Physics Poem β

With apologies to Allen Ginsberg

I
I saw the best minds of past generations destroyed by physics, tired, frustrated, delusional, dragging themselves through the European streets at dawn looking for a frame of reference,
Angel-headed scholars who offered astrological advice to the emperor and his ambitious brother,
Who, as master of the mint, sought to convict counterfeiters while unlocking the secrets of alchemy,
Who used mathematics to prove the existence of god, (while some of us believe it to have spawned from Satan),
Whose demon could compute the future of our universe without error,
Who were allowed to stay in France with an exemption from the decree,
Who invented work (for which we would never forgive him, but that he taught us billiards)
Who were knighted, and became president of the academy.

II
What sphinx of integrals and cross products bashed open their skulls and ate their brains and imagination?
Moloch! Torque! Resistance! Oscillation!
Moloch! Moloch! Gravity! Energy! Force, and the non-inertial frame of reference!
They broke their pencils calculating Moloch’s trajectory toward heaven!

III
Professor J.! I’m with you in Sanders,
Where you’re madder than I am
I’m with you in Sanders,
Where you tell us of spheres in which there is no gravity
I’m with you in Sanders,
Where you insist on the existence of a centrifugal force
I’m with you in Sanders,
Where you describe the motion of a double pendulum

Footnote:
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
The physics is holy! The calculus is holy! The linear algebra is holy! Everything is holy!
Everybody’s holy!
Holy the pencils! Holy the paper! Holy the calculators! Holy the computers! Holy wikipedia! Holy integrals.com! Holy Kepler! Holy Newton! Holy Euler! Holy Laplace! Holy Lagrange! Holy Coriolis! Holy Hamilton! Holy the final exam!

Physics Poem α

My school has a semiannual party for all the physics students. It's quite a rager. We all go to the observatory dome, chat with professors, and read poems that we wrote about physics. This was my first. Freshman fall, I registered for a modern physics course, having no idea what I was getting myself into. I'd like to think that this poem describes the madness that ensued.

Newton was the physicist
Who wrote down the entire list
Of laws that govern we.

If once at rest
You'll stay unless
A force applies to thee.

Such force dictates
Accelerate
Inverse to mass. You see?

The force on you
Is equal to
The backwards one on me.

But these three rules
Just govern fools
Said Einstein once, with glee.

He ruined all of our good fun
And set to write step number one
Far from the apple tree.

"Half m v squared is hardly E.
It's gamma m times square of c.
Don't get me started on P."

Said Albert, then.
And who knows when
We'll understand his lunacy.