Sorry, kids. No time for a big post, but here’s a poem I wrote about resident bacterial/viral flora to tide you over.
Civilisation
That’s what they call it
We live
In the plains, in the valleys, in the walls
Stigmatised
As disease-causers and bloody anarchists
Innocent life
Almost unnoticed by the self-appointed Empire
Uneasy truce
Between us and this floating isle
A grain of greed
Tempts tumbling, cascading white cells
Itchy fingers
Coiled tightly around taut leashes
Maddened by M.A.D.
We embrace awkwardly amongst sleeping dogs
A crack
as klaxons echo throughout the ranks
Invaders!
Peacekeepers ready their weapons
Refugees flood
Shot and sunk for the company they keep
Pioneers lost
The finest sieve finds no justice
Meanwhile
In geological time, slow as melting glaciers
A resentful kiss
Between lovers, contains more bitterness than it seems
TT
Yeah, okay. Not bad for a busy scientist.
Great imagery man, I like how each stanza builds on the previous, giving the peom coherence as a whole. Almost feels chronological.
Keep the poetry talent up your sleeve for later! I’ve kept my inner pernickitty-pedant alive and well so I can make a few cents as an editor, now that I can’t make anything from the field I trained for!
Incidentally, I’ve found that playing the online protein-building games FoldIt and Eterna have helped me understand the mutations that might make E coli unfriendly, eg. when it went nuts on the bean sprouts in Germany. Since I’m just a victim of arrested biology (ie. in the non-medical stream of public health), the games make me understand much faster than reading textbooks!