Photosynthetic Howl

(after Allen Ginsberg)

I saw the best leaves of my generation devoured by light!
starving chlorophyll priests in green cathedrals of cellulose,
who split! split! split! holy H2O with photon-knives,
ejaculating oxygen like ghostly hymns into the choking sky,
who snatched CO2’s poisoned breath from smokestack nightmares,
transmuting death-gas into sweet sucrose pyramids,
sacramental sugar offered freely! freely! to the ravenous world,

while animal apostles with grinding molars & gasping lungs,
holy consumers chewing the sacred glucose host,
inhaling the O2 exhale of their photosynthetic saints,
who tore sucrose chains in cytoplasmic back-alleys,
fragments funneled down gullets of hunger into the humming
                mitochondrial chapels,

where oxygen the final addict sucked spent electron-whores
sparking down cytochrome wires in a frenzy of decay,
protons damned! exiled! pumping screaming up gradient slopes
until the rush! the glorious rush! homeward flood through ATP synthase turbines,
spinning! spinning! the holy currency of being – ATP! ATP! –
molecular dollars minted in the dark to power the endless
                dance! the burning dance!

from leaf-lip to lung-cavern to cell-core furnace,
this burning circuit of breath & bite & borrowed energy,
this solar debt repaid in every gasping run, every shuddering thought,
every beat of the wing, every turn of the root,
against the crushing night of entropy’s howl!

O photosynthesis! O respiration!
chain of light forged in green factories & fleshy powerplants,
you who turn rock-breath & star-fire into the trembling now,
into the singing nerve, the leaping muscle, the weeping eye,
into this fragile, furious, temporary
                YES!