Glorious esolang where programs can be written as power-ballads, e.g.:
A poetic number literal begins with a variable name, followed by the keyword
is
, or the aliaseswas
orwere
. As long as the next symbol is not a reserved keyword, the rest of the line is treated as a decimal number in which the values of consecutive digits are given by the lengths of the subsequent barewords, up until the end of the line. To allow the digit zero, and to compensate for a lack of suitably rock'n'roll 1- and 2-letter words, word lengths are parsed modulo 10. A period (.) character denotes a decimal place. Other than the first period, any non-alphabetical characters are ignored.
Tommy was a lovestruck ladykiller
initialisesTommy
with the value100
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved youall your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
From Paul Violi, "Counterman":
Roast beef on whole wheat, please,
With lettuce, mayonnaise, and a center slice
Of beefsteak tomato.
The lettuce splayed, if you will,
In a Beaux Arts derivative of classical acanthus,
And the roast beef, thinly sliced, folded
In a multifoil arrangement
That eschews Bragdonian pretentions
Or any idea of divine geometric projection
For that matter, but simply provides
A setting for the tomato
To form a medallion with a dab
Of mayonnaise as a fleuron.
And—as eclectic as this may sound—
If the mayonnaise can also be applied
Along the crust in a Vitruvian scroll
And as a festoon below the medallion,
That would be swell.—You mean like in the Cathedral St. Pierre in Geneva?
Yes, but the swag more like the one below the rosette
At the Royal Palace in Amsterdam.
The best one:
The Baron of Fawsley, Lord St John,
Had a fine buckskin coat with a frt john.
He said, "It was guthven
Me by Viscount Ruthven,
Who thinks I'm a cowboy, or t john."
Lord Alfred, the laureate clever,
Embarked on a morbid endeavor:
"My dear Henry left me,
Poor little bereft me!"
(His elegy goes on forever)