Science. Poetry.

I am not necessarily pleased with how my brain keeps these seemingly disparate subjects in different segments of itself that prefer to be cordoned off and virtually unaware of each other. I'm trying to get one side waving. I'm not sure which side has the longest arms.


Stem Cell Therapy Symposium, I


Trickery. Trickery and fiddling.
This is, we are told, the only way to heal the heart.

My heart overhears and it does not like this fact,
quotes back some facts that seem to offer counter-argument.

I tell it that its research is out of date, that it’s alone,
but console it with lies and emotion, hold it steady

from its fluttering. Do not falter, I tell it, just because of this.
And anyway, I say, breaking is a state of mind. Mostly.

Cells speak.

Riding Out

We did not hear God’s words. If God spoke
it was not on a cellular level, but we ride out
with the rest of them on those intentions.

It starts here, we perform. A chemical reaction,
divide and replace. No words. Only ever
the endless balance, the timeless demands.

Forwards is not just on through the horse’s mane
and ahead into fields, but onwards into time as well.
We can see a lack of hope despite the hope

of thousands. We know this will not end well.
When does it ever end well? Function is repetitive
and not exact; we lose sight of the perfection

with every repeat. The future would do well
to take note, but we have no sway in the decisions.
You say we are remembered, but what is memory when God is involved?

A very new one, still fresh.

The Point

We’ll begin this time with the atmosphere—I am too tired
to consider the vastness beyond, though you do seem to be pointing
upward, outward, towards existence itself. But you say no,
you are not pointing at that. I bring the focus closer and clouds come clear—
I see ducks and the obligatory ice-cream cone. But no, you say, not that
not that. The tree, I think, and I begin to try to figure out which leaf
it is you’re asking for – because it is an ask, it seems to me, though not
a big one. What would I want with a leaf? you say. What interest would I have
in that? I am struggling, seek the answers in tricks of circumstance.
The window, perhaps, the glass. The very thing I am taking for granted. No.
Your finger, then, the nail upon it. I set up my own laugh as I search your face.
Is it that?. Your head is shaking, side to side to side, your eyes are sad
with decline. I am firmly in the room, the walls are puce, the smell a distraction
from the truth of it. My laugh is still waiting. It must be, then, the cells of you.
The failing, flailing cells of you, dividing, slowly slower. Your hand, still pointing,
wavers. Your heart beats on. Take care of the pieces, you say, look to the future.
I follow your point backwards up your arm and on to your stubbled face.
Why is it the future is always away, up and out?

Something and nothing. Probably not much.

from music #3

We’ve gone down low again, but this time with theatrics.
There is manipulation in chord progression, aspects
of sound that are not agreeable to the dizzying heights of relief.
We are not in it for relief, but revel with the worms
and the darkness, the filth shifting into subversion from embrace.

Dear cells of mine, dear body, is this how it’s meant to be?
Somewhere wholly imaginable in the muck, sharing
lack of surprise that there are voices speaking to us from the dark?
This must be the answer because there is nothing else.
How easy it is to turn from the sky. How clear its incomplete deceit.

The reply is not un-looked-for, but it doesn’t come as echo
from above. We live with it or feign surprise. We aim for the dark
because we want to be much as we started: microscopic
in proportion to importance; unable
to pull ourselves together in time to answer back.