Best Hawking Poems
(to Mittens)
Schrödinger’s Cat is where it’s at,
nor live, nor dead, nor purring.
With half a chance she’ll live to prance
the worst may be occurring.
But if I’d look I’d lock her fate.
Dare I disturb her quantum state
when spooky action at-a-distance
could conclude poor cat’s existence?
Somehow unseen I need to see
behind that curious curtain,
where “God plays dice” with cats and mice,
and Heisenberg was uncertain.
Where large meets small, and cause effect,
where fact finds science fiction.
It boggles my small intellect …
Each way I think of to protect
her has some contradiction.
Where simple seeming Maxwell’s Demon,
if programmed to assist …
To no avail, he’s doomed to fail,
he clearly can’t exist.
Where mighty minds have failed before,
what chance have I to best Niels Bohr?
Poor Einstein nearly fried his noggin
when he tried at Copenhagen.
Then at the Solvay Congress, rambling,
suffered cerebellum scrambling.
Where the world’s four known forces and all its best minds,
couldn’t save kitty lest they Unified.
So he tried and he tried, and he tried and he tried,
still we weren’t Unified on the day Einstein died.
Then followed footsteps, Steven Hawking.
Though he didn’t do much walking,
wowed us with his brilliant squawking.
Black holes have “hair?!” Could information,
spared by quantum sublimation,
paired in Grand Unification,
spare this long-hair’s ruination?
Could yet unwritten cosmic laws
apply behind those blurry walls
to spare her furry feline paws?
I can’t remember if I cried
when I read that Steven Hawking died.
Such sadness touched me deep inside,
still, we were not Unified.
So confidence I can’t exude.
The only thing I can conclude:
Alas, I lack ability
to tinker probability.
But I will give you even odds that all our odds are even.
This odd result results because we’ve mixed our rhymes with reason.
So be it odd to play at God … by God there’s a solution!
I have free will and will by God will out her execution.
So, by stroke of this pen I do decree:
This story ended. Happily!
The tethers of this
all too fickle body
fall away
before the immensity
of space and time
leaving the mind
free.
I roam the edge of the roughs, ponds 'n streams
For illusive precious golf spheres per chance
Long looks through silt sifting for glints it seems
That make themselves appear to start the dance
Bits of dimpled light that want once again
Away from their sunken settled dark place
To take full flight across the verdant glen
And put a simple smile on one's bright face
For when you find a lost ball, dearest friend
They share great joys and awful torrid tears
What begins anew from someone else's end
Those round companions can go on for years
So live 'n walk ever searching to gawk
The vagary life of the true Ball Hawk
Colored pencil illustration G. Gaul 2023
At eight, Mary started hawking
Supplies, at Creek road market
Little Mary!
Hawking
Up and down
In the hazardous market
''Buy your ice water''
Every now and then
She would cry
Many a kids
Also hawked wares
Hence, their continual cries
'' Buy kerosene''
'' Buy your ice water''
'' Buy your ice cream''
A customer's beckon
Always triggered chaos
The struggle to sell their wares
Some kids crossed without
Watching
Upon one hawking day
A reckless driver hit Mary
Slowly, she lost her breath
And went down in a thud
The driver escaped like a mad dog
A folk of traders like an ant colony
Gathered about the child
Shaking heads with folded arms
Soon they dispersed
With a tale to tell
How Mary, the hawking child
Died with the night
But shall arise with the sun no more
Stephen Hawking says we must colonize another planet
Or face extinction, sure hope we can manage it
That's quite a goal
For us human souls
The movers will make a large fortune, I submit
Within Pantheon Of Classical Gods
stricken with affliction,
sans amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
(also known as ALS,
or Lou Gehrig's disease)
in the prime of his youth wrought
underestimation, vitiated termination,
targeted sequestration,
solidified rigidification,
rendered quandary,
per paralyzation obliterated,
nixed navigation,
morphed motivation,
marked limitation
kickstarted infatuation,
jinxed immobilization,
induced intellectual hyperfunction,
garnered fundamental fascination,
fanned fabled exploration,
devastation demonstrated
delectable declaration,
cosmological constant comet
clinched, chained certain capitulation,
brainstormed benefaction,
benediction attribution assured.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
his longevity (marked by bing permanently
linkedin, hitched, drafted
to a custom made wheelchair,
his brilliant unsullied scientific genius)
endured seventy six orbitz veer
ring round the nearest star,
though seemingly motionless, he freed their
ret tickle physiochemical insight
encompassing, revolutionizing,
and jaw-dropping, revelations
with mortals he did share
transcendent seeded plentifully
mental limitless groundswell
fed his fecund rare
if eyed cogitated, formulated, insulated
(infinitesimal nook and cranny) force *****
lee disproportionate overly endowed capacity
bracketed with mar ching madness peer
ring with laser, razor, and taser sharp mind
(or a minuscule approximate near
facsimile thereof) scrutinizing, positing,
and discerning astronomical phenomena mere
via concentrating gifted limned, and rapacious,
though processes affixed
with a visage mordantly like King Lear.
Stephen Hawking was bogged down in space.
Just one eye moved around in his face.
But in spacetime he leapt
like a quantum and kept
all of us far behind his great pace.
In memory of Stephen Hawking (8 January 1942 – 14 March 2018)
Now that you've passed
into the apparent horizons
with an infinitely dense
and a powerful singularity
never to return again
yet you will always be with us
far into future when "us" will
turn back in to the star dust
the condensed masses of knowledge
the understanding of the universe will
never be apart from your legacy
it denser inside realms of
the knowledge of humanity
with a physical radius lesser than
the Schwarzschild radius
even though you've vanished
you're knowledge will radiate out
into the universe forever as the
"Hawking Radiation"
The visible world
And the Universe,
- (Little as we know of it)
Have the indefinable stamp
Of personality on them.
That is clear - even to fools.
Meanwhile in our world,
Hawking and Dawkins –
Dr. Woe and Dr. No
Sam Harris and all the rest
Stumble about
In tiny circles
And shout -
“We have no doubt
Physics exist and scientific method too,
The rest of it is an irrational zoo
Of superstitious nonsense!
God does not exist,
Nor do I,
It is all a dream,
Pie in the sky.”
Then Dawkins says he’s hungry
And Hawking says he’s thirsty
And Sam Harris, sitting
On the fence, smartly dressed, says:
“Chocolate fudge for me.”
Only the restaurant doesn’t exist!
No Dunkin’ Donuts
No McDonalds
No TGIFs or Ruby Tuesdays.
“We shall wait a trillion years,” concludes Dawkins,
“No, a trillion, trillion, years,” says Hawking,
“And then what?” asks Sam Harris?
“Then you will get fudge,” says Hawking, smirking.
“By the law of random numbers,
Chocolate fudge will be reconstituted
Out of atoms.”
“But, says Sam, logical to the last,
“I cannot wait 100 trillion years for my sundae!”
“In the case,” says Dawkins, “you’ll have to die.”
“Why?”
“Why? – Have you gone mad?
- You know that you can’t ask “why”,
It is an illegitimate question.
It’s like asking, “Why do birds fly?”
“Well, why do they?” asks Sam Harris.
“I can give you the equations,” says Hawking
Just then there is a boom, like thunder.
“What was that?” say Dawkins and Hawking.”
“Wait!” says, Sam Harris – who suddenly goes pale:
“That was God, fellas.”
“So what is the scientific answer?” says Hawking.
Sam goes red.
“Well, actually fellows, she said:
“Tell Hawking to answer the question why birds fly
In plain language, not by equations.”
“Here is a pot of glue Hawking,” says Dawkins.
“What for?” says Hawking.
“Because now you are stuck!” says Dawkins,
Laughing his head off..
a brilliant mind ~~
a journey through a black hole
final theory ~~
Written on 14 march 2018
Stephen Hawking
His legacy is large
as he leaves his
life-sustaining technology
behind..
He leaves behind also
this quote:
"The greatest enemy of
knowledge is not ignorance,
it is the illusion of knowledge."
Knowledge
often masquerades
as wholeness
claiming more than
its limited span..
Knowledge as thought
appears in our Self
is made of Self
but cannot know
the infinite Self...
Our Thanks, Stephen Hawking...
Science's
True
Enthusiast
Pioneered
Hope
Eternal
Notwithstanding
Withered
Human
Admonitions!
Who
Knows
If
Noosphere*
Goes On?
_______
*Noosphere - the sphere of human thought, from Teilhard de Chardin
(In Honor of Dr. Stephen W. Hawking, 1942 - 2018)
2/25/2019
Human hands and hawks have worked well together
Five thousand year record for falconry
An eternal bond of flesh and feather
Shows us how epic hawk hunting can be
As raptors light upon a gloved fist
Freed from handler's hoods hawks wing on high
See this dim lit tale through thicket and mist
Think how hawks think in the chase as they fly
These predators soar into human hearts
Seek nature's balance between bird and prey
Fiercely their talons grasp the killing arts
Pouncing and crushing victims every way
Returns to the glove are acts to behold
By the hands of man see nature unfold
105 words Sonnet 14 lines
Colored Pencil illustration by G. Gaul
I
Cosmos has some constant and Einstein got closest in a century
- pure gravity
II
Hawking stated loudly, If there's gravity, the cosmos will create itself
III
Gravity, in black Holes too, is Love of God: it cancels all laws by Grace-Gravity
Stephen Hawking died today
The greatest mind of our time
Physically restrained by his disability
His mind explored the universe
He wanted to know
How we came to be
He explored the universe
I hope now he will find
The answers he wanted
So walk or run
Do those things you want
Finally - there are no earthly bonds
It goes to show
A life well led
Means there are no constraints
Even when the odds are
Against you
You can triumph.
© Paul Warren Poetry