The Worst Centre

I am the most obscure of the forsaken – 

At the centre of being unconnected to Bacon; 

What is your Whitenails number? 

The dish that held Dolly Godfrey's cucumber 

Sandwiches is closer to Bacon than me; 

And my Erdős number is Infinity.

What is your Whitenails number,
How close are you to my toxic node,
Amid the genealogy of slumber,
The algorithms of dream mode,
Where the dist value of somebody
Who has dreamt of me directly
Is One?

Get out, before it’s too late,
Before permutations of fate
Spiral and affix
An Erdős-Bacon number of Six
To the last uncontacted tribe on Earth:
Filmed from the air, as Colin Firth
Narrates the programme, wild boar
Can be seen with the people below.
Boar that were dandled shortly before
On the lap of Oleg Pikhurko
Have infiltrated their community!
And, because Firth has made a movie
With Bacon, and Pikhurko has sat on
The lap of a former epsilon
Who on one occasion had sat
On Paul Erdős’s lap, well that
Lowers the cost, and makes
The combined shortest path it takes
To get from this uncontacted
Tribe to a pilgrim of mathematics
And to a man who has acted
Alongside so many others Six.

Get out, before it’s too late!
That mysterious handler, Fate,
Is slowly shutting the gate –
As Oleg Pikhurko’s feral hogs
Cede their dandled ferkel,
To herd us into the covetous cogs
Of Erdős-Bacon’s circle,
It sends its whistled commands,
And shuts the gate with cautious hands,
So as not to spook.
That said, not even the film crew’s chinook,
Going “wocka wocka” overhead,
Would spook the tribe as they are fed
Stealthily into interconnectedness.
Oh, sadness…
To think of that film crew
Flying over a chaste glade,
Scattering droplets, not of flu,
But of degrees that degrade
The self; and Fate in fatigues,
When this tribe is lumped with the colleagues
Of Erdős and Bacon,
Will lock the gate it has taken
So long to shut.