Following the first thwack
we deduced that distance was
limited primarily
to unpredictable bursts of anger,
arbitrary chastisement factors.
The rule, all of its dozen commandments
plus the extra uncalibrated ends -
a fixed length, extended sufficiently
to bruise well beyond
its mere twelve inch reach.
Wood or Perspex the fractions stung,
minds began to compute escape
in eighths and sixteenths,
we understood that the rod, the yardstick,
probably the world,
had been measured to the umpteenth
by sadistic inchworms.
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