Dump

Another poem I wrote for a FUUN service


This is a confession

I don’t like to think about it
I do the chore
I toss it into the bin
I carry it to the alley
I recycle
But I don’t like to think about it

The blue truck lumbers past me
As I wait for the morning bus
A lingering odor in its wake
A foulness that disturbs my coffee

The knife i used in 1997
To spread mayonnaise on a hamburger bun
It’s still out there
Somewhere
The mayonnaise packet too

I think about the city dump
An old man sits in a salvaged chair
Outside a plywood shack
A mutt dog at his feet
Directing things
“Old refrigerators over there!”
“Kitchen trash there!”
“Diapers? On the pile!”
He has too few teeth
The dog has too few legs
This is how I romanticize

The truth though...
The corporations
The billions of dollars
The workers
The truckloads
The waste, shredded and compacted.  Sealed away
The barges carting it off to distant lands
The mounds and mounds and mounds
The poverty
The hepatitis
The people
Their lives.  Their dreams

I don’t like to think about it

Software Development as an Art

This is meditation on the concept of computer programming as an art form. I delivered it during this morning's service at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashville. It seemed to go over well enough, so I thought I'd post it here.


The idea that software development is an art form is pretty controversial.   Google it and you’ll find blogs full of rants on both sides.  ‘Craft’ is a far more acceptable term, but even then there’s disagreement.  Still, no one can deny that software development is a creative process.  It begins with an idea and ends with an application.  Something that -- while not exactly tangible -- is usable.  Once it’s complete (if it ever is) something that did not exist, now does.  It’s been created, brought forth from...someplace

I’m a computer programmer.  I work for a product company that builds web-based, healthcare education and talent management software.  The code I write is a mixture of C#, TSQL, Javascript, HTML and CSS.  My job requires a knowledge of both object oriented and functional programming concepts, test-driven development, security, SCRUM, HTTP, REST, XML, JSON, design patterns and that’s just a random sampling.

So, clearly, I am an artist.

Yeah, sometimes, I have a hard time buying it too.

Okay. I can tell you a time when I feel like an artist.  It’s common practice when developing software as part of a team to have code reviews.  These may be one-on-one or may be in a packed conference room around a large screen TV, but in either case the goal is the same: to judge my code -- to pick it apart, to search for defects, for inefficiencies, for poor style.  These code reviews are essential in developing quality software.  It’s well known that the earlier a bug is found the cheaper and easier it is to fix and one, two or 12 extra sets of eyes can see things I can’t.  I know it’s useful.  I know it’s for the best.  I even know that soon I’ll be the one doing the reviewing.  But it hardly matters in the moment.  My code is on display.  The thing I created with all its unnecessary object instantiations, its bloated method bodies, its classes with too many reasons to change.  It’s all there.  My code stands naked.  And these people are all so much smarter than me.

So that’s why I think software development is, at least, kinda like art.  I’m attached to the code I write.  I care about it.  I worry about it.  I spend too much time playing with it...a process so common amongst developers, it has a name:  Refactoring.  This class could be shorter.  This name could be more meaningful.  That call should probably return in less than 20 minutes.  It could be better.  I can make it better.

So I figured if software is an art form, I could probably write a poem about it.  Something that might describe it’s beauty to those who’ve never heard the term “curly braces”.  Here’s my attempt.  If anyone has any suggestions for cleaning it up or improving it, please let me know.




It’s about crafting worlds
Objects built, set out and decorated
Actors passing notes on a silent stage
Scene playing out behind the curtain

It’s about transformation
One structure becomes another
Then another
Is wrapped in abstraction
And stripped to its frame

To the outsider
It’s foreign.  Ugly
Letters and spaces
Abominable use of punctuation
Best left to basements

To the novice
It’s syntax. Branching. Iteration
A mystery unraveling slowly between failed compilations and segmentation faults
Until finally IT WORKS!  But wait...is that right?

To the veteran
It’s solid
Real
Alive
Turning and pulsing
The running thing
Not the code
But where code and machine meet
Visual
Shapes and colors. Pulses of light along connecting lines

It can be beautiful
It can be ugly
But I guess that’s true of a lot of things

On Death

This month at my church, First Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashville, we are focussing on the uncomfortable subject of death. The following poems are a part of my attempt to contribute to that conversation.

Awareness

Death to me, as perhaps to you,
upon first encounter
is a new fact
like gravity,
the heat of a long burning light bulb,
or the sounds of a dog outdoors in winter.

Wonder sets in before fear and sadness.
Emotions learned.  Acquired from adults.
The proper way to behave, they tell me,
is to sit still and be sad.
The proper way to behave, they show me,
is to speak softly in cautious grief.

Then an acceptance:
Everyone else, it seems, must die.

###

Understanding

I say Death must become unfair
because it isn't
intrinsically.
It fits the bill quite well though.
Plays its part.
The looming curtain, waiting,
waiting to drop and end the show
without concern, or without much concern,
as to the state of the players
or the scene
or the act.
Possibly without concern even for the playwright
but I can't speak to that.

Death is the stage hand, who, after having seen enough,
or maybe due to an urge for a cigarette or a coffee or a sandwich at the diner down the way
pulls the cord,
drops the heavy veil,
cutting the action.
Treating equally the most poetic of soliloquy,
the basest burlesque
and the brightest light-hearted farce.

###

Justification

Death is a metaphor for winter. For describing the cold and the harsh without having to fall to words
like 'cold' or 'harsh'
The closing of the eyes, like the quick darkening of the skies, brings fear.
With Death at least we speak of the unknown.We pretend and our pretending leads to some surprising ideas.
Ideas so varied, so diverse that we recognize how much we don't know.

(Even if we won't always admit to it)

Death is a softer, gentler stand-in for the burdens of life.
Burdens we know too well and will anticipate if, for even a moment, we leave our minds free to do so.

###

Reality

The nurse told us that toward the end
she would pull away,
and I was left with the image of me
as a boy on the playground and the friend,
who only just the day before had run with me to be the first on the swing,
was today telling me to go away
to take my cooties someplace else.
He'd found a better friend.
And, now, was our grandmother doing just the same?
Had she grown tired of us?  Found someone new to love?
Would she make them, from scratch, a banana pudding
with the meringue on top, just like I liked it?
And who was this nurse?  This woman sworn to heal!
Who was she to tell us this?  To surrender?  To tell us to surrender!
Was it not she who was pulling away?  On to other patients?
To better patients?  To find someone maybe a little less challenging?
And here we are, weak, helpless, practically begging her to stay.
Calling to her.  Calling to God.  We'll do better.  We'll be kinder.
We'll eat every last one of our vegetables.
All the while knowing, or at least coming to know, that it's no good
It's no good.
The movie is ending.  The evening is passing into night.  The light is...
Metaphors.
We have to look at this thing.  See it for what it is.  
There's no room now for wasted time.
We gather around the bed.  We hold each other.  We cry until we shake.
We cover one another in tears.
We practice, each in turn, saying goodbye.
We wait.
And, when finally it comes, we are not ready.

###

Mystery

Age can be measured
in funerals attended per year.
A better way, perhaps,
than years since birth.
Better for being not a line, straight on, but a curve.
Sloping upward, toward life's asymptote.
Logic ceases. Reason suspends.
And even sacred mathematics
fails to explain with any personal satisfaction.

It's mystery. Damned mystery.
And it's with no small shame that I admit
how much I truly, truly hate that word.