Perl Poetry

Article  970  of  comp.lang.perl:
Path:  jpl-devvax!pl-dexxav!lwall
From:  [email protected]  (Larry  Wall)
Newsgroups:  news.groups,rec.arts.poems,comp.lang.perl
Subject:  CALL  FOR  DISCUSSION:  comp.lang.perl.poems
Message-ID:  <[email protected]>
Date:  1  Apr  90  00:00:00  GMT
Reply-To:  [email protected]  (Larry  Wall)
Organization:  Jet  Prepulsion  Laboratory,  Pasadena,  CA
Lines:  61
It  has  come  to  my  attention  that  there  is  a  crying  need  for  a  place  for  people  to  express  both  their  emotional  
and  technical  natures  simultaneously.  Several  people  have  sent  me  some  items  which  don't  fit  into  any  
newsgroup.  Perhaps  it's  because  I  recently  posted  to  both  comp.lang.perl  and  to  rec.arts.poems,  but  people  
seem  to  be  writing  poems  in  Perl,  and  they're  asking  me  where  they  should  post  them.  Here  is  a  sampling:
From  a  graduate  student  (in  finals  week),  the  following  haiku:

study, write, study,
do review (each word) if time.
close book. sleep? what's that?

And  someone  writing  from  Fort  Lauderdale  writes:

sleep, close together,
sort of sin each spring & wait;
50% die

A  person  who  wishes  to  remain  anonymous  wrote  the  following  example  of  "Black  Perl".    (The  Pearl  poet  
would  have  been  shocked,  no  doubt.)

BEFOREHAND: close door, each window & exit;  wait until time.
    open spellbook, study, read (scan, select, tell us);
write it, print the hex while each watches,
    reverse its length, write again;
    kill spiders, pop them, chop, split, kill them.
       unlink arms, shift, wait & listen (listening, wait),
sort the flock (then, warn the "goats" & kill the "sheep");
    kill them, dump qualms, shift moralities,
    values aside, each one;
        die sheep! die to reverse the system
        you accept (reject, respect);
next step,
    kill the next sacrifice, each sacrifice,
    wait, redo ritual until "all the spirits are pleased";
    do it ("as they say").
do it(*everyone***must***participate***in***forbidden**s*e*x*).
return last victim; package body;
    exit crypt (time, times & "half a time") & close it,
    select (quickly) & warn your next victim;
AFTERWORDS: tell nobody.
    wait, wait until time;
    wait until next year, next decade;
        sleep, sleep, die yourself,
        die at last

I  tried  that,  and  it  actually  parses  in  Perl.    It  doesn't  appear  to  do  anything  useful,  however.    I  think  I'm  glad,  
actually...  I  hereby  propose  the  creation  of  comp.lang.perl.poems  as  a  place  for  such  items,  so  we  don't  clutter  
the  perl  or  poems  newsgroups  with  things  that  may  be  of  interest  to  neither.    Or,  alternately,  we  should  
create  rec.arts.poems.perl  for  items  such  as  those  above  which  merely  parse,  and  don't  do  anything  useful.    
(There  is  precedent  in  rec.arts.poems,  after  all.)    Then  also  create  comp.lang.perl.poems  for  poems  that  
actually  do  something,  such  as  this  haiku  of  my  own:

print STDOUT q
Just another Perl hacker,
unless $spring

Larry  Wall                        [email protected]