Conversations with Mathematical Precision

The math teacher is a bully
Who gives you only a few symbols
To tell your story,
And he already has the answer ready
Before you even get a chance to answer the question,
With the rules you were given,
And in a language that is not your own.

To the rational mind,
The kind of mind that divides this and that,
Into 1s and 0s,
There is no way to see the answer,
Except,
In systems that allow only for
Answers
With 1s and 0s,
In a language
That nobody understands,
Especially not math teachers.

Listen,
If you don't get that Math
Is no different than Greek,
Or Latin,
Or English,
Just another language built
By some dominant class,
With a lot of self-righteous rules,
Of control,
Of power,
Of enterprise,
Of capital,
Then you don't understand,
That to be a math teacher,
Is NOT to give a man a tool
For liberation,
But a tool
For taking captive his fellows.

Abel was the second murderer,
Let's not forget that.
The first skin was taken by the LORD,

And methods developed for food,
For morality,
Soon turn themselves inward,
And before you know it,
We are all dead,
Bound up with the Law,
With quadratic formulas,
Running our satellites out into the solar system,
Looking for another brother to kill.

Let's not delude ourselves:
We seek war, not peace.
We divide.
It's in our DNA.

I'm this.
You're that.
Punctuate that sentence.
Be over there,
And keep both sides of the equation EQUAL.
OR
You won't ever get the damned thing balanced.

Listen:

I've had enough of this nonsense with the numbers.
I've got a lake to swim in,
26 letters,
A comma, dash, period,
And--every once in a while--a colon.
It keeps the sentences together in a way that periods don't:
Don't ask me how.

So,
Mr. Math Teacher
(Whom I respect, deeply.)
(Really, I do.)
(I mean, my father taught Chemistry, for Christ's sake,)
(And for the sake of his eight children,)
(And our beautiful mother),
Here is what I'm asking of you:

Acknowledge this:
You have limited the conversation
With your arbitrary rules
That have made so much possible,
That have made so much sense out of so many things,
And these limited ways of having the conversation,
Do, in fact,
A lot of good--for example:

I saw those pictures of Pluto, for example,
Just this morning.
I saw ICE MOUNTAINS ON PLUTO!
Thank God for that.
I mean, wow.
And not so long ago,
I saw my first picture of A FREAKING ATOM!
And I thought the pictures of dust mites
Taken by Scanning Electron Microscopes
That I saw when I was six,
I mean,
I thought THAT was cool.
But this business with Pluto,
And whatever Hell that satellite is gonna show us next.

Geesh.

Don't get me wrong:
I'm thankful--

But I'm also impatient for more knowledge,
And I'm tired of the kind built on Good and Evil,
This and That,
1 and 0.

You will never find the answer you are looking for,
Because it won't fit inside the language you've created.
The one with too many rules.

Jesus Christ! Do I have to tell you the answer?
You want me to show you my work on the back of the paper?
Here it is: