ALGORITHM

That’s all very well, she said.
Logic with data built up to make linear sense:
to get one’s head around the lattice of substance, structure
- and the objective perception thereof.
But what about algorithms, then?

This is not just a matter of following numerical sequences and specifications.
Nor computing neat answers by set procedures.

More, a mysterious recipe of playful gods
dancing across random stepping stones,
stage by whimsical stage, without a predictable map;
each one open to idiosyncrasy, isolated from the contours and context of the other
without an overall pattern or apparent trajectory.

Pulling the plug on complacency.

Does one have to be a stooge in a lab
with an egg instead of head?
Is there only one unambiguous arrangement of neurons,
one apprenticeship discipline that enables?

Or, mayhap, there are other ways to gauge outcomes for precise problems
- let alone inexact ones?
That can be grasped by butterflies bopping about,
by the insane, inebriate or entranced,
Even by a spec of anti-matter, the intention of a tree
or some entirely alternate un-thing?

Do creators sit at their desks with pencils in hand
following protocol and rules they themselves invented? And sync?
Or just laugh and throw bits of chaos into their experimental cooking pot
amongst the basic components termed fundamental?
Though by whose charter would those be defined - or designed - as such, who knows!
Some nameless extrajudicial Divinity quite beyond the pale!

But there is more of a plan and policy, she said
(not amused by profligacy or hubris)
than competing gods and warring systems pitted against each other’s incompatibilities.
Can’t you see that the procedures can be repeated and have a result. Arrive at a hypothesis.
Like chess, she said.
There are strategies.
Only a thoroughly trained physicist
is able to laterally leap, to input codes and measures to risk and chance
and add time into the equation
can hope to put them together in an organic way, with a consistent result.

It is slovenly to suppose we can discern and encompass boxes outside our box;
It is mind and word games only. Little puffs of conceptual air
with our worms eye view, on the brink of infinity.

Algorithms, the nearest we can get to what IS - after beatitude.
She said.