 

Show your work.

 

The units for this problem are stones.

 

Stones to be hurled.

 

Stones to be collected.

 

Stones to sew into our hemlines.

 

It’s all about measurement, Al.

 

Peroratio: 

 

If you wade into the water

you must be more than

not

less than the depth of the water.

 

They do not round up here.

 

We strive for 89%.

 

If only to prove

that we can

B.

 

#9: Synthesis

 

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Paul W. Hankins (March 2015)

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