Math and Science

MATH & SCIENCE POEMS

In some young athletes' wild elation,

endorphins' powerful sensation

is warped through pride until at length

they use for ill their boon of strength.

Their victims, into mind's pursuits

once driven, tap a desperate gift -

'til vanity's now in cahoots

with wealth. Yes, mended is the rift

between them and the bully, who

is furnished guns with handes pearled

to spread control through regions new -

their countrymen, and then the world.

...

Why should the animal merely be

if body truly desire to feel?

What mind must think, I cannot see,

to say that thought alone is real.

Oh let the brain attain some ruth

upon the much-distracted heart.

For Earth and people health is truth;

should any man then take fate's part?

Let us therefore don our animal nature,

it's time individuals got once more rugged

and freedom recur to the joy of the storm,

looking again toward our rights and their future

from homes all techno-snoopery bugged.

But the garret's wiser than the dorm.

Exultance in physical energeis

does captured hearts un-tether -

from blandishments of fear them frees

in ev'ry change of the mental weather.

...

"Shapes"

All the trihedral apices

of regular dodecahedrons

are sides midpoints of regular

icosahedrons circumscribed;

their pentahedral angles all

meet centerpoints of sides of the

dodecahedrons regular

that circumscribe them in their turn.

These polyhedra alternate

infinitessimally in,

and outward to infinity

(engulfing space in empathy) -

for either form may be inscribed

within or circumscribed about

the other - it's geometry.

...

In Space

They call it "O," the point they make,

extending thence six segments straight

of which three plus directions take

called forward, right or up; create

their opposites - back, left or down -

which they are styling "negative,"

then stretch the ends past edge of town -

each duple axis, positive

and minus, perpendicular

to plane where other two may live.

These map-makers then go too far,

three signed coordinates t'assign,

three distances from ev'ry point

to get to any axis line.

What omnipresent powers annoint

these heads that feign to compass all

of space? They fear no vanity

nor reckon hearts of poetry

can sing their own geometry

where most ingenious pride must fall,

can rhyme how technocratic men

colleague in Mother Earth's disgrace.

Let reason's evil graphing then

in its cartesian plane or space

be closed in mirror pentagons

or by dodecahedrons bound

that center on the origins

of weapons formuls we've found,

derived by fiends who view 'til late

their cursed, fallen, broken state -

contracting them nigh unto death.

The rest of space can take a breath,

its denisens no more play rubes

all sliced and diced in squares and cubes.

Despite each migit-devil's jibe,

a huge icosohedral room

then let some poets circumscribe

about each moaning jail-tomb

so now imps view, at their release,

on each triangular bulkhead

old bards portrayed who've found surcease

from diabolic plottings dread,

or angels framed in trinities

who do with hellions what they please.

...

What mathematic formulae

can then descrdibe

the undulations of a purring cat

against the young chorine's

warm soft pulsant hand,

she daydreaming there in the wings,

in all her vivacious pulchritude

as she hums her up-coming solo -

Indeed, with what determinants

can great Logic itself demonstrate

the writhings of the girl

when, after the show, she lets you

sweep her away from the stage door

to some nearby motel, as

the naughty thing must let

an appeealingly avid fan, and

it's your hand she writhes against

with such wanton abandon - what geometries

can plot in space-time that shape's

calescent motions, the heaving of her thighs?

What coordinates can hold her locus?

None. No coordinates, no formulae,

determinants, demonstrations.

She may be limned by Art alone.

....

Newtonian Incident

An apple falls upon the artist.

A crab it is, of apples tartest.

His sinus clears, the thoughs of Her

she plants to lift him in the air.

Above the prairie turf he hovers.

He still cannot believe they're lovers.

...

"Artist"

To make imaginings real is not

so difficult - this painting that I've got

half-done grew from my first reflecting that

a meld of hilly landscapes with the flat

would change straight lines of depth that merge,

toward point of vanishing converge -

they, depth-ward into distance shrinking,

diminuating sign-waves now become

A place as uniform as plane is this,

though hilly as one upland drizzles kiss,

but morning scene, sea-surge-like suburb-scape

from eaves-height viewed through eyes tear-eddies drape.

Impose, on third-D sign-waves growing small,

elliptic ripples, major axes all

contracting, snaking down horizon rays:

The anonym is blue some summer days.

Perhaps that background city's made him sad,

a tedium he grows less and less glad

to go to weekday mornings in that town,

some parabolic tower's looming frown.

...

Still Rhymin'

How could Sci-Biz be fiendisher

than let each man be publisher

too any group he may have planned

of works of art by any hand

that may appeal to ear or eye -

while passing all their authors by

as without rights to property?

Darwinian one-up-manship

and capitalist avarice

have jinxed all human fancy's trip -

full many a bard this off must piss -

how can the fellow get a grip?

...

"Cold Warriors on Terror"

Cartesian origin-point where

some eight trihedral angles meet,

apex quadrantal sectors share -

thence radiates a space-map sweet.

Here all points in the Universe

with three coordinates they chart

and, risking any hubris-curse,

they take the measure of God's heart.

They spin the orbit of the Earth

and integrate th'ellipsoid's size:

their thought as much as God's is worth,

they can their fellow man's despise.

They'd stamp his world with numberings,

assess, evaluate all men -

possess each of Earth's lifeless things,

control the living ones again.

Unquantifiable are both

a citizen's identity

and personality - if loath

to laud self-styled deity -

while they're instrinsic also to

the happiness he dreamed it was

his right forever to pursue -

that dream they cannot let come true.

...

"Soft Integer for a Hard Scientist"

Nooontime up and down the street,

people passing who don't meet -

but, to the eyes of any one

of whom, does not the sultry sun

suggest a figure of most fun?

It's the number of girls, less

the ones departing vision's field,

plus new ones on the scene revealed

at each successive moment, yes -

then multiplied by all the boys

at those same times the walker sees:

this product represents the joys,

all this stroll's possibilities

of bliss - a varied value, Elf!

So why not factor in yourself?

Yet wait, did we think to subtract

all pairs of whom either ought lacked

of his or her majority,

or celebate had vowed to be,

had lapsed into senility,

or else was someone else's spouse,

or was in jealousy far gone,

or didn't turn the other on,

or wasn't well - but let's not grouse!

It's still so great, this journey's sum,

the chance for couplings and menages,

as too smite jealousy's gods dumb

and Cupid move to shoot barrages.

None knows but you, Master Fantastic,

those neighborhoods so orgiastic.

...

"A First"

Let X be yon hot gamboge star,

then minus-X is its opposite -

the isotope dump lands

sacred to the quick fix, easy buck,

taboo to any foot for ten millennia

on pain of death - perhaps a first

for man among the denizens

of the entire solar system,

that some acreage were for so long

made all unliveable.

So now on one hand we haave our gamboge Sol,

then these anathamatic mutant lands

upon the other - showing how,,

far from transcending mortal fate,

we've rather multiplied the risk of doom!

In all religions Science is hubristic.

'Twould be, if one true - unrealistic.

...

"Computer Dating"

What may be a good match?

Who knows who's good for whom?

Computer minds may hatch

a choice to light the gloom

'round what love's searchers hope to see

as true compatibility.

Desire and chemistry may weld

together two before they think -

whom differences are then beheld

too draw toward separation's brink.

What makes, in two, them to discover

their fondest joy in one-another

so each feels any other lover

would love's inspiration smother?

Some program sure can this deduce

with some x-rated questionnaire

to fill the data-base. What use,

then, Cupid taking to the air?

...

"Brotherhood"

Only America could turn one guy

into a war vet and his brother into a hippie

suffering from a Military-Industrial complex.

Oh that unconscionable science

should countenance such

unconsciousness of conscience

in its business functionaries

and its security services.

Why should the depredations

of foreign wars or domestic rebellions

discompose the bonds of friendship

between brothers - why should not

a tear of nostalgic pacifism

fill the eye of the veteran parading

around the corner into view

of the anarcist warranted protester

cheering the "protector of rights

and freedoms" grinning? Why should not

fraternal rapprochment grow between

those who fight wars and those who fight

to end them? Why shouldn't they sympathize

with one-another's inclinations

toward pursuit of the same happiness?