Math! Poetry! Nonsense!
24 April 2012
You say you think there are but finite primes?
Allow me to retort with structured proof!
And so with a simple verse and pattern’d rhymes,
I’ll show: upon their number there’s no roof.
So take your finite set and multiply
Your primes into a single product, whole.
To this add one, and though you think me sly,
We name this number ‘N’ to meet our goal.
N modulo each prime? Remainder one!
Thus N is prime, or at the very least,
must have prime factors which were not among
the list you had when we began this piece!
Thus, where you say by rights there ought be none,
By rule I shew’d there always will be one.
Infactorium 
Okay, here’s my nerdy poem from 1994, published in the MSMA Literary Magazine, page 8! My apologies for overuse of commas.
Sir Issac’s Sonnet
“Excuse me, kind sir,” said a man one day,
“Of what are you thankful for?”
“My dear old man, I really must say,
I give thanks that the Earth has a core.
For if it didn’t, our souls would soar
beyond the limits of our atmosphere.
And also, you see, to say what’s more,
our minds would no longer be here.”
“Goodness gracious, oh my, oh dear!
Did I hear you correctly my friend?
You said that our minds would disappear?
But then…our lives would end.”
“My friend, be calm, forget your plea.
For remember, thank heavens, we have gravity!”
gB or not gb, that is the question;
whether ‘tis nobler in the quest to suffer
The jabs and jeers of outrageous reviewers,
Or to take care with an infectious agent,
And by infecting, silence them. To bind, to fuse
With receptor, and by a publication, silence them
And their notions of other proteins
That their funding relies on. It’s a fight,
An argument to be won. The fight, the win
To win, and silence an army of the others!
In that fight, what data may come
When we have exhausted the mind and reagent,
Must give us pause, there’s the respect
That makes science worth doing
For who would bear the whips and scores of time
That it takes to amass the knowledge needed.
The competitor is wrong, the scientist is tired,
The nights and weekends of toil,
The cheers and laughs of working experiments,
As the patient man will be rewarded
With more work, a weary life,
But later the dread of being scooped,
Data not collected, nor experiments designed
Makes us bear the toils that we have now,
Than to fly to a stress-less world of baking,
Thus science doth make thinkers of us all,
And thus a native hue of resolute stubborn-ness,
Is colored over with the case of uncertainty,
And enterprises of great ideas and excitement,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the game to the time. .
Not strictly a sonnet, but an exercise of procrastination on the virus I used to work on.
WOW. Impressive work, friends! But can you say you wrote yours in less than 9 minutes?
I don’t remember. But these are lovely and I think we should have a monthly science-poetry #madwriting party. Each month hosted on a different blog. That blog owner picks the style. Eh?
Definitely worth a shot!