Linux Songs Poems

If researchers wrote nursery rhymes...

Little Miss Muffet sat on her gluteal region,
Eating components of soured milk.
On at least one occasion,
        along came an arachnid and sat down beside her,
Or at least in her vicinity,
And caused her to feel an overwhelming, but not paralyzing, fear,
Which motivated the patient to leave the area rather quickly.
                -- Ann Melugin Williams

If she had not been cupric in her ions,
Her shape ovoidal,
Their romance might have flourished.
But he built tetrahedral in his shape,
His ions ferric,
Love could not help but die,
Uncatylised, inert, and undernourished.

If you had just a minute to breathe,
And they granted you one final wish,
Would you ask for something
Like another chance?
                -- Traffic, "The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys"

If you stick a stock of liquor in your locker,
It is slick to stick a lock upon your stock.
        Or some joker who is slicker,
        Will trick you of your liquor,
If you fail to lock your liquor with a lock.

If you're worried by earthquakes and nuclear war,
As well as by traffic and crime,
Consider how worry-free gophers are,
Though living on burrowed time.
        -- Richard Armour, WSJ, 11/7/83

Il brilgue: les t^oves libricilleux
        Se gyrent et frillant dans le guave,
Enm^im'es sont les gougebosquex,
        Et le m^omerade horgrave.

Es brilig war.  Die schlichte Toven
        Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben;
Und aller-mumsige Burggoven
        Dir mohmen Rath ausgraben.
                -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass"

In /users3 did Kubla Kahn
A stately pleasure dome decree,
Where /bin, the sacred river ran
Through Test Suites measureless to Man
Down to a sunless C.

In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun.
Find the fun and snap!  The job's a game.
And every task you undertake, becomes a piece of cake,
        a lark, a spree; it's very clear to see.
                -- Mary Poppins

In high school in Brooklyn
I was the baseball manager,
proud as I could be
I chased baseballs,
gathered thrown bats
handed out the towels                   Eventually, I bought my own
It was very important work              but it was dark blue while
for a small spastic kid,                the official ones were green
but I was a team member                 Nobody ever said anything
When the team got                       to me about my blue jacket;
their warm-up jackets                   the guys were my friends
I didn't get one                        Yet it hurt me all year
Only the regular team                   to wear that blue jacket
got these jackets, and                  among all those green ones
surely not a manager                    Even now, forty years after,
                                        I still recall that jacket
                                        and the memory goes on hurting.
                -- Bart Lanier Safford III, "An Obscured Radiance"

In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
                -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"