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Mushroom to Svamp

How fungi transform material, we admire as Google, from English to Swedish, translates mushroom into svamp.

A beautiful word, a swamp-cum-vamp, a siren emerging from a quagmire to appeal to our fetishistic death wish.

Alice in IKEAland swallows SVAMP regurgitates a lamp. We may desire a frosted orange agaric, but our outlandish dream is out of stock. Alice has SVAMPIG, a grey/white sponge, the soft side, a dishcloth, the coarse side for stains that require more vigorous cleaning. SVAMPIG commands, Wet before use. No PISHSALVER, Drink me, but she aspires not to shrink, nor whirl in the gyre – O Thanatos, into Swedish you translate. Spongy is SVAMPIG.

Mushroom Machine

1. The urge to begin with ‘I’ Must be resisted. This default mode Close to the manufacturer’s setting Most users would probably choose. Brain at wakeful rest, daydreaming About which lock ‘I’ fits To start the whole engine churning.

2. Alan Turing is on the new £50 note. His nephew says he should be remembered, Not primarily for code breaking, but for Asking, ‘Can machines think?’ Our smartphones can write plausible poetry. The Computer’s First Christmas Card Does not begin iwishyou.

3. Professor Adamatzy inserted electrodes in oyster mushrooms and held a flame to the cap of one. Other fruiting bodies responded in the mycelial network with a sharp electrical spike – potential for fungal computers and mycelium as environmental sensors.

4. Time of year: autumn; adjective: electric; Two singular nouns, not normally In the same sentence: mushroom, machine; Another adjective: pale; verb: signals. Electric autumn An oyster mushroom signals Beyond the machine*

* Poem Generator: Create a Haiku in Seconds