Viscosity

The Navier-Stokes equations*

They have to do with fluids,

They have to do with flow,

And now AI has tested them,

They show what we don’t know.

Our life is like a fluid

All history but a flow

Of turbulence with impediments

What demon made it so?

Love likens to viscosity:

It stays us in the flood

Of mathematical arguments,

The maddest dreams of blood.

"Shitstorms are also a kind of wave."—Byung-Chul Han, In the Swarm: Digital Prospects, trans. Erik Butler (MIT Press, 2017), 5.

*See https://navier-stokes.org/navier-stokes-equations/

Saturday, September 19, 2026

In the Troposphere: A Meteorological Sonnet

This lowest level of the atmosphere

Is where they’ve set our tragicomedy.

Like tears and rain, production has an end,

Although romantic couplings all depend

On tearing up a sentimental eye,

Which in its observation sets a course

Charted neither by purpose nor by gear.

But bends . . . whatever it evolved to bend.

Attenuating gasses give off less heat,

And words are warming in the troposphere.

In want of fuel, a language can’t be beat!

Whether you speak Welsh or isiXhosa,

Too, makes no matter to the tropopause,

Which hangs above all wordiness down here.

Note: The transitional layer of the atmosphere between the stratosphere and the troposphere is called the tropopause. See https://www.noaa.gov/jetstream/atmosphere/layers-of-atmosphere.

Thursday, September 17, 2026

The Screen and the Words

I am a traveler from an ancient time;

It may be your world, which I take for mine.

I gaze upon your face as on a screen

Wondering how to penetrate what's been,

And whether my haphazard thoughts

Might be so many oughts. Or naughts?

But then discard the banal question,

Rebelling at its mere suggestion.

I do not speak the language I define.

It may be your world I take for mine.

It would be bad manners for a guest

To put such passing issues to the test.

I merely juggle with the words

Found lying here, as sport for nerds.

I could continue on these lines,

In balance with the thought, the times,

Which may be headed to corrupt.

A fine occasion to shut up!

Some say “which,” others “that”;

And some are thin and others fat,

Circumstance may well define!

It may be your world I take for min . . .

Monday, September 14, 2026