December 29, 2024Functional Convergence
If a taxi is untaxied outside
the Herald Square Macy’s
on Christmas Eve like a kind of post
-modern Vitruvian centerpiece,
a kind of heavy metal suckling
pig, how much will the damage
—assuming no insurance coverage
—how much will the damage damage
the cabby’s next one hundred afternoons?
Assuming no insurance coverage,
assuming 15k as the average cost
of a medical mystery, assuming MRI
and BMI and smoking history and a 45%
chance of rain, is the cabby’s episode
diagnosable by robot? Pin-downable
by vector? Bio-statistically sound?
If the flash-dancing club that owns
the taxi’s topper is displeased
with that night’s great yellow flay,
and if there is positively no returning
the gut-naked bits steaming beneath
the hood to canonical form, how much
income chugs to the scrap yard?
Is the car crusher’s operator whistling
Lou Reed? If so, reconfigure
the golden ratio of screech to symphony.
Reconsider aftermath as an act
of orthogonal decomposition.
If three out of six of the pedestrians
struck refuse medical attention, what is the exponent
of ache, and does it carry? How long? How far?
How many times do the blue-and-reds
HELLO across their shock-sparkled eyes
before they return to their bodies and calculate
the net hemorrhage of twenty minutes
to Lenox Hill, fifteen in X-ray, ninety-two
thumbing holes in the exam table’s fleshy crepe?
Determine the half-life of the half-life
of a pill called UNLUCK. Wrap it
in cheese like you would for a Labrador
and feed the world—it’s Christmas time!
All regression is linear if you have eyes
in the back of your head. My hair
is falling out so soon I will see everything.
from Poets Respond