Poem-A-Day #242 : Parkinson's Law

Parkinson's Law
There is an equation for everything - it's exhausting
          right now the man next to me is doing complicated figures - it's calculus
                               but could be advanced geometry - physics
I don't know
and that's my point - there are figures on pages for every damn thing
and I don't know them -
                                                  I think about the things unknown
                              there are expanses of them - not horizons enough
            you are standing on a mountain and you can see the whole way
around the world right to your ass - and then inside your ass to your stupid brain

But sight would fail you first - the world fills and fills and fills
because it is an expanse - humanity is bureaucracy - a steady fractal -

          we multiply to fill the space given - we are at our highest number right
before collapse -

I don't know if we collapse - it's exhausting
thinking about apocalypse - I feel that numbers are ants marching across
the corpse of the forest - sifting the leaves for foodstuffs -
                                                    that could be peaceful -
                                  but if we go with the proof in the math
              it's probably unpleasant - it's probably equalling
there's a diagram I'm sure - it's probably a triangle closing its sides to us

We can multiply to fill the space given but if the space shrinks we're fucked

Velvet Ant

That is a velvet ant.

It isn't really an ant at all.

It is a wingless wasp in the family Mutillidae. There are over 3000 species in this family whose female members all resemble large, hairy ants. They live in dry desert climates.

There are 400 species of these things in the southwestern US.

Their hair can be red, orange, silver, white, black, or gold.

They are also called cow killer ants because they have incredible painful stings and are known to attack cows and other livestock.

Unlike real ants, velvet ants are solitary. They do not have drones, workers, or queens.

They do have incredibly hard exoskeletons that are known for breaking the steel pins used by entomologists.

Eggs are laid inside other insect nests, near the young of the home insect. When they hatch, the velvet ant young kill and eat the larva of the home insect.

The female has a long movable stinger.

Velvet ants are known to squeal when stepped on or crushed.

The more you know...