Pray there shall be poetry in my computer science PhD

James Bowden

I am so excited for fall to fall upon me.

Summer has been sweet, but havoc wreaks
my subconscious. It is said that to do great
work, the brain must be loosed upon it like
a wild dog. The pieces I can drag together
consciously, dwarfed by what my neurons
synthesize behind my back and proffer me,
small-handed and mysterious, in the shower,
in dreams, in the hills that stretch like wheat-
elephants from the high glass window of
my desk. With the flurry of change that is
fall: imagine how many fluttering leaves my
brain will have to chew on. Imagine how my
turmoil will be matched by the biting wind. Imagine
all the alliteration all the assonance all the
all the albumin that my ærs may or may
not pick up on. Where, oh where, will go
the syllabic little slut that is, me?

Am I a poet? Am I a mathematician? Am I simply
concussed? Is my brain big enough to straddle the
line, all the lines? Balance does not
become me. I push my subconscious toward the scientific,
and the poetry of life threatens to slip through my fingers.
Emotions I have fought so hard to feel seem quickly
irrelevant. Only
focus. Only machine. The
the beautiful borne upon me bears past me and I
I blink.
I can only hold so much. What if I can’t hold it all?

I cannot hold it all.

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First rendered here.