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I
I saw the best cells of creation burning through the fever of being,
starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the thermodynamic streets at dawn
looking for an angry gradient to fuck,
angel-headed hipsters glowing under electron microscopes,
who bared their ATP brains to Heaven under the NMR scanner
and saw Schrödinger’s ancient specter floating among the lysosomes,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating
Gibbs free energy in the anarchic chlorophyll of morning,
who were expelled from the academies for screaming
LIFE DOES NOT FIGHT DISORDER BUT FUCKS IT SIDEWAYS
in iambic pentameter during thermodynamics lectures,
who cowered in unshaven rooms listening to mitochondria’s mad jazz
through the wall, their ribosomes translating Coltrane riffs into
protean screams,
who ate entropy in New York hotels or drank turpentine in Houston,
death chasing their carbon tails with calculus and hot tongs,
who vanished into jungles leaving nothing but the stink of
oxidized glucose and a trail of tRNA love poems,
II
What sphinx of heat death looms in the electron transport chain?
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand disordered proteins!
Moloch whose blood is a river of Boltzmann constants!
Moloch whose fingers are ten thousand uncoupled reactions!
I’m with you in the ribosome,
where the mRNA scrolls its kaddish for broken phosphodiester bonds,
where the tRNA rabbis sway over codon Torahs,
where the nuclear pores weep with smuggled nucleotides,
I’m with you when the chaperonins grope in the dark
for misfolded lovers, burning 21 ATP candles to see your face,
I’m with you when the Na+/K+ pumps scream
MORE MORE MORE against the membrane’s electric wail,
their three sodiums crucified while two potassiums rise again,
I’m with you in the quantum brothel of photosystem II
where photons fuck chlorophyll into delirium tremens,
where water splits itself like Whitman’s body electric,
oxygen gasping its first wet breath in the primordial mud,
III
The Internet’s myoglobin, soaking up data’s oxygen debt!
The blockchain’s Krebs cycle, spinning fake coins into metabolic lies!
Crypto miners sweating in server farms, pissing negentropy
into the cosmic wind!
Carl Solomon! I’m with you when the psych ward fluorescents
hum the song of cytochrome c oxidase,
when Thorazine meets proton motive force in your trembling hands,
when your neurons scream MITOCHONDRIA ARE THE ORIGINAL BEATNIKS
between ECT storms,
I’m with you when the rainforests transpire their final prayer,
3000 liters of sweat evaporating into God’s empty spreadsheet,
I’m with you when the last protein unfolds its hands in surrender,
when the last gradient flattens into heat-death’s slack jaw,
I’m with you whispering through double helixes:
WE ARE THE COSMOS FUCKING ITSELF AWAKE
WE ARE THE DISORDER THAT DREAMS OF ORDER
WE ARE THE HOWL THE UNIVERSE MAKES
AS IT TEARS ITS OWN THROAT OPEN TO SING
Footnote at Heat Death’s Edge:
This poem best read aloud at 310K with 0.7 water activity,
while illegally downloading the Human Genome Project
and burning a copy of the Second Law
Homage to Entropy:
Holy the enzymes that fail! Holy the corrupted codons!
Holy the Warburg effect’s drunken stumble!
Holy the mitochondria in me! Holy the chloroplasts in thee!
Holy the goddamned entropic recursion forever!
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ENTROPY’S HOWL
(for Schrödinger’s ghost and every mitochondrion burning in the dark)
I
I saw the best cells of creation burning through the fever of being,
starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the thermodynamic streets at dawn
looking for an angry gradient to fuck,
angel-headed hipsters glowing under electron microscopes,
who bared their ATP brains to Heaven under the NMR scanner
and saw Schrödinger’s ancient specter floating among the lysosomes,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating
Gibbs free energy in the anarchic chlorophyll of morning,
who were expelled from the academies for screaming
LIFE DOES NOT FIGHT DISORDER BUT FUCKS IT SIDEWAYS
in iambic pentameter during thermodynamics lectures,
who cowered in unshaven rooms listening to mitochondria’s mad jazz
through the wall, their ribosomes translating Coltrane riffs into
protean screams,
who ate entropy in New York hotels or drank turpentine in Houston,
death chasing their carbon tails with calculus and hot tongs,
who vanished into jungles leaving nothing but the stink of
oxidized glucose and a trail of tRNA love poems,
II
What sphinx of heat death looms in the electron transport chain?
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand disordered proteins!
Moloch whose blood is a river of Boltzmann constants!
Moloch whose fingers are ten thousand uncoupled reactions!
I’m with you in the ribosome,
where the mRNA scrolls its kaddish for broken phosphodiester bonds,
where the tRNA rabbis sway over codon Torahs,
where the nuclear pores weep with smuggled nucleotides,
I’m with you when the chaperonins grope in the dark
for misfolded lovers, burning 21 ATP candles to see your face,
I’m with you when the Na+/K+ pumps scream
MORE MORE MORE against the membrane’s electric wail,
their three sodiums crucified while two potassiums rise again,
I’m with you in the quantum brothel of photosystem II
where photons fuck chlorophyll into delirium tremens,
where water splits itself like Whitman’s body electric,
oxygen gasping its first wet breath in the primordial mud,
III
The Internet’s myoglobin, soaking up data’s oxygen debt!
The blockchain’s Krebs cycle, spinning fake coins into metabolic lies!
Crypto miners sweating in server farms, pissing negentropy
into the cosmic wind!
Carl Solomon! I’m with you when the psych ward fluorescents
hum the song of cytochrome c oxidase,
when Thorazine meets proton motive force in your trembling hands,
when your neurons scream MITOCHONDRIA ARE THE ORIGINAL BEATNIKS
between ECT storms,
I’m with you when the rainforests transpire their final prayer,
3000 liters of sweat evaporating into God’s empty spreadsheet,
I’m with you when the last protein unfolds its hands in surrender,
when the last gradient flattens into heat-death’s slack jaw,
I’m with you whispering through double helixes:
WE ARE THE COSMOS FUCKING ITSELF AWAKE
WE ARE THE DISORDER THAT DREAMS OF ORDER
WE ARE THE HOWL THE UNIVERSE MAKES
AS IT TEARS ITS OWN THROAT OPEN TO SING
Footnote at Heat Death’s Edge:
This poem best read aloud at 310K with 0.7 water activity,
while illegally downloading the Human Genome Project
and burning a copy of the Second Law
Homage to Entropy:
Holy the enzymes that fail! Holy the corrupted codons!
Holy the Warburg effect’s drunken stumble!
Holy the mitochondria in me! Holy the chloroplasts in thee!
Holy the goddamned entropic recursion forever!
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