Athens, Georgia
June 6, 2012
My muse flipped me off last week
after too many midnights, head
caught
in code, tweaking time step
solvers
on an engineering binge.
She said you left that years ago
for
herons, shoals, and metered lines
and who
but one like you might find
your
mind entranced in strings of code?
I said it’s just a short-time
thing
an algorithm coding fling
my simulation fantasy
to make a number cruncher sing.
Just
fine she said, half out the door
composing raunchy metaphor
it’s art, I argued, and what’s
more
my colleagues all swear, and you
know’em
my programs resemble a poem:
they tend to abort
a syllable sort
ambiguous functions the norm.
As I said, my muse
flipped me off last week.
Took up with a wild-eyed type,
my evil twin Sal
who drives a souped-up symbol –
nineteen sixty seven
or eight mustang
which has nothing on my hybrid
when it comes to efficiency.
She was last seen riding shotgun
top down, streaming
raucous lines, the kind
she knows I never use. To choose
the wild, a touch
obtuse and bad
career move for a muse
‘cause "Reptile Brain" just
cannot write.
So I propose
a compromise
pour tu, cher muse, inverse haiku:
Wake
up soon and savor dawn
engineer by day
after sunset, yield to
art.
So ready now to channel
phrases, randy words
stoked in the queue
