Casey Pick
02-12-02
1:46am
The Poetic Justice System
Someone once told me there was an unwritten law
That science and poetry don�t mix.
That the two go together like oil and water...
...or was it nitro and glycerin?
Seems a reasonable conclusion
After all, the two are even clearly segregated within the skull,
With a gaping (meta)physical canyon in between.
But if that�s the case, I�d best prepare to forfeit my license
Because lately I�ve come to view life as a sine graph
With its consistent ups and downs�or maybe it�s tangent,
With interspersed places utterly untouchable and undefined.
I�ve watched as lovers obeyed Newton�s laws,
Circling regular as clockwork
Until they gained enough velocity to escape
Or their orbit was interrupted by the introduction of a greater gravitational pull.
And most telling of all, I�ve wept with relief
When a clever comrade thought to apply Conservation of Energy
To the human being... to the human soul.
In their words, energy is neither created nor destroyed,
And what are we but energy?
It is what makes our hearts beat and our thoughts leap.
(Electrical impulses, energy-call it what you will-I�m here to argue poetry, not semantics)
So when I leave, and others leave us
They are never truly gone�for nothing disappears...all is conserved.
So perhaps there is something sympathetic about science, after all,
Something poetic in its laws...