Ordinary Numbers and Numbered Cardinals
Here's to the ordinary numbers that start with 1
That can add sensibly to all or any
Or even the other ones listed as some
Other cardinals ordinary—
It's just natural.
Here's to whole numbers that can be divided
Simply by presenting a divisor
And fractions averted by decimal point invited
Along the way, none the wiser—
It's just rational.
Here's to numbers living consecutively
Each pair, between them, a world abstract
Of yet more numbers positively or negatively
Here's to the figures from which you can subtract—
Without the fear of crossing zero.
Merely reversing the signs keeps all reason intact
On matching two-dimensional reciprocal vectors
With a mirror at its center to count them exact
And multiples via multiplication are product effectors—
It's an inventory with which you can deal, so.
Functions are dysfunctional
Logarithms arrhythmic
Clockfaces are much too punctual
Fibonacci cataclysmic—
And a fool's golden triangle.
Quadratics are initially subversive
Calculus finds time-zero
Fractals are visually recursive
Built upon fine echos—
A nonplussed matrix tangle.
Forget complex numbers
That use mathematical imagination
And the imaginary numbers that only encumber
As unreasonable, unreal, and unfounded improvisations—
And too conveniently additive.
They disguise themselves as multiplicands
With sly operations parenthesized asunder
Or multipliers where one of them understands
Square roots of a negative number—
Are you positive?
Fie on irrational numbers that can never measure up
In ratios of integers devised to be adaptable
But are too irrational if on a measuring cup
When you're trying to pour something measurably practical—
It's inversely irreversibly perverse.
Prefer instead the ordinary
Where divisors separate dividends
Tidily if not cardinary
Engendering the quotient one intends—
And commutatively do the reverse.
As my example I present the quotient of 3
When 12 mounts the 4 in numerated denomination
And puts two figures in the position to be
Happily ever after in fractional copulation—
In a numbered consortium.
We'd be lost at the corner, 41st and 2nd
If the only cardinals stood purply in Rome
And coordinates not geographically reckoned
When hurdling to nowhere like home—
Ordinary cardinals—you can count on them.
There are no irrational countdowns to blast-off
Nor complex fingers to count on
Imaginary calendar pages to tear off
Or occult ratios-and-disproportions—
Making inconsistent persistent.
But equating 4 x 2 to become a 2-by-4
As the Max size measure of Planck that defines
What hits you in the head in ordered pairs or more
When you stray off the ordinary number lines—
And that's a Constant.