“Code is poetry” is a term that gets thrown out there all the time, but in the case of Bruce McGovern, the 14 year old Asian-American whiz-kid from central Louisiana, the metaphor is quite literal.

McGovern chooses Ruby as his poetry platform, stating “the literary ambiguities and idioms of the Ruby scripting language are idiomatic, ambigumatic, and literariomatic.”

Below are two of McGovern’s most recent works of code poetry, to be displayed at the PS1 gallery in New York City next month.

The first, from last winter’s collection “My Heart is Now a Model Under Your Control,” depicts the heartbreak of a young man within the depths of grief, despair, and loss (click to read entire work):

But grief and despair are not McGovern’s only colors with which to paint.  The striking maturity and sharp-witted concision in the 14 year old’s new collection will garner a second glance from even the most scathing of literary critics.  This is an excerpt from his recent epic, entitled “A Whole New View.”