Friday, November 4, 2011

The Sound of Science

After writing this I searched youtube and discovered that this has already been done twice... one is about Darwin and the other is by the Beastie Boys.

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                      Hello dark room, my old friend
                      I've brought my western here again
                      This time my protein's not degraded
                      This time the signal's not yet faded
                      And the bands will stand out like a yellow fly
                      With white eyes
                      And shine the sound of Science

                      In LTL I walk alone
                      Cultures still have not yet grown
                      Giving up I return to home
                      My pain is growing like a new genome
                      But then I turn around and from Wawa I buy hoagies
                      and two coffees
                      To fuel the sound of Science

                      And on the cover slip I saw
                      ten thousand cells or maybe more
                      Cells dividing without splitting
                      Cells dividing without quitting
                      Cells secreting hormones that others will not use
                      And then they fused
                      And grew the sound of Science

                      "Fools", said I, "You do not know
                      My thesis like a cancer grows
                      Read my words that I might teach you,
                      Read your mail that I might reach you"
                      But my pleas, like a senior thesis fell
                      And landed
                      On the shelves of Science

                      And at last I bowed and prayed
                      For a thesis real or fake
                      Then the words of a distant cry
                      Echoed down from a young PI
                      And the voice said "the path to a paper is high-throughput cancer stem cells,
                      not a gel."
                      And it spoke with the sounds of Science.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

A series of awkward metaphors (or Modern poetry)

                      He shot me
                      with his eyes as I waited on the street corner
                      for the red light to turn green
                      with a plastic CVS bag
                      cradling half a gallon of milk and a box of tampons.
                   
                      The smoke cleared
                      from my eyes and I saw him diffuse into the atmosphere
                      of our local tavern happy hour.
                   
                      We mixed red wine with our hearts
                      And devoured each cup like thirsty grad students.
                      I told him how he shot me
                      and he offered to show me his gun-
                      I told him that the light was still red.
                   
                      "We both want the same thing,"
                      he whispered into my eyes,
                      but personally I thought it was the other way around.
                   
                      His bed looked just like a frozen waterfall
                      and felt about the same.
                      But before long the bed was singing,
                      the song was sweating,
                      the sweat was pulsing,
                      the pulse was bleeding,
                      the blood was smelling,
                      the smell was tasting
                      the taste was icing,
                      the ice was melting.
                   
                      And when we fell apart
                      like two used kitchen sponges, wrung together then carelessly tossed aside,
                      I gazed down at my weary carcass
                      and thought to myself
                      "Fuck. I left the milk out."