road.pl

A Poem in Perl

Note from the Poet: Perl is a computer language that programmers are able to write poetry in, due to the large number of available commands.  It’s a game to try to write something that makes sense and also compiles. I’ve wanted to write some Perl poetry for years. This poem actually runs (and doesn’t do anything).

#!/usr/bin/perl

# The first need is to free ourselves of that worst form of contemporary obscurantism. -FAH
# Perl code can be treacherously obfuscated. -Larry Wall, inventor of Perl

for (each %western_democracies) {
    fork;
    
    if (require state) {
        FREEDOM::dump unless reverse;
        
        $socialism->$facism->$totalitarianism;
        $freedom=>$planning;

        while ($you != $me) {    
            push @people, %minority_will;
            bind MEN, POLITICS;   
            close $markets and unlink BUYER, SELLER;    
            exit DEMOCRACY and bless SOCIALISM;
        };
        
        do not sleep; do not wait && wait && wait until time;
        do alarm; do join my $cause, %values; do split /power/;
        
        listen YOU, EVERYONE or "serfdom";
    }    
}