tossing Fermat about

 

 

Well  . . .  she was sort of blonde

shrug length

and embered in my glare

slender as a sapling, wore black,

typically,

a century younger than me

but yearned to be middle-yeared.

She halloed me from a passing remark,

boarded me

with the dislocated authority

of the bookish.

For hours we discussed hardcore

maths and Fermat’s Last Theorum,

a statement about

the non-existence of something.

 

Then we spoke of love.

 

 . . . the simplest way to show

that something doesn't exist

is to assume its false

and derive a contradiction, I said,

adding, Riemann fertilized

a large number of fields.

 

She held my hand as I continued,

 

 . . . You often have to draw on aspects

which lie in one or more directions;

they all have to be explored.

 

Her other hand stroked my thigh.

 

 . . . Fermat himself seems to have tried

planting the seed in the obvious place;

make one mistake and, unless you make

another which cancels out the first,

you're likely to hit on two assertions

that don't square with eachother.

 

she began to unzip me

 

 . . . even if you find your mistake,

it's easy to convince yourself that,

since you found a proof

with only one error in it,

you might be close to finding

one with none.

 

She removed my elliptic curve.

 

 . . . there are some people who are attracted

to a problem simply because it's hard.

 

millions have toyed with it, I added.

 

 

The following three poems were published

by Earlyworks Press in their Porkies

anthology 2006

 

PAINTING A FRY-UP

What colours would one mix to paint a fry-up ?

A spread of yellow ochre and aureate

appropriate for the egg yoke

with pepper grey soaked in titanium

for the white.

The bacon base would be a light cyan

over-layered with violet and Cadmium red,

a hint of pure henna too.

For the fried bread, a bed of raw sienna

with a salting of saffron yellow

and a slap and tickle of zinc white.

As for the sausage one might tease flesh pink

with a seepage of ivory, a wink

of Van Dyke brown, a nipple of purple.

The mushrooms one could illume in white,

add a dash of Payne’s grey and black night.

The hash, brown,

tomatoes, cerise and Venetian red.

The sauce would be glazed burnt umber.

One would not need green.

 

A  LITTLE  FISHY

I caught a fish in bed this morning.

It wriggled a lot, spun me a line,

wormed its way into my day

so I removed the hook

and screwed it on a passing void.

Hung the fish from it.

Then I got to work.

Fleshed it and refleshed it, refreshed it

filleted it and refilled it, descaled it

and rescaled it, detailed it and beheaded it

rebuilt its head with matchsticks

adding muscle, tissue, a veneer of skin,

eyes and lips

until it talked and said

I caught a fish in bed this morning.