Math Homework

2 + 2 = 4
Less + Less = more
Dog + cat = dat
Car + dat = flat

Finger + nose = snack
Math teacher, cut me some slack.

5 - 2 = 3
Me - sleep = zombie

3 × 9 = 27
10 × pie = I'm in heaven

9 > 8
Love > hate
12 < 13
Cake < ice cream

1 over 4 = 5 over 20
That shirt = not over my dead body
1 over 5 = 6 over 30
Kid over there = stinky and dirty

Always add up to 100%
Unless it is MY money spent

Me + the beach = time for some fun
Math homework = done

-B.C. Byron
WHAT? An F! I worked really hard on this math assignment and my answers were WAY more creative than everyone else’s.
Buy my book here

Yes folks, even math can be turned into a poem. As I’ve posted before, the everyday things become a poem if you look real hard and get to know ’em. And math is an everyday joy for me. I’m an electrical engineer which provides me with the glorious opportunity to work with spreadsheets and programming projects chock full of calculations. For a while I was managing other engineers which took me away from this favored task, but I’m happy to say that I’ve moved back into a more technical role that requires all sorts of graphing, building equations, estimating power consumption, and other goodies. Now, you may think that my strong attraction to math stems from a super ability to understand it in ways that others can’t. Not even close, my friends. Math was always a struggle for me from gradeschool to college. I always enjoyed it but, believe it or not, I had to take one math class 3 times to pass it. I studied day and night in my calculus classes and still didn’t get an A. By the time I finished college I was tutoring math to others in my spare time and creating complex mathematical models at work. No, math does not come easy for me but it has been well worth the effort, and I still get a thrill out of solving a difficult problem or learning a new way to graph a mountain of data so others can make use of it. Finding joy in something does not always mean you are exceptional at it.

I hope you all have something that you both enjoy and find to be challenging. For many, it’s running or playing a sport, learning a new way to create art, singing or playing an instrument, or writing poetry. The hard work you put into it and the amount you struggle to master that skill will amplify the fun over time. Keep at it, whatever it is, and be prepared to learn from others and take criticism. Don’t hunt around forever trying to find something you’re “a natural” at. When I first started writing poetry just over 2 years ago, I found a successful children’s author who was kind enough to review some of my poems. He ripped them apart, finding faults in nearly every line, but I’m better for it and I’m grateful. We all need reviews from honest people that are more concerned with helping us improve than they are about our pride.

Music of the Microwave

The music of the microwave,
Is humming in a lazy way.
A drippy sink provides the beat.
The body starts to sway. 

Percussion is a toilet flush,
Computer beeps,
A stroking brush,
The clatter of a shattered bowl,
The instruments of daily rush. 

It's in the air conditioning,
If only we are listening.
It's in the creaky wooden floors,
Just hear the way they sing. 

To some this stuff is only noise,
The kind of thing that just annoys,
But I hear only music
And the sounds of daily joys.

-B.C. Byron
Enjoying the music of our modern world.
Buy my book here

The modern world is a noisy place, but we don’t have to let that be a bad thing. I was watching Star Trek the other day and I noticed a few things I hadn’t before. First, the ship went to yellow alert and I noticed how obnoxious their alarm is on the ship. I don’t know why I never noticed that before. The camera also zooms in and out and people scurry around to emphasize the blaring alarms. It seems like the jumpy starship captain throws that alert switch at pretty much any provocation and suddenly everyone on the entire ship is woken from naps, interrupted in conversations, startled into missing the toilet, and generally thrown into a panic. They never complain to the captain about it, even though most of the situations end up resolving in a few minutes with or without the sirens. As soon as this particular yellow alert subsided and my blood pressure went back down, I started to hear the other sounds on the ship. There were beeps, dings, clicks, buzzes, engine hum, and a multitude of other technology nuisances making their presence known. I thought, “the future is pretty annoying”. You’d think they could design their fancy ships to be a bit quieter considering the fact that they can recycle matter into any food they want and travel, create fake gravity, and travel between stars in a few minutes.

They next day at work, I realized that I’m pretty much living on the Starship Enterprise. As soon as I pulled my headset off at the end of a meeting, I heard the humming of my computer’s processor and its swishing fans. They person in the cubicle across from me was typing furiously and generating a steady click-click-click. The air conditioner kicked up just then, adding to the caucophony and something started beeping for seemingly no reason at all. There were a dozen other sounds all competing with each other, and I had been working in this crazy noise-fest without even noticing. My world was suddently a very distracting and stressful place.

My 6 year-old doesn’t see things the way I do, and that’s often a wonderfully good thing. This poem actually came about because of an experience when it was just me and her cooking lunch. She was swaying back and forth and moving her shoulders up and down in a rhythm with a great big smile on her face as she waited for a frozen burrito to finish cooking. I asked her what the dancing was about and she said, “I like the microwave music”. Music. A good perspective on what I would have called “Star Trek noise”. The world is what we make of it, so let’s make it something good. Enjoy the music of the microwave and the toilet flush percussion. If it wasn’t there, we’d probably miss it.