An Algorithmic Lucidity

Gunni told her not to touch it;
Common sense would say as much in
Plainer words, for these devices
Warrant care if not a license,
Just to view the glowing screen
Of the forbidden time machine.

It's meant for research that's historical,
Not for making oneself an oracle,
Not for giving Voltaire a tease,
Or climbing up Pangaean trees.

But Laura had a burden
In this timeline's normal version,
So she made her own incursion
To years the burden had occurred in.
No one knows just what she did,
Or how the timeline handled it,
Or how things were supposed to go
If Laura had not changed the flow.

And as we gathered in her mansion,
And I checked my gift poem's scansion,
I had to wonder why she will not tell
Why her investments have gone so well,
Or why all her enemies have come down with
Fatal but late-to-manifest genetic diseases,
Like Huntington's chorea.
I dismissed my concerns and raised my drink
To sing: Happy birthday—or so we think.

Specific is terrific,
But meta is betta.

I'm going to do it the dark way
I'm going to do it in my way
I'm going to quietly sulk
And write things on the wall
And always be lonely

I will try to do my share
Sorting papers in my lair
But don't ask me to come play
'Cause I'll ask you to go away

I'm going to go on with living
Observing, loving, and giving
And I will never know joy
Nor being annoyed
Knowing that I've sinned
Knowing that I've sinned

I'm going to do it the dark way
I'm going to do it in my way
I'm going to make myself pure
With my act and my word
Frozen in my controlling

I will ruminate and try to figure out the humans' nature
And I'm looking for what's right
No matter if it is what I'd like

I'm never going to have a boyfriend
I'll always talk about the end
I will walk through halls
And pass through walls
Knowing that I've sinned
Knowing that I've sinned

Yesterday my sister won the Nobel prize
Her work will be a benefit to all of humankind
She went and proved some things which no one had surmised
Yesterday my sister won the Nobel physics prize

Yesterday I dreamed I won the Pulitzer prize
I uncovered the scandal, was a President's demise
I found the truth and brought it out to people's eyes
Yesterday I dreamed I won the Pulitzer journalism prize

And then I woke up
And rubbed my eyes

Yesterday my sister won the Nobel prize
Her work will be a benefit to all of humankind
She went and proved some things which no one had surmised
Yesterday my sister won the Nobel physics prize

Dead kid gets a bench
Dead kid gets a memorial bench
So now we all know his name
Though we don't know who he is

Class of nineteen ninety two
Though he died in 'ninety one
Was he a better friend than you?
And what'd he do for fun?
What were his opinions on the issues of the day?
And what exactly took his breath away?

Now he's still and in the grave
And since the dead seem all the same
No one really cares to wonder what he was
Forgotten as we're staring at his name

Dead kid gets a bench
Dead kid gets a memorial bench
So now we all know his name
Though we don't care who he is

Dead kid gets a bench
And the inscription just screams "Rust this"
No inscription can do justice
Though we don't know who he is
And we don't care who he is

I just saw a film first conceived near the kiln
At the school by a woman called Nora,
Near the pots and the wheels near the streets near the fields
Filled with Santa Cruz fauna and flora.

The seat wasn't cheap, and the popcorn was stale,
And yet bumps on my arms fomed subtitles in Braille,
For this art was apart from all that I had seen,
As each line and each part and each act and each scene
Put soul to the surface, a window now cleaned
Or made silver, though only a screen.

And now cats in the street seem to meow as if pleased
By the film by the woman called Nora,
And I know it's just me, for the cats are just pleased
At a mouse that they've caught, or yet for a
Sense that they get from the footfalls that hit
On the ground from those leaving the theater?
Could cats know higher art from reactions they sense
In the human filmgoer or reader?

No—cats do not follow clues, so these mews know no Muse,
They are meaningless, yes, in the worst way ...
And yet—wish the artist happy birthday?

Two point seven one
Eight two eight one eight two eight
Four five nine almost.

How frizzy is my hair
It really is unfair
My partner should object
Except she really doesn't care

I stare, in the mirror
Half-paralyzed in fear
My partner should object
Except she really doesn't care

For the haters are going to hate,
And the ponies are going to pwn,
As for me, I will bear all the burden and weight
And uncertainty of the alone.

Zeno knew, but did not know enough; a minute is divided
Into fragments, and each fragment sees, for points it o'er presided:
A small change, of which I take the distance
Along each fragment's lost existence:
The root of the sum of the squares
Of the length and the width and the height
Of the change in the range as the fragment is spanned
As the fragment is stricken from sight!