A Poem Thread

Discussion in 'Art & Culture' started by Angelus, Nov 9, 2002.

  1. Me-Ki-Gal Banned Banned

    Messages:
    4,634
    My 3rd grade teacher was the best. She made me feel grand , after that all went down hill and my sixth grade teacher was an old woman named Mrs. Cussin and she would yell at us kids like you could not believe. Funny I had her in the 2nd grade and felt her abuse . She was so old then I was sure she would retire any day only to get her again in the sixth grade . Cursed is what I felt , so me being 8 down sized and laid off is par for the course. No wonder my 12 is going to hell, but if I do then you will too. For Mother nature loves Me even if others don't . She will do my bidding , Look out for her temper is tremendously stout
     
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  3. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

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    OK, I'm changing it to 5th grade being eliminated, so then we can finally be smarter than a 5th grader.
     
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  5. Me-Ki-Gal Banned Banned

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    Thank you , You get a gold star . Spend it anyway you like . One wish from the lamp of a Jinny
     
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  7. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

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    What No Man Had Thought Before

    Alan Guth had never done anything much before,
    But soon attended Dicke’s Big Bang lecture tour,
    And so had decided to study the birth of the universe.
    And so just like that he developed inflation theory first.

    The “Big Bang” formed 98 percent of matter spent,
    But whence the rest of all the higher elements?
    What flaming forge fired carbon, iron and more?
    Fred Hoyle was a nut, much unloved, and a big bore.

    Working with others who often avoided him,
    Hoyle came up up with imploding stars, a whim
    That that allowed supernovae to generate
    The heavier elements at the rate of his steady state.

    This process was known as nucleosynthesis,
    Causing a 100 million degree heat and mist
    That sprayed new elements into gaseous clouds of stardust
    That could eventually coalesce into solar systems, and us.

    99.9% of this mass made our sun, the rest leftover dirt,
    Ever colliding, two grains being the conception of Earth,
    For in every encounter there was always a winning lump
    Of these endless and random bumping growing clumps.

    (Fowler, not Hoyle, obtained the precious Nobel prize;
    Hoyle had been overlooked, but to no one’s surprise.)
     
  8. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,028
    The Age of Rust

    Aliens visit the Earth, thinking lush,
    Only to find it covered with rust.

    Their visit does not occur in future times
    When the Earth is full of dusty rime,
    But is way back in the youthful years
    Before there was hardly any atmosphere.

    Bacteria have just begun making oxygen,
    Discarding it as a mere waste product—
    An unwanted poison to be jettisoned.

    Everything on Earth that is capable
    Of being oxidized becomes oxidized;
    We’ve seen evidence of this rust
    In bands of red oxide deep in the crust.

    Only when this rusting comes to an end
    Do the oxygen levels in the atmosphere rise;
    They are only 1 percent after 2.4 billions years;
    Now being 20 percent after double those years.
    .
    The aliens soon leave our planet,
    That rusting junk pile that
    Could never amount to squat.

    (They did take a photo of the rusty Eiffel Tower, however.)
     
  9. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    33,264
    Well I think it's fine, building jumbo planes.
    Or taking a ride on a cosmic train.
    Switch on summer from a slot machine.
    Yes, get what you want to if you want, 'cause you can get anything.

    I know we've come a long way,
    We're changing day to day,
    so tell me, where do the children play?

    Well you roll on roads over fresh green grass.
    For your lorry loads pumping petrol gas.
    And you make them long, and you make them tough.
    But they just go on and on, and it seems that you can't get off.

    Oh, I know we've come a long way,
    We're changing day to day,
    so tell me, where do the children play?

    Well you've cracked the sky, scrapers fill the air.
    But will you keep on building higher
    'til there's no more room up there?
    Will you make us laugh, will you make us cry?
    Will you tell us when to live, will you tell us when to die?

    I know we've come a long way,
    We're changing day to day,
    But tell me, where do the children play?

    Car Stevens (Yusuf Islam)

    http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...eim70-&usg=AFQjCNGl1qFXY9-JJ6anr0dFo3v_s7EwIg
     
  10. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,028
    They play on X-box, computer, and telegraph (text messaging).

    I asked a kid why he didn't play in the forest. "Too many trees." he said.
     
  11. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    33,264
    Once there was a tree....
    and she loved a little boy.
    And everyday the boy would come
    and he would gather her leaves
    and make them into crowns
    and play king of the forest.
    He would climb up her trunk
    and swing from her branches
    and eat apples.
    And they would play hide-and-go-seek.
    And when he was tired,
    he would sleep in her shade.
    And the boy loved the tree....
    very much.
    And the tree was happy.
    But time went by.
    And the boy grew older.
    And the tree was often alone.
    Then one day the boy came to the tree
    and the tree said, "Come, Boy, come and
    climb up my trunk and swing from my
    branches and eat apples and play in my
    shade and be happy."
    "I am too big to climb and play" said
    the boy.
    "I want to buy things and have fun.
    I want some money?"
    "I'm sorry," said the tree, "but I
    have no money.
    I have only leaves and apples.
    Take my apples, Boy, and sell them in
    the city. Then you will have money and
    you will be happy."
    And so the boy climbed up the
    tree and gathered her apples
    and carried them away.
    And the tree was happy.
    But the boy stayed away for a long time....
    and the tree was sad.
    And then one day the boy came back
    and the tree shook with joy
    and she said, "Come, Boy, climb up my trunk
    and swing from my branches and be happy."
    "I am too busy to climb trees," said the boy.
    "I want a house to keep me warm," he said.
    "I want a wife and I want children,
    and so I need a house.


    For the rest of The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstien

    http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...oqSvCA&usg=AFQjCNH_6PfMhQ8VkoPIcf-ZCEGtAs3-Dw
     
  12. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,028
    That Blankety Blank

    Euclid and Pythagorus never even thought of it,
    Perhaps not needing it for geometry;
    So it was and wasn’t ‘Greek’ to them.

    Aristotle was deathly afraid of it.
    Even the word ‘naughty’ came from it.

    ‘0’ had a chilly reception everywhere,
    Its rounded symbol enclosing nothing,
    As if it could be captured,
    But ‘nothing’ never changed,
    Being the same even if you took it away.

    Humans stumbled on zero and nothing by accident,
    And recoiled in horror, fearing it, reviling it,
    And sometimes even banning it outright
    As some kind of evil influence.

    After many centuries, it seemed to be tamed,
    Put in its place as a simple little placeholder.

    Then the beast reared its ugly head for real,
    Misbehaving like a monster right and left:

    It brought instant death by multiplication,
    And wrought total absurdity through division,
    Yet halting our expensive computers.

    It exploded into the ambiguous fog of infinity;
    It ran away from us in calculus,

    Sliding us down the slippery slope
    Of closing in on it but never reaching it.

    It spawned ghosts such as negative numbers,
    Imaginaries, and those ephemeral infinitesimals.

    Both the genie and the genius
    Had been let out of the bottle,
    And the goose egg still
    Confounds and confuses,
    No one knowing zilch about it,
    Creating paradoxes left and right.
     
  13. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,028
    No Time Machines

    Now, tongue in cheek,
    I’ll tell why there are no time machines.

    It isn’t that no one ever came back
    From the future to see us,
    Although that is still an OK reason
    For no time machines being possible.

    Nor is it that there can’t be
    A future going on somewhere ahead of time,
    Since that’s a fine one, too.

    It is that women prevented time machines
    From being invented;
    For, every time a man said,
    “Honey, I’m going out to the garage
    To work on my time machine”
    The woman in his life would reply
    “That’s impossible, dear.
    Stop wasting your time.
    There is housework to be done
    And grass to be cut.”

    The man would still sneak out
    To try to work on his time machine,
    But the woman would find him
    And once again say something like,
    “That’s impossible, nut head.
    Get in here and do something useful!”

    And that’s why there are no time machines!
     
  14. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,028
    SHADES OF THE OTHERWORLD?

    Could there be more to this world—
    Those of the undrawn shades unfurled?

    Is there a universe alongside this bright zone,
    A parallel, twilight world overlapping our own?

    Are there shadow beings all about us,
    That we can only perceive as blankness?

    They’d be made of but the dark matter,
    Yet lively with their own kind of chatter,
    These shades flowing right on through us—
    We the lighted “plus” to their dark “minus”.

    These pale shadows of our attendants,
    Are not as us—of light’s extent,
    But are as black clouds of a coal sack;
    Nay, they’re not even dark or black,
    But are of an invisible bivouac.

    Dark matter and its shadows traverse
    The bulk of the missing-mass universe.

    The shades of evening draw us on—
    We must look to the past, upon the first eon.

    Two distinct families of matter
    Were created in the Big Freeze batter,
    Just those two that did then so accrue
    When they were frozen out of the primordial stew
    As the fetal universe was cooling
    And the hearty gruel was ungrueling.

    The normal universe and the shadow universe
    Can interpenetrate, neither averse
    (Or even “adverse” to rhyme the verse)
    Nor of coerce; they just cannot interact,
    As they have no contract.

    If the shadow universe was richly sown
    It could have evolved along with our own.

    Shadow planets could form
    Around shadow stars as norms
    And become populated with swarms
    Of those shadow beings lukewarm.

    They would be invisible specters, unseen phantoms,
    Unobserved presences, indiscernible apparitions,
    Imperceptible wraiths, unnoticed spirits, magic places,
    Inconspicuous spooks, and hidden traces…

    But first we must ask what makes a universe,
    Such as ours, the one in which we immerse.

    It is the forces that count for everything,
    Matter being but a secondary singing,
    For atoms exert forces through space,
    Especially of the electromagnetic race;
    So, then, it is forces that disburse
    The currency of a rich universe.

    This is why we don’t fall through a chair—
    That mostly empty space of “thin air”
    When we decide to sit down there.

    Space is a kind of a large-scale limitation
    Of an underlying discrete network of connections.

    Atoms would not even know at all
    That their companions existed, with no call,
    Without the push or pull of the forces’ thrall,
    As then they themselves would be as pall
    As some ghosts passing through a wall.

    The four forces hold our world together
    In its diversity of shape, structure, form, and color.

    Some forms of our matter don’t feel
    All of the four forces as real:
    Neutrons have no electric charge
    And so they don’t “care”, Marge,
    About that e/m force at large.

    Suppose some form of matter didn’t feel
    Any of the four forces that became real?

    Dark Matter doesn’t appear to discourse,
    Not having the resource of its own special forces
    To bind it together; no packhorses.

    All it can feel is the “force” of gravity,
    And perhaps the weak force’s changeability—
    Which is for decay, and not stability;
    In fact, both forces are weak, a pravity.

    You cannot hold a person-size lump
    Of matter together with just gravity’s slump;
    So, then, no interesting lumps can form
    In the dark universe, not even unicorns.
    Even making a star or a planet
    Is difficult with just gravity alone working on it,
    For the electromagnetic force is crucial
    To slowing any of the material
    Down enough to hold it in one place;
    So, then, there can be no shadow race…

    …No veiled hints, obscured suggestions,
    Unknown impressions, out of sight suspicions,
    Nor any supposed tinges, shimmering glimmers,
    Resembling semblances, or ghostly whispers.

    What has no light is but a dark shade,
    With no creatures therein made.
    So, dark matter is not a source for being;
    ‘Tis but a very large matter to us unseeing.

    And, yet, is it we who are the outsiders,
    Our luminous bubbles of foam the riders—
    The stars, planets, and us the striders—
    On the vast ocean of dark matters much wider.

    We were an “afterthought”,
    With no forethought,
    Although perhaps made possible, nonetheless,
    By the dark matter—since it was oblivious
    To much of the great primeval blast,
    It forming filaments that could last,
    Attracting our regular matter
    That was everywhere splattered,
    Into the pearls of the galaxies
    Strung along like cosmic necklaces.
     
  15. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,028
    THE TIME CAPSULE

    Since one million years had just passed by,
    They, of the future, prepared to open, nigh,
    The absolutely sealed container’s prize,
    Of a capsule made so carefully that it did survive
    Without damage, being totally impregnable
    To any outside influence imaginable.

    They expected to see, perhaps, some old relic,
    But certainly nothing alive that could tell of it,
    For it would be hard to imagine, even then,
    That some organism could keep on going its ken
    Over its course of a million years later,
    Sealed inside this tight container,
    Unable even to exchange energy’s spark,
    This metabolism being the hallmark
    Of life and all that quacked or quarked…

    And, so, they did not at all expect something
    In there that would be flapping its wings,
    Gasping for air, or anything at all of life’s song,
    Wondering what had taken so long.

    Well, they were right and they were wrong,
    For in the time capsule that was planted so long,
    Several things had with it come along…

    One was a plaque, of numbers low and high,
    And containing some primes and pi,
    Another, some essays of the future—
    Some, like mine, quite mature,

    Along with Darwin’s book, maps curled,
    And many other items of the world,
    From those times when the oceans swirled;
    But, the last, one perhaps not intended,
    Was a microbe—an extremophile—
    Laying there quite contented all the while!

    Well, they soon laughed, loud and long,
    For they were in between right and wrong
    About what could survive from so long ago,
    For, it was really walking mighty slow!
     
  16. thechunk Registered Member

    Messages:
    11
    There was a guy called Dave
    Who dug up a prostitutes grave
    She was mouldy a shit and missing a tit
    But look at the money he saved.


    :facepalm:
     
  17. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,028
    THE KNOWING

    “Into this Universe, and why, not knowing,
    Nor whence, like water willy-nilly flowing:
    And out of it, as wind along the waste,”
    Omar “knew not whither, willy-nilly blowing…”

    Now I’m knowing, that out of this muddle,
    Indeed, it’s the chaos that frees me to be,
    For, it’s all of disorder in disarray,
    An ultimate disorganized confusion,
    Whence all sprung, banged, and exploded,
    With no hint or trace of order, law or plan;

    ‘Twas mayhem, bedlam, and pandemonium,
    Wreaking havoc upon the turmoil of a tumult,
    Heaping high upon, a commotion of disruption,
    In the utter fullness of the uproaring upheaval…

    …The maelstrom to end all messes and shambles,
    The lawless free-for-all of total energetic anarchy,
    Entropy crowned as King of the great hullabaloo,
    That cosmic hoopla from which all hell broke loose.

    Never there was to punish one for not even knowing
    Why you are here in this world so much growing,
    That became here all so willy-nilly going.
    So, as life’s rose, outspread your fragrance blowing!

    Whither flowing free,whether knowing, or not,
    Hitherto, I know not whence, but am whither going,
    Willy-nilly, hence that’s all there is to knowing…
    Hence thither forth I go on hither flowing to find
    That I was ever more free to be in body and mind.

    It is of Ovid’s “rude and indigested mass:
    The lifeless lump, unfashion’d, and unfram’d,
    Of jarring seeds; and justly Chaos nam’d.

    “No sun was lighted up, the world to view;
    No moon did yet her blunted horns renew:
    Nor yet was Earth suspended in the sky,
    Nor pois’d, did on her own foundations lye:

    “Nor seas about the shores their arms had thrown;
    But earth, and air, and water, were in one.
    Thus air was void of light, and earth unstable,
    And water’s dark abyss unnavigable.”

    So it is that we the living might hereby agree,
    To live a being that is much more intense,
    To leap toward higher orders of actuality,
    To revel in the glories of this conscious life,
    To attain each minute a more euphoric joy…

    And to bring this radiance forth to all,
    The increased intensity of free experience,
    And to build on it, etc.,
    Ever growing;
    Forever, amen!
     
  18. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,028
    PHOTONIC WONDERS

    I took a snapshot of a moving photon;
    It filled a pixel and was not moving on.
    The photo told me not how fast it had flown,
    So I assumed this info couldn’t be known.

    The photon was ageless at the speed of light,
    As women are always young and always right,
    For time had stopped; I thought time was movement.
    Photons never get old or need improvement.

    With my new contact lenses, I now can see
    One photon, unmeasured by man—most need three.
    It traveled 13 billion years, from the deep,
    But what lights my dark head when I dream in sleep?

    How come photons don’t pile up on the floor
    Under my lamp when it shines all the more?
    Lucky thing, for where would I put them all—
    Doing light housekeeping into the hall?

    Is it light that defines space, as EM?
    Do I see the light? What is lit in REM?
    Is light the answer to the TOE’s dark quiz?
    Then wherever it reaches, existence is.
     
  19. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,028
    FOR THE SUPER
    HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP
    OF THE UNIVERSE:
    GOD VS. SCIENCE


    R o u n d 1

    In the Beginning…
    God played an active role in the Universe,
    After creating it, each and every verse,
    And especially one upon the Earth…

    Which is supposedly
    Only a few thousand years old,
    Or so it has been told.

    God won this round, hands down,
    For even those many science clowns
    There were there at the time
    Thought that man was prime,
    Being the special center of creation
    And that the sun and the stars, in elation,
    Revolved around his nation…

    And, furthermore,
    That evil spirits caused physical ills
    Along with all of our mental ills,
    As aggravated by life’s frills—
    Which were all called ‘sins’
    That somehow still came from within.

    Even fun was one of sin’s evil cousins,
    For the Bible was made of old Jewish legends.

    Thankfully, those hundreds of odd Gods
    WHO had come to reign before GOD
    Were crushed and by Jehovah trod .

    However, about three centuries ago,
    The realm of natural law was extended, so,
    The Supernatural Kingdom
    Began to shrink away, some,
    Eventually vanishing from all of existence,
    But, we get ahead of our own persistence…

    God made Adam fully formed, without a navel;
    But, now, an asterisk on page one of the
    Philippine Catholic bible says “No”,
    To not take it literally; it’s just not so.


    R o u n d 2

    God came out quick, still claiming the writ
    That he guided the Earth safe through its orbit
    Around the the centered sun in space, His Son,
    For by now the Earth’s motion around the sun
    Was known to be true to nearly everyone.

    Newton demolished this notion
    With his laws of motion.

    God thus no longer ruled Nature’s course,
    For the world was free to run its course.



    From Isaac: Laws and Revelations:
    There is a mote in space known as Earth,
    A pale blue dot of fluff orbiting a hearth…

    Due but to Newton’s laws of motion, there’s none—
    No Godly hand guiding it safe around the sun.

    The vanishing had now really begun.
    The heavens and the Earth were one.

    Stars and galaxies went on and on, puffing,
    And we became the center of nothing.

    God was losing his definition in stone,
    As his sworn traits disappeared, one by one.

    So, He’s retreated to higher ground, that is,
    Outside of space, time, and all that exists.


    R o u n d 3

    God so then claimed to appear to us
    Only in spiritual thoughts and ideas, thus,
    Making Him responsible, as our Savior,
    For the goodness of human behavior.

    This metaphor was then found to be unnecessary
    As the source of human character non-contrarily;

    Yet, some still clung to the life-line ropes
    Of His intervention, with their hopes,
    Although some claimed that He
    Did not involve Himself, or be,
    In our daily operations and pleas.

    So, God no longer intercedes in causes,
    Except in some nebulous cures and “becauses”,
    As being safe from harm, or curing what hears,
    But, He never heals amputees, or appears.

    For the latest is that He must stay hidden,
    Even if the “miracles” of His Son, bidden,
    Were very much out in the open to see;
    Better that no one know of Him clearly.

    So there is “faith”—a blind trust in the unknown.
    Believe it or be tortured—or has this, too,
    The Word of God, become inoperable?
    Only the supernatural realm remains.


    R o u n d 4

    God was still yet “seen” to intervene here,
    Saving lives, here and there,
    In the natural world’s reality,
    But, too, striking planes from the sky,
    Ever adjusting and smoothing the operations
    Of natural law, expressing His inscrutable purpose.

    However, scientific knowledge, cosmology,
    Fundamental physics, chemistry, biology,
    Anthropology, and psychology were wont
    To undermine religious views on every front.
    God was losing His strength to be,
    For science loomed large, quite ponderously.


    Religious knowledge, without proof,
    That which professes absolute truth,
    Now fails and fades, an impossibility,
    While science, which professes fallibility,
    Succeeds and grows stronger daily.

    There were still those strange myths…

    Why is the Old Testament out of the pew,
    In many churches, in favor of the new?

    Was it divine revelation or not?
    Do God’s fits not become a good role model?


    R o u n d 5

    With God in full retreat, it was yet thought
    That at least He had instilled or wrought
    A spiritual essence in us willed, whole,
    That which was called the “soul”.

    What vanity to claim such full self-importance!
    To demand so much from the universe…

    That one would claim an angelic vapor that
    Drives a living being, provides character,
    Morality, and consciousness, on top of
    A burdensome, fragile, and expensive
    Organ such as a brain not needing to be used?
    Science collapsed the idea of the elan vital
    When the synthesis of substance began.

    Life’s chemistry was of chemicals!

    Yet, it was still said that God made all the kinds,
    Albeit strangely full of the problematic signs
    Of such an unintelligent design,
    For how else could it all have been consigned?

    Darwin told us how natural selection
    Explained the mysteries of evolution
    And of the variety of life covering creation…

    Extending from animals to us, a continuum,
    Now even seen to go back to a bacterium.

    We were no longer special at all, as such,
    Differing from chimps by not very much.

    The discovery of genetics later on
    Collaborated it all in our genome.

    So, because of evolution’s record written
    God’s Bible was no longer seen as written
    In plain text for the common man,
    But is open to symbolics and interpretation.

    Thus, now, He just is, the same as the universe,
    And, yet, this would be a kind of curse,
    For this state would be quite restrictive…

    Not to mention the mere tautology
    Of a universe, a cosmos, and an Entity
    Being one and the same pose,
    Such as a rose is a rose is a rose.

    Since the above Cannot be,
    He’s now become but a Deity,
    Leaving us all on our own,
    Our own life to own,
    The same as the nonreliance
    That is seen by science;
    Now we’re fully sentient,
    But a planned, random accident!

    Aye, the truth of what now we are is:
    We’re not made direct, by a Wiz, to take a quiz,
    But as mammal, organic, of speciation—
    One passing narcissism and self-adulation,
    Onto the bio-electro-chemical organism
    Evolved upon a planet near a star, risen
    Of and in the long and winding mindless way
    Of slow time, dust, and selection by death
    That sifts the best from the rest: evolution’s breath.


    R o u n d 6

    More devastating blows landed, raw,
    Einstein’s theories extending Newton’s laws
    To the very large universal scales, with trust,
    While quantum mechanics brought us, next,
    To the reach of the very tiniest of objects,
    There being no place left for us as subjects.

    God was nowhere to be seen,
    Having vacated the arena.

    Yes, science has found that the universe
    Operates just as it would without Him—
    That evil spirits don’t lead to bad health,
    That brain imbalances can lead to sins.

    Devil, Hell, the Bible, intercession, etc.,
    Are all gone now—he is undefinable—
    Protected from the knowing—safe, away:
    Yet claimable as the unseeable unknowable!


    R o u n d 7

    Confirmations were everywhere hatched,
    Since scientific laws must ever match
    And predict the facts of what it mimics,
    For example, of the quantum mechanic.

    Although QM’s basis seems counterintuitive,
    It always works out just perfectly,
    For we employ and depend on it, in every way,
    On tech products based on it, every day.

    Science ever goes on to astronomical heights.

    The first supernova since 1572
    Appeared in some small galaxies nearby, a few,
    Called the Magellanic Clouds, too…

    Though its radiation began a while back,
    We saw it alight upon us in the ‘now’—
    Those immerse quantities of energy
    Of a mighty star-stuff maelstrom.
    A Chilean astronomical technician, some bloke,
    Stepped outside, perhaps to have a smoke,
    And, being observant, spotted it’s yoke!

    Ah, he, a mere human standing around
    Out under the dark starry sky, aground,
    Detected it, upon this lucky time,
    For the large telescopes only take in the shine
    Of the sky in small sections at a time.

    He went in and told of such unexpected,
    That a large burst of never-detected
    Neutrinos was now to be expected.

    The astrophysicists called their colleagues,
    C’mon, you all, answer, please,
    Those deep beneath the Earth’s surface,
    In the United States, Japan, and Europe,

    And then said, “Look in your tanks, in revelry;
    You have already made a great discovery.”

    They were right on the dime, this time;
    Each of the observatories had detected the signs
    Of a few tens of neutrinos at about the same time.

    Consider the magnitude of this achievement,
    For they had tested all of what physics meant!

    They had predicted the events that go
    On in a star’s death throes—
    By using theories from nearly every part of physics:
    Special and general relativity, quantum mechanics,
    Fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, nuclear physics,
    Atomic physics, and elementary particles.

    If any of these theories had in error flailed,
    The prediction of the neutrinos would have failed.
    Thus, the laws of nature that are known to us
    On Earth everyday must have the same thrust
    Hundreds of thousands of light years away;

    And, also, the same back in the day
    When that star had exploded so,
    Hundreds of thousands of years ago.

    God had been pushed completely out of the ring,
    And so there were no more praises of Him to sing.

    There were no immutable forms made,
    As is, that never change, as “bade”,
    For, there was no one miracle of life
    Leaping into any living form, but rife
    With all of natural selection’s strife.

    Slightly dead chemicals
    Became definitely alive chemicals,
    Metabolizing into many particulars,
    This being nothing spectacular.

    We even have evidence of ancient algae
    From 3.5 billion years ago, in a sea,
    When liquid water was available and free.

    It still took more than two billion years
    For more complicated life to appear.
    There was no Garden of Eden.

    God’s become aloof; he’s begun to dissolve…
    He let the design gradually evolve
    Over thirteen billion years into man’s plot,
    The endless universe a mere backdrop.
    He is the Intelligent Designer that
    Is deducible from not understanding design,
    But, wait, he is of infinite design—
    So now I know that something had to make Him!

    ( Ground—Of—Determination: G.O.D.)


    R o u n d 8

    The Knockout.

    The three-degree blackbody radiation was found,
    The CMBR. It comes to us from all around;
    Nonuniformities in the radiation were found at last,
    Those that formed the galaxies of the past.

    The QM realm has been proved, of late,
    To be a fundamentally fuzzy state,
    Virtual plus and minus states
    Popping out at any old rate;

    That is, there are no real causes,
    For there are no hidden “becauses”.

    This realm is not quite a Nothing,
    But a near ‘nothing’,
    Nor some infinite regress of something.

    Virtual particles may take the helm
    Or cancel back into the QM realm.

    If “Nothingness” were exactly zero, not fizzy,
    Then this ‘vacuum’ would not be vague and fuzzy.
    Thus, an absolute Nothing cannot exist to be,
    For its very definition means that it cannot be,
    As then it could not even be there at all in reality.

    So, there is but the quantum jitter;
    There was only this ‘possibility’ forever.

    Oftentimes, the QM “virtual” particles magically
    Spring into existence, and vanish quickly,
    Although they can interact and remain, really.

    If not, they have to vanish so quickly
    That we cannot account for their reality.

    If we could see them, then the QM possibility
    Would not be the vacuum fuzzy energy;
    But, if they were not there, as something,
    The vacuum would be exactly Nothing…

    And so this certain school
    Would violate the vague and fuzzy rule.

    None of these happenings are invisibly lame,
    Such as those of the supernatural claims,
    For the fuzzy ‘nothing’ has many effects
    That we can compute and detect.
    So, is there is no cause, no purpose, unthunked!
    Does this make us go into a deep dark funk?

    No, for it is our glory that we are free to be,
    The making of life being our own responsibility.

    Now God was dead, gone, having counted out,
    Having never been, whether within or without.

    The eternal, causeless ground-state
    Could have never had any “create”,
    For there could be nothing prior
    Such as that which is known as a Creator.

    Terrorists still go to war in his name;
    It’s all going astray—this notion fails;
    If I knew where the Great Designer stays,
    I’d question his mysterious(insane) ways.

    What, then, is left of this vanishing Phantom?
    More features than I’ve listed have fallen—
    The Extraordinary Superstition’s kiss
    Remains as but a shadow of a wish.
     
  20. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,028
    To The Depths of the Deep

    Here I stand, holding fast.
    Onto my other half.


    The zephyr faints, dying in the half-light,
    Its caress suspended, as day kisses night,
    When, for some instants, stretching into moments,
    We are neither here nor there, but in twilight.

    We live at this boundary of day and night,
    Our selves merging in the blend of twilight:
    You and me, me and you; yours, mine, and ours—
    The day-gold melts into the jeweled night.

    Above us, fires burn the stars away;
    Below us, the Earth turns under our feet;
    Within us, unworded dreams haunt the soul;
    Around us, night pours blackness on the ground.

    Soft and warm, the evening caresses us,
    In gentle darkness, and quiet stillness.

    Here we sense the sweep across the heartstrings,
    For we’re undistracted by the day’s bright noise.

    I beg of the night to yield its dearest puzzle,
    To reveal the full truth of what it is.

    Much I already know from twilight dreams,
    And from poems unveiling truth and beauty,
    But, I ask, with my most inquiring looks
    To know the deepest secrets of the night.

    So, I must ask from the powers of the night,
    Not immortality, nor youth, nor birth,
    But only that I glimpse the enigmatic:
    That riddle solved of the conundrum.

    The door resisted at first,
    Then creaked into the crypt,
    Powdered rust streaming from the hinges.

    Here the answer was kept,
    But not all was pleasant—it spoke of death,
    Of life’s end, separate by just a breath…
    I saw tombstones overgrown, underswept,
    Names unknown—and to all a message saith:

    — “Read Me” —
    It said, in words engraved beyond the brink—
    “You, who live, up above: of life go drink;
    And you, underneath, now lying so dead:
    Rest in peace, RELAX—it’s later than you think!”

    Night-time sharpens,
    Heightens each sensation—
    Darkness wakes and stirs imagination


    Slowly, gently,
    Night unfurls its splendour…
    Grasp it, sense it—
    Tremulous and tender

    Turn your face away
    From the garish light of day,
    Purge your thoughts
    Of the life you knew before!

    Close your eyes,
    Let your spirit start to soar!
    And you'll live
    As you’ve never lived before

    Softly, deftly,
    Music shall surround you…
    Feel it, hear it,
    Closing in around you

    Open up your mind,
    Let your fantasies unwind,
    In this darkness which
    You know you cannot fight—
    The darkness of
    The music of the night


    Let your mind
    Start a journey through a
    Strange new world!

    Leave all thoughts
    Of the world you knew before!

    Savour each sensation!

    Let the dream begin,
    Let your darker side give in
    To the power of the music that I write—
    The power of the music of the night

    (Andrew Lloyd Weber)
    . . .

    To learn the Secrets—what IS and ev’r WAS,
    We must brave the crypt and ghost of cause…

    So, into the deep, we go, without pause,
    To look down, ever down, no self to keep—
    Through birth, death, and the shade of sleep,
    Through paths unkempt, underswept—

    To the deep,

    Through the cloudy strife
    Of this hazy life,

    Through the equations of eternity—
    Their non-paternity nor maternity,

    Past the realm of the things which seem or are,
    Even o’er the steps of the remotest bar.

    Down, down!

    Where the mind whirls round and round,
    As the ear draws forth the sound,

    As the eye sees the light,
    And of the dark the fright.

    Down, down,

    Beyond all death, despair, love, and sorrow,
    Past yesterday, today, and tomorrow—
    The body’s guide is but the logic of the mind.

    Down through the fog, the not, and the void,
    Where “God” and Everything fail; Oh, zoids!

    Down!
    Where reigns the night, and the air is thin,
    To where the sky & stars are not, but within,

    Where the radiant have not their throne,
    Where there is one pervading, all alone.

    Down, down!
    To the fathoms of the cryptic;

    Down, down!
    Where substance slept with arithmetic,

    Toward the spark yet nursed by embers,
    To the first and last the universe remembers—

    To seek the gem that shines—
    The wealth of mines,
    The jewels so treasured by thee and thine.

    What truth accelerates life’s momentous gem,
    Letting the motto become “Carpe diem”?

    Who seized the moment or lost its momentum,
    Wearing not the time as its royal diadem?

    The World does not pass by—
    We pass through it live;

    Clear your being so the treasure may arrive;

    This spirit sparkles of a different light—
    The gemstones are of a different mine.

    Down, down!
    We guide thee, we must carry thee;

    Down, down!
    We’re illumination beside thee…

    Fear not the proof—
    It’s the beauty of the truth:

    What entropic seas never-endingly
    Cast Deathly Time aside,
    Ceaselessly thriving on
    Of that which was the imperishable—
    The flame of beauty inextinguishable,
    Forever celebrated as immutable
    That gained its perpetual permanence
    From the undying love of the glorious truth?

    Above the ground, you were ever born again
    When the roseate hearts were cleansed by dew;

    And lucky were you if spring found you new,
    As every blossom on the bush blew full.

    When these wonders the new morning bestrew;
    The beauty of truth was all that you “knew”…

    Life’s hardships there were softened by beauty,
    All its weaknesses strengthened by the truth—
    As, when roses blossomed, like realizations,
    Beauty itself bloomed from the well of truth.

    Down, down!

    For now, rarely enough, existence is left aside,
    And, yet, the essence ever has its other side—
    Life, although anguishing, must be lived fully,
    Since, if we’re alive enough to feel its beauty

    Then we’re exposed to the opposite twin;
    Yes, Beauty’s other side is Melancholy.

    Down, down,
    The essence beckons us back home,
    As like the contained-container is the poem.

    When a deep truth is known so intensely
    That all of its clothing falls away
    Then we have learned the beauty of truth,
    For the reality of meaning is beauty.

    Opposite twins rule the causing call,
    The positive and negatives being the All.

    When sadness brooded over the morrow,
    I once visited the deep well of sorrow.
    There enshrined, inseparate, Beauty said,
    “’Twas from me that sadness you borrowed.”

    So, do we live the life of art,
    Each playing our part?

    Nay, that is not life, nor a part, bit,
    For there’s another dimension to it.

    Art and poetry enrich human experience,
    But they’re no substitutes for the living of it.

    Like Keat’s figures on the urn blest,
    Should we live life any less?
    NO!—because what is deathless is also lifeless!

    Down, down!

    Truth and beauty must be inseparable,
    Although this is seemingly imponderable.

    On that sphere above,
    Soft breezes ever blew,
    Caressing me and you,
    As we kissed the roses new
    and drank their dew.

    Reason and passion then merged into one,
    As truth and beauty made their rendezvous.

    Down, down, ever down—

    Through the antiquity, past all of the known—
    Arriving at the lowest, remotest throne,
    One of the highest perfection,
    For it was of the opposite directions.

    Here, the enigma of the ever immortal
    Is undone and unloosed, through its portal—
    The Theory of Everything mortal—
    The Idea for which we’ve opened the door to.

    Down, down,
    To the end at last!

    Here the timeless, lawless, and formless
    Of the unordered, uncreated scene;
    Here the causeless reigns “supreme”.
     
  21. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,028
    WHY THERE’S SOMETHING ALWAYS

    Nonexistence
    Of something existing
    Is absolutely impossible,
    And it always will be,
    As it was ever was,
    Being perfectly unstable,
    This motion never ceasing.
    It being the prime mover.

    Of this instability of the simplest
    The QM fluctuations must become,
    All their emissions summing to zero,
    Yet, a few of them somewhat enduring,
    In their canceling oppositeness,
    That must then on to make the definites,
    So as to gain more and more stability,
    Structures which must then be tied to cause,
    These growing more and more complex,
    Even unto stars, galaxies, universes,
    And life forms, such as homo sapiens,
    These structures of the total cycle
    Yet still decaying into their return.

    Such has it always been.
    From this notion (TOE) we can also dispense
    With the paradox of a specific amount
    Of definites having always been around
    With nothing prior to account for the amount,
    As well as no “where” being special either,
    Since anywhere—being any old place,
    Nor “time”, since for any time
    And for all time,
    Nor “what”,
    Since anything
    That’s possible can be,
    Nor “who”, as in special,
    For any life may form,
    Nor any particle properties special,
    For only what is stable enough
    To continue, yet flexible enough to change
    Will go on and on into recombinations
    Of further composite complexity,
    Nor, of course, any planet,
    Solar system, galaxy,
    Or universe being special,
    As there are any and many.
     
  22. universaldistress Extravagantly Introverted ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,468
    I've got too many to choose from.
    And anyway,
    poetry isn't my strong suit,
    for despite its license
    the bastards judge me too harse.
    So I give up and focus on the prose.

    11/03/11, 23.18 gmt
     
  23. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,028
    That's OK; I didn't even rhyme or meter the last poem, just snuck it in based on line breaks alone, and to plug my theory. True, poems, though, can help one to be concise and precise.
     

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