Poem: The Amounts Do Not Fit Together

The Amounts Do Not Fit Together

These figures here
do not belong in the container
that is that number
over there, and look
at the shape here, these numbers
have been squashed and bent
to fit in a place
they do not belong,
are now sad, are birds
who will not sing
because they have been away
from others of their kind
since an age before
they would ever have heard
such a song, are sickened,
now, and others are treated worse,
these subtractions here
that do not belong, are knives
cutting with the imprecision
of some twelve year old science student
with a dead frog and a nervous stomach,
these numbers, you have done harm to them,
not to mention the result
should anybody be foolish enough
to follow these calculations
in any real world scenario.

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