Today my inner geek came out to play.
I decided to experiment with numerical structures and write a poem based on the mathematical Fibonacci series after I’d read about other writers doing this in the excellent book The Writing Experiment by Hazel Smith.
Each number in the Fibonacci series is the sum of the previous two, so it goes like this: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55… and so on.
I decided to apply the Fibonacci series to the number of syllables in each line. The first and second lines have one syllable, the third line has two, the fourth line has three and so on up to the seventh line, which has 13 syllables. Then I decreased it, so the eighth line has eight, the ninth line has five, etc.
And how numerically pleasing that the middle line of a 13-line piece has 13 syllables! You have to love the beautiful symmetry of maths (sometimes)!
Just
when
you think
you’ve over-
come your searing grief
life bares its livid tongue, pounds you
down, you slump by its twisted feet, crumpled, defeated,
you hope no-one heard the thump, you
curl inwards, fragile,
hope someone
throws you
a
rope.
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