Hydrated, Carbon-based Life: A Meaning

 

 

I consider (let us consider) the many books I gave you,

 

 

The essays, the poetry magazine, that entire novel written in verse, its

Characters diamond-sharp, its grip vice-like on my many

Sundays: And in (idiotic) puzzlement I wondered why you

Returned them unread with sweet “Thank-you"s.

You squirted neurotransmitters differently, 

I thought, or were not quite carbon-based: 

[Though Silicon cannot catenate, 

and I do not know of any other].

Until One bright morning I saw you glow 

[a very carbon and water-based glow, pink, with that sponginess] and the truth dawned

on my (semi-retarded) mind: Why lap up vatic, gnomic 

or sententious pronouncements, when you can access the real thing?

Go home, 

Put the daughter to bed and then float around, fairy-like, in a sexual haze - 

The love of your life securely sequestered and tied to the bed, sweaty chest 

Showing hair? [Night light jumps off your body and he makes an essay. 

Outside, snowflakes provide a medium]. 

Consider the chemistry, the fluxes, the electron dance.

Please, therefore, disregard books: though carbon-based, there is 

no girth nor the dance of promiscuous water to them: 

Just aging paper, slowly oxidizing dehydrated cellulose, minor epiphanies, 

Quasi-competent, capable of merely hinting at 

where you go every evening, every night.

Do me a favor: Return my books: 

Let us save the Library fines, 

together.

(Elmwood Park, NJ, 01/18/06)