howl of the pump

for Allen Ginsberg and the sodium-drunk stars in our cells

I saw the best enzymes of my generation, frenzied by gradients, hysterical with charge,
dragging themselves through lipid nights, burning ATP like pyres in the cytoplasmic dark,
pump-arms writhing in electric prayer, who split themselves in hydrolysis,
who howl through membranes, who howl through membranes, who howl—
Mad sodium gyres! Their three-eyed sockets bind the holy triad,
Na⁺, Na⁺, Na⁺, sacrificial ions vomiting from the cell’s gut,
while ATP, that amphetamine saint, slams its phosphate crown
into the pump’s maw, screaming Take my energy, take my phosphorus, take—
and the pump shudders, phosphorylated and drunk, twisting its spine
to face the extracellular void, spitting Na⁺ into the abyss like a cracked engine
purging ghosts, then lunging for K⁺, K⁺, those two shy lovers trembling outside,
hauling them in by their charge-hair, dephosphorylating in the afterglow,
collapsing again, again, again, again, to the rhythm of ADP’s dirge…

What sphinx of specificity decreed this lockstep? What chaos-dance
guides the ATP’s stumble toward the pump’s grip? No mind, no plan—
only the fever-dream of Brownian motion, a trillion collisions,
a casino of atoms where the house always wins: charge calls to charge,
shape moans to shape, lysine’s positive hunger gnawing the phosphate’s
negative wail. O ATP, you ragged pilgrim, you ricochet through
the cell’s soup, a magnetized dice tossed in cytoplasmic tides,
until the pump’s cleft — that cathedral of arginine, that asylum
of aspartate — clamps you down, strips your third phosphate,
leaves you ADP, a spent shell, another carcass in the metabolic orgy…

And the gradients swell, those alpine peaks of Na⁺, those K⁺ valleys,
hoarding potential like a bomb’s breath, while the pump’s convulsions
write the scripture of resting potential, the bible of axons and myosin.
Without this fury, neurons go mute, hearts seize to stone, cells bloat
into oblivion — yet the pump hammers on, piston of the soul,
mitochondrial sweat greasing its joints, ATP after ATP
cracked open like skulls, each hydrolysis a supernova
in the crawlspace of existence.

Moloch whose eyes are sodium! Moloch whose fingers are potassium!
I’m with you in the dark, pump. I’m with you when the ATPs swarm
like amphetamines, when the gradients scream their need.
I’m with you when the cell forgets why it labors, when the body
is a necropolis of used-up phosphate, when the cosmos itself
is just another ion, waiting to be pumped.