"cytoplasm" poems
What they don’t tell you in school,
while you’re trying to remember
the difference between prophase and metaphase
chromosomes and chromatin
is that really
biology isn’t science
biology is life
See, divorce
divorce is like mitosis
slow to start, but quick to finish
Begins at prophase
when conflicts arise as your family’s nucleolus,
your family’s unity
disappears
Your carefree life, your chromatin,
coil and change
become tight, tense chromosomes
Outside forces, mitotic spindles,
residing in the cytoplasm
start creeping towards your parents
to separate their souls
Metaphase:
you’re all lined up
single file
ready for battle
Centrosomes, middles of each new life,
poised opposing each other
with their spindles latched onto you kinetochore, your middle,
like a dog with it’s leash
Anaphase:
everything separates,
your world’s torn apart
and you’re left silently
watching
alone
as your sister is torn from your life
Telophase:
the pain starts to lessen
as you uncoil
and your broken family’s nuclear membrane
begins to reform
Once the paper’s are signed
once the cell’s wall’s rebuilt
your old life is over
and the process
it’s finished
See, they don’t tell you
don’t think you need to know
that
divorce is simply biology
and
mitosis
well, it’s life
Oct 29, 2014
Oct 29, 2014 at 12:21 AM UTC
as RNA polymerase
quietly unzips your
DNA and moves along
the length of your genes
and a bit of RNA
emerges and moves
through the cytoplasm,
after the snRNPs do
their work, of course
and your ribosomes
attach and tRNA does
its noble job fixing
to its anti-codons
linking the peptide chains
of the building blocks
of life
as all this happens
I close my eyes
and kiss you
gently on the cheek
and you smile a little
Sep 14, 2010
Sep 14, 2010 at 3:06 PM UTC
She knew, right afterward.
Amazing.
She knew.
I took her word for it.
Oo-Oo-Oocyte!
The largest, roundest cell
Females have. It is
Visible to the eye
Clothed or nakey.
With the largest surface
Volume in relation to
Her cell-fluid-gorged surface.
One is produced ea/month.
One?
Yowza.
Me?
Millions of the little buggers.
Millions! Yeah! THAT’s
The ticket!
And tiny those little tickets are.
Hardly more than a nucleus with
That powerhouse of the cell,
The Mitochondrial outboard motor,
Propelling the tail.
The smallest and straightest
Human cell
(Cool tail, though)
The juxtaposition is kind
Of amazing.
Large vs. small.
Roundest vs. straightest.
Tail-propelled nucleus
Vs.
Moon-shaped cytoplasm.
The opposite, embryologically-
Speaking.
And she was positive,
POSITIVE
We’d conceived.
Roughly 9 months later,
I was there. Physically.
The rest of me was
Possibly sunning in Togo.
Kind of freaked me out,
The birthing process,
The first time.
My son. My baby boy.
Our child.
5/28/91.
I’m more proud and more
Astonished at the man
My little baby has grown into
With each passing day.
Golden child, beginning
Life with blonde hair,
Almost white, darkening
As he grew into the French-
Indian DNA of his
Mom’s side of the family.
He is so much like
His Mother, for which
I’m very happy,
Because his Mother
Is simply amazing
And worthy of an entire
Slew of poems just
To describe her.
And I’ve another
Golden child
Gold blessing vein running
True and deep, different
Than his older brother
Of seven years,
Yet similar, opposite in
Some ways, having grown strong
As the little plaything for
His older brother’s friends,
Making him very tough,
Strong as a team of oxen,
A work ethic he inherited
From Dad, Mom, Brother
Yet fitting together as
Loving siblings can
When they have God
At the center of their lives.
Thank You, God, for
My two sons.
I’m protective, but I know
They do not belong to me.
They are Your blessings
To my wife and me.
They are Your blessings
To this world, set in motion,
Wound up to take what they see
And make it better, and
To prevent it from getting worse.
They will do Your work.
We were the biological
Vessels that delivered
Them from Your world
Before
To this world,
Now.
Mar 1, 2013
Mar 1, 2013 at 5:12 PM UTC
Actually...
The substance surrounding
"Invisibility"
Is made up of
Poetic words and stanza...
Feb 13, 2016
Feb 13, 2016 at 2:34 PM UTC
We were states of matter
until we had chemistry
a pure of mix elements causing eradication
and more like atomic radiation
we were powerful
an affective pair
then biology taught me
to value every heart beat of yours
every tissue to cells
every cytoplasm to mitochondria
and that Czechoslovakia
that you were from
had a capital named Prague
during world history
but nothing interesting than your story
during our midnight phone call
then mathematics taught me to calculate the distance between us
and physics showed me our chance of collision in every single velocity
I have used all kinds of formulas I learnt to solve our problem
but dear
I got the answer of
good bye
Good bye,
High School.
Feb 9, 2016
Feb 9, 2016 at 7:32 AM UTC
The chill that crawls in the cytoplasm
and
folds in against itself damasked and dynamic
but it wasn't the climate's bite
the pea gravel stone cemented into place
boarding up the fluid monument
poured up and leveled by its creator
but it wasn't the stone
digging into my heel
pressing on the once broken bone
that reminded me that this
THIS
is not the way i ordered my hamburger
and no
it wasn't any thing growing atop
my flimsy wrapping
pale and hairy
and then nothing
inside me and resting
along the walls of my longest tract
digesting my food along side me
even still
more base
it wasn't any amount of matter condensed
shooting
firing between two neurons
reminding me of half truths
or lies
blatant ones
which can careen me back
into places better left forgotten
no
what i felt there
with wet feet and cold quivering hands
was something that
despite what i would love to believe
CANNOT be measured
that which drew me from
every one of the places
that should be connected
but aren't
to a love
manifested as suspicion
that placed both egg and seed
in the same envelope
of
both disgust and admiration
**** you Vicky
whoever you are
****
you
and all the cold
******** lice
and the pressure
the memories
they all try to drag me away
to a place where I cant see
what they desperately try to convey
one to another
and
our brilliant star moves from behind
one iridescent pink gossamer puff
sparkling for a moment
back behind another
it's warming
but it doesn't reach back
for your had
no request for your warmth
and yet
every fiber aches
for the moment when you careen
back into it
or when everything you know
is compressed back into it
that
that little moment
where everything and nothing make sense
like two dogs speaking french to each other
as long as they both know how to
howl
not just how to
how is simple.
but when
and why
Jan 30, 2013
Jan 30, 2013 at 3:23 AM UTC
They teach me math but I can't divide they teach me science but I couldn't tell you how the cytoplasm keeps the Nucleus safe from whatever blah blah blah
They taught me how to spell yet the spell check is still most commonly used app on my laptop I'm starting to see a bit of a trend now let's all not pretend that the stuff we are learning will ever stick but here's the real trick
Things they don't teach you in school
How to build relationships
They don't teach you how to cope with having a basketball game and a research paper to write And 20 math problems and a social studies article and having 3 girls texting me all in one night.
how to just stare at someone until you see that slight movement of their head and then you quickly bolt your eyes away and then wonder in fear... Did they see me? Don't act like you all don't know what I'm saying
They don't teach you how to deal with your heart stopping while the rest of the world's keeps on beating
Those... Those things are what truly is taught in school how to walk down the hall like you have never met the person who you actually used to spend day after day with yet you still walk by not knowing what they’re thinking although you know inside they are saying things like **** I was stupid to ever give him a chance or wow what a loser I hate him but you pray you pray that they are thinking wow I kinda miss him because you know you miss her too but no matter what happens it will never be you I love it always be f's because you know you failed but it's unfair because you were never truly taught.... I guess that's it right there
Things I learned in school I love you I guess it takes a bad grade to truly learn something and they don't teach you that yet that that is all I have learned.
Jun 16, 2015
Jun 16, 2015 at 7:36 AM UTC
Supermarket celebration
shoppers are cytoplasm searching
for cellulose, muscle, photosynthesis.
Oils, petrochemical and vegetable
love: faith and trust
for instance, the Food and Drug Administration.
In America, the custom is
to avoid meeting the other shoppers' eyes. We graze
like cows or wander as zombies to the oldies played over the aisles.
I've always liked it here.
Cornucopia, yes. Also
a place to be alone and depressed, or cool off.
Water and bone
and the known ingredients. Neurons
for remembering, calculating, touching stuff.
I have a favorite bagger
who has the smile of a lover,
wouldn't rather be elsewhere.
Like glamour stars in bikinis
(but unlike tomatoes and bananas)
cashiers and clerks are admired from afar.
Joe says What's not to like? Ice cream, yogurt,
profit, tofu.
To eat your fill is a blasphemy against God.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 6:26 PM UTC
The days carry the essence of grand fatigue;
I once knew a good judge of character,
whom the recipients of righteousness
called a friend.
He collapsed within the fog,
leaving a rare delicacy for me to consume.
I savored the taste of blatant bitterness,
refusing to regurgitate the morsels
I quickly digested.
Now I've got this nagging cough
and wheezing in my chest.
The plight of mad science
to taint my good blood cells
with the disease of contaminated cytoplasm.
I am becoming numb
to its brutal effects
and I am frightened.
Oct 24, 2013
Oct 24, 2013 at 10:44 PM UTC
Weaving a dream.
Wide awake..
Not a trace of sleep in my tired lids...
It's a fugue in technicolour...
Lots of green, red and blues,
pink of flesh, a bit of yellow,
Violet and ochre..
More there are..
That's not of it all...
Swirling and sticking in fractal patterns..
Vibrating colours resonating through my bones..
waves of liquid radiation permeating the cytoplasm.
Pheromonal colours casting heady notes..
The eyes see it, the heart feels it,
the mind studies it, the hands caress it...
The senses, limited by the number six,
coming to grasp the boundless!!!
Such infinite.....???
What???
beauty...
Dec 31, 2015
Dec 31, 2015 at 1:05 AM UTC
Simple squamous epithelium
That lines the frothing orifice
Of politicians and wine-soaked braggarts
Cytoplasm
That flows equally
In justice and infectious regurge
Genes
That transplant the ghastly
Pale-light abscess of custom-made drivel
God, Ph.D., you too?
Oct 4, 2022
Oct 4, 2022 at 1:03 PM UTC
We thought of us today as single cells
'Ciliating' across the universe of colour
under the coverslip of time; a microcosm
of pedalling plants or fettuccine of cells.
The hues of darkness are pink and bright,
in beach slippers tracing paths on glass,
and those springing Vorticella are flowers
we created in our fictions of science ...
But all possess a veneer bound
cytoplasm of affection, crawling like
Annelids across the void in a world
bursting in avatars of the invisible
or their transparent real selves
glowing like gemstones in the sky,
or simply opaque as we are, each
to the other under the play of light,
polarized views secreted within some
dark muddied pond, harbouring
the cells of love, shedding cuticles
of sorrow, laying the germ of tomorrow
or funneling delight in little green globes
that make food ... are food. We must be
blessed to be cytoplasm like them or cursed,
I don't know which, but it's all profound.
May 2, 2021
May 2, 2021 at 8:37 PM UTC
I used to think everything meant something. Now I know the aorta can burst and mean nothing. Genius on silver-blue sand stars in **** **** the feather bustier and nylon dreamlike; unafraid, my sister put chilis in her sweet tea. Finally back to the dingy sectional and I should be flipping out. I have a box of cigars from my old boss. Like me, he can't figure out what to write in the card. Like me he lies. I was dropped on my head a few times, I laugh. We are haunted. We're both boys playing baseball, but I kept trying to touch the basemen. Genius, abducted by bluegrey shellfish. I used geletin for the cytoplasm; cell splitting is easy, says my pregnant sister. Almost done, I can hear the radiator leaking if I try. I had my head in the lap of a new outlaw, reciting what I could remember of cummings buffalo bill tragedy. There was a gun under the seat and it was blue. The box of cigars was blue too.
Nov 28, 2014
Nov 28, 2014 at 3:00 PM UTC
Inside roosts a rose of the purest arsenic,
and fanged teeth that prey upon the beating heart -
liquored venom that curses any skin with lesions,
completely devoid of mercy, it rips both flesh and bone apart.
With tendrils climbing the chasms of its velvet walls,
and thorns that would puncture thy lungs -
it's hunger devours the cytoplasm of living cells
it's saliva insidious poison that forever runs.
Only did it open when I spilt my blood onto its hellish fibres,
rejoicing with a tune from a voice that was beyond broken -
with a SNAP! And an almighty CRACK!
Did its demonic jaws spring wide open.
And there, lying in the decaying rotten core,
was no gold but a circular nest of poised stingers,
guarding this devil spawns horrific treasure;
one chest of nine severed fingers.
Apr 21, 2015
Apr 21, 2015 at 5:51 PM UTC
mottled bookmarks pin
tiny fragments of mine.
pages unfold from within
and resist to curve behind the time.
grimaces fade into memoirs.
suit coats on petit bourgeois
wink at my shredding guard vest of tin.
to wipe off those band-aids,
to slim my baggage sutcase,
to bury the laundry in silk waters is to see
it's lifting aloft no casting aground
so I murmur aloud shunning the clout.
a biting leech tot under battings of the brick.
me overlooking my hot spice of a boy
is cringy to mimic a sickening coy.
seems like I'm a worm and blood I eat and drink
to transmiss leukocytes all over the globe
when my maw is stuffed and my bulge bobes.
two sides of me rubbed along are two poles.
I bite far and I link two organisms
meds' substitution with itchy feelers
and a deep chested sweetheart, him I fret.
when to run my slabber in his blood
is to dehydrate and self-slenderize me?
awe-eyed lover man slim'd my tube in size.
me be loved for a healer then be dumped
but it's in my cytoplasm and in my blood
to bottom the gutters as if by dirt under the fingernails.
a biting thot inside the bloodsucker ***
seen by people as a nocuous germ.
they may wash their hands with a laundry soap
everybody is no island, I unrobe my cloth.
to cut sheets from life diaries isn't tougher any more.
© 4 days ago, Anton nature • humor • personal • societ
Aug 22, 2019
Aug 22, 2019 at 6:12 PM UTC
I've torn your wires to pieces
And fixed them with my own adhesives
I've squished you like a piece of clay
And molded you into something psychedelic.
How many times have we spoken lately?
The electrons and neurons make a pleasant tingling all the time.
Electricity flows within my cortex
And powers me like a subatomic soda
Any rocket bomb flies through an open window
And collides on each careful nerve ending.
I've graffitied you from top to bottom
With memories from summer and autumn
And I left the spray cans to dry off next to you
Just so that I can come back anytime to what I drew.
But then again
My fingers make a plasmatic arrangement, too
As they trace cytoplasm around on a piece of paper
While words and music notes cloak me like vapor
The chemicals on each letter stamp
Set you on fire when administered on the tongue
And while the lights shine bright from each lamp
You're aware that neither of us are so innocently young.
Brain...brain...brain...brain...
Drive me by on a track only taken by train.
Mar 1, 2019
Mar 1, 2019 at 10:28 PM UTC