Weekend Poem

Apoptosis

When a cell suddenly dies it’s called apoptosis.  

No one knows why; it’s a secret knowledge,

A microscopic biological gnosis,

A screeching stoppage.

Maybe we’re all programmed to just croak

According to inscrutable cosmic algorithms

Each and every cell in on the joke

Songs clang out of tune, drums lose the rhythm. 

Our cell membranes were always just a temporary redoubt,

Fragile molecules arranged in aqueous oval orbs.

The killer never comes from without;

It was always a destructive directive from the inner core.

The lines drawn were always contingent.

One day they suddenly wobble,

Waver like highway apparitions in summer heat

Before a final fading oblivion.

This enclosed space was never a real dominion.

(It was a gift, it was luck)

Form dissolves into the surrounding solution;

Ribosomes, nuclei spontaneously deconstruct.

x

Soon all the cells around you will go quiet;

The humming machinery of life stalls.

Does the silence distill a cold sweat,

Do you wake up soaking wet?

A sleeping sickness spreads like osmosis,

Last one left adrift in currents, untethered.

This then is the one time for fear,

Surrounded by silence, by formlessness

Underwater drifting with eyes closed

Not knowing what begins in this unmarked frontier.

Will you run out of time

To crack this code

Before your own scripted de-quickening?

Will we rise when we lose the lines that limit us,

Or does the meager space between the confines define us?

Do lines and spaces forever inhibit us?

When we fade and become formless

What remains may be the gist of another.

Primordial stew of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen

Driven to new patterns and connections by a quiet narration

We've always heard but now are expected to confess.

The timer always resets:

Another countdown, another secret expiration

6/22/18