listen (a perl poem)

[Sharon Hopkins]

Don't expect this to *do* anything: I had a hard enough time just getting
it to parse in both perl and English!

#!/usr/bin/perl

APPEAL:

listen (please, please);

open yourself, wide,
join (you, me),
connect (us,together),

tell me.

do something if distressed;

@dawn, dance;
@evening, sing;
read (books,poems,stories) until peaceful;
study if able;

write me if-you-please;

sort your feelings, reset goals, seek (friends, family, anyone);

do not die (like this) if sin abounds;

keys (hidden), open locks, doors, tell secrets;
do not, I-beg-you, close them, yet.

accept (yourself, changes),
bind (grief, despair);

require truth, goodness if-you-will, each moment;

select (always), length-of-days

# Sharon Hopkins, Feb. 21, 1991

[Kerry Shetline]

In article <11...@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> sha...@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV

(Sharon Hopkins) writes:
> APPEAL:
>
> listen (please, please);
>
> open yourself, wide,
> join (you, me),
> connect (us,together),

Wonderful poem! I'm not familiar with perl, but I am a programmer (I do
most
of my work in C). I found the effect produced by fitting your words and
thoughts to the syntax requirements of this language stunning.

-Kerry

[Jefferson Ogata]

Mee too. I thought it was really radically super cool. It set me
to thinking about what one could do writing poetical shell scripts
or awk programs. Perhaps dynamic poetry; even C programs....sort
of like the little vt100 files people make to do screen animation.

In fact, I was so intrigued by the form, I don't think I read the
poem very well! ;-)
--
Jefferson Ogata og...@cs.umd.edu
University Of Maryland Department of Computer Science