stochastic progress

Cetaceans galloping beneath the waves
preserve a land-based quadrupedal gait
as upright Man so often still behaves
like ancestors more fit to brachiate.
Old subroutines are cheap to rearrange
as duplicated genes are free to drift.
Among the clunkers, each time we make change,
collectibles are there, for us to sift.
Conserving features more like the sublime
absorbing bound'ries play the longest odds
repeating throughout eons of Deep Time
produced the physiognomy of gods.
Until biologists learned to do math
it took a genius to discern life's path.

Shannon Entropy

I dreamed that you could understand the code that I'd devised
devoid of ambiguity as plain as broad daylight
and anyone who heard or read could look out through my eyes
a sweet, seductive fantasy that helped me sleep at night
I rushed to put it down in ink the moment I awoke
but trains of baggage came along with every word I chose
the clarity was the mirage, and all I clutched was smoke
that through my fingers oozed away and to the stars arose
Retreat! Retrench! at least in math, we share communion pure
that isn't just conventional, transparent to us all

but Gödel interjects to say I must not be so sure

an edifice on such a base in time may also fall
self-organized, dream-words conform to heptametric verse
so somewhere, entropy must grow, within my universe

where to mathematicians go?

a tilted planet, orbiting its sun
has days that wax and wane throughout the year
a  normal axis sets all=one
a cosmic bicycle in one fixed gear
a metaphor for life's growths and decays
implicit in each daybreak and sunset
aligning dimming eyes with waning days
a finite bankroll carrying no debt
but cyclic functions come around again
each Spring's rebirth's as sure as Fall's decline
so poets sketch an afterlife for men
a lot like this, but of inverted sign
conjecture's free to roam where data's null
to think it's settled fact, one must be dull

dimensions

geometry precludes tube-in-a-tube
for animals constrained to be 2-D
a one-way gut would split the beast in two
without a hope of contiguity
a third dimension, bridging what's been cut
allows a complicated body-plan
connecting mouth to anus with a gut
be it a crocodile, or louse, or man
but Strings want ten in Space and one in Time
imagination boggles at the task
to sketch a world that won't fit in one mind
and yet we feel compelled at least to ask
a scherzo on dimensionality
finds wide horizons once one gets past three