Just before logging off for the day,
and ready to boogie out of the joint
an email landed squarely in my inbox
cordially inviting me
into the management office
accompanied by the buzz of my cell phone:
(cue the sound of ominous music):
I unexpectedly got called
expecting to be handed a pink slip
(if you catch me drift)
suddenly my heart beat a mile a minute
and palms of hands
perspired like a wet dish rag
expecting to experienced a chop job
expecting to be chewed out by a hack
after rapping lightly on the door
before heading into the office by my namesake.

Even before taking a seat
an onslaught of rapid fire babbling besieged me
as way of introduction,
when receiving most recent assignment
for Matthew Scott Harris (me),
communicated by amiable chap
who interestingly enough
shared being christened
with exact same birth name as mine.

Rather than attempt to scribble
fast speaking mile a minute
brilliantly frenzied novel theme
prior experience taught being prepared
to stow digital dictation devices.

Upon readying recording device
to playback at my leisure,
I dramatically signaled to him
to repeat speaking, albeit ideally
at 78 rotations per minute (RPM)
while fingers of mine
lightly, yet impatiently
drummed upon the table
awaiting significantly more succinct delivery,
(yet bracing to be saddled
with what I expected
to be impossible mission
even for the stalwart
Peter Graves body double)
renown for his fast talking verbal outcome
concerning next poetic endeavor,
yet to borrow a football analogy
the writer of these word needed
self restraint less primed and prone
to block and tackle from him.

The moment he started speaking,
I then immediately ceased tapping sound
anticipating far out and groovy
prompting me to hang loose
able, eager, ready, and willing
to synthesize his incomprehensible jibber jabber,
which hopped out outburst
spurred me to ask him to talk slower
finding myself issuing imprecations
as he blithely ignored minor plea of mine
and quickly resumed chattering away
with animation, excitation, and irritation
bypassing feeble attempts of mine
mindlessly buzzfeeding and brainstorming,
an experienced "aha moment,"
thence he immediately explained
to yours truly (me) the idea,
which will hopefully be clearly expressed
courtesy the following poem.

Though instinctively writing
countless bureaucratic reports
(but more particularly typing),
never did especial attention
get paid to the particular nuances
(never mind the terms)
of kerning and tracking
that got brought to my attention
after being informed courtesy
(as iterated above) my namesake.

Kerning developed
during the era of metal typesetting,
where the term "kern" referred
to the part of a metal letter
that extended beyond its body,
allowing for closer spacing
between certain letter combinations,
making it a manual process
where typographers would physically adjust
the spacing between individual characters
by hand to achieve a visually pleasing result;
essentially, kerning has been around
since the early days of printing with metal type.

The French term originated
from the Latin cardo, cardinis, meaning "hinge."

In the days when all type was cast metal,
the parts of a typecasting sort
that needed to overlap adjacent letters
simply hung off the sort slug's edge.

Those overhanging metal pieces were called kerns.

Tracking is a similar process
to kerning that focuses
on the spacing between all letters in a word,
rather than just a few letters in a word.

Tracking is usually uniform,
meaning you apply an equal amount of space
between each letter
so that it doesn't look
too spaced out (how one feels
after getting loaded up) or too tight.

Tracking is the process of loosening
or tightening a block of text to make it look hip.

For most general writing purposes,
the "best" lead type considered to be HB
(medium hardness), as it offers a good balance
between heart of darkness and smoothness
while minimizing smudging,
making it suitable for everyday use
across different writing surfaces.