Weeds

December rains iguanas from the trees
a rough thermometer to mark the drop
when Winter brings Dade county to its knees,
lean protein's free in this exotic crop.
Like lionfish, invasives can be sweet
('though Asian carp remain an uphill sell).
Reptilian tacos could be tourists' treat,
if marketers stepped up, and did it well.
A species like our own, when out of place,
wrecks havoc in a garden, or at large.
Few have the spine to tell us to our face
We're pathogens, deluded we're in charge.
Eventually, Earth will be OK
and sooner, if we'd merely go away.

hands down

When cuttlefish can out-perform your pet
in problem-solving, and in self-control
Some want to question which of them gets et
and which enjoys the snug domestic role.
Domestication only fits the few
who understand a social hierarchy
The rest, we're prone to stir fry, bake, or stew;
We're picky in our hospitality.
This season, chordates seem to dominate
'though dinosaurs succumbed, we muddled on
But roll those dice again, a different fate
This time, a mollusc entry might have won.
Contingent evolution favored spines
but something else will rule, another time.

compartments

The IgG that BCG evokes, Protects from miliary-type TB. Americans won't line up for more pokes that can't defend lung-surface from disease. Mucosa are patrolled by IgA Which won't provoke a storm of cytokines. Vaccines one'd aerosolize and inhale Might be the weapons that could hold that line. The race is on against this novel plague it's possible no sera will avail. Projections at this research stage are vague; perhaps not every one of them need fail. This pathogen will go on kicking ass until we mount the right globulin class.

Alien

A cuttlefish with glasses for 3-D
will strike at prey that isn't really there,
when shown a movie splitting red from green
as well as any falcon, snake, or bear.
Darwinian selection gave them eyes
quite independent of the orbs we sport,
and neural hardware that might theorize
'though manifestly not the chordate sort.
As alien as any brain you'll find
A parallel construction link by link.
Our common forebear couldn't have a mind
but cephalopods--somehow--learned to think.
Such good ideas recur, time and again
be it in motile molluscs, or in men.

unbalanced

clear-cutting old-growth forests of brown kelp
sea urchins mow whole eco-systems down.
I'll eat more uni ('cause I want to help)
Until sea otter numbers can rebound.
At equilibrium, there's food for all!
echinoderms proliferate quite well.
Such delicacies barely even crawl
a billion years, they've trusted spine and shell.
Tool users serve their gonads up on rice
as briny sushi with that unctuous glow
the simplest presentation, shorn of spice
sophisticated diners love their roe.
We chordates have no future on this Earth
if we won't grant these algae their due worth.

urp II

Methanogens detox ungulates' gut
by stripping hydrogen out of the chyme,
that forms when fermentation's firmly shut
from oxygen (if only for a time).
What's once produced is belched into the air
to trap IR--'though UV shines right through.
A threat to which we're slow to grow aware
as we poach in our man-made greenhouse stew.
A million years of symbiotic bliss
recycling cellulose into prime meat
could make a sterile Venus out of this
blue planet as it traps more of our heat.
Our steak in worlds to come's ever more dear
if we must buy it with our atmosphere.

no soft landing

Low-status walruses thud on the shore
to splatter messily on rocks below.
High-status males staked beach-front claims before
and snort at the idea of letting go.
As climate change puts sea-ice out of reach
they vie for any haul-out they can get.
if not prime sugar-white sand on the beach
at least a bluff that's only sometimes wet.
But depth perception doesn't get them mates
and climbing rocks won't pass their genes along.
Their females weigh a bull on other traits
that warming seas abruptly rendered wrong.
Dire metaphor for blind pursuit of cash
gigantic pinnipeds are prone to crash.

"empires make their own reality"

Lysenko kept his Kremlin patron rapt
and Josef Stalin wanted to believe
duress would make plants mutate and adapt
environment determines more than seeds.
But crops don't care for ideology;
when seasons are too short, or wet, they fail.
His threats can't countermand biology;
farm folk had none to eat, and less for sale.
Now, politicians sneer at Climate Change.
Again, they'd push the scientists aside
in favor of a policy deranged,
forgetting all the million who had died.
When governments defy reality
our world confronts "to be, or not to be".

simplistic

Brett Kavanaugh's the darling of the Right
who'll holler "murder!" if one would abort
a brain-dead fetus ere it see the light.
A monstrous misfit for our highest court.
When life begins' not easy to define;
philosophers--if wholly honest--can't
show legislators any clear bright line,
since most conceptions fail, and don't implant.
Each pregnant teen must live with the effects
of getting raped, and bear the public shame.
But Brett smirks at his own coercive sex;
in his world, only victims carry blame.
McConnell's fealty to Trump's complete
if he delivers one more stolen seat.

spy vs spy

To target self-reactive killer-Ts,
chimeric leukocytes present a way
while money's lavished on oncologies
arthritis may be what makes CAR-Ts pay.
The cytosol lets cancers' defects hide
surveillance misses what goes on in there.
But TCRs displayed on the outside
announce their targets brazenly, and bare.
'Though failsafes circumscribe a white cell's role,
they'll sometimes pick a fight we do not need.
As killer clones escape their mete control,
a doctor wants new tools to intercede.
When maladaptive leukocytes run mad,
build chimeras to curb T-cells gone bad.

under pressure

The crocus thrusting past the dregs of snow
to pass its genes along, can't miss the date.
Banked glucose from last Fall's spent now to grow
to rendezvous with bugs that pollinate.
While salmon hatching out in gravel beds
rely on plagues of insects to wax great,
concatenated species, "food" and "fed"
choreographed to each proliferate.
'Til CO2 knocks all of this awry
each Spring thaw sets another record-mark;
red photons that should leak into the sky
get tangled in our blanket, 'though all's dark.
Darwinian biology of change
may not keep up as Climate gets deranged.

freak

One triploid crayfish somehow became more,
each generation merging with the next.
Six strands of DNA--not two, or four--
encodes proliferation without sex.
Ballooning populations rarely last
a monoculture's always prone to pop
there's more to dominance than breeding fast;
one virion could decimate the crop.
Darwinian selection's view is long;
it's not enough to multiply, and fight.
Today's hot strategy might turn out wrong;
it's only looking back we'll know what's right.
Parthenogenic rotifers get by,
but sexless arthropods seem poised to die.

second time as farce

Lysenko's back, and famine's close behind.
New politicians think they can outwit
established science, like they mean to find
a way to separate the stink from shit.
This time, it's Trump, denying that we cause
the droughts, and floods, and deaths by hurricane.
Defying scientists, whose graphs and laws
all point to costs, where all he wants is gain.
America's become a laughing-stock
pariah, while the world works hard to plan
plan-B that circumvents this strutting cock;
the planet's not in awe of any man.
A leader terrified of being led's
unfit to serve a nation as its head.

Intelligent design

For sprinting, we rise up digitigrade
the longer lever multiplies our pace
a transformation of the way we're made
surprising game that hadn't seen us race.
A gut too long for flesh, too short for plants
and sweaty, hairless skin that radiates
requires technology for making pants
and hats to limit heat-loss from our pates.
A compromise design a team might pitch
no wise Designer's write the spec just so
obliged to carve a non-existent niche
where biomes had filled up an age ago.
No God formed in the likeness of a man
would sign His name to such a stupid plan.

stochastic progress

Cetaceans galloping beneath the waves
preserve a land-based quadrupedal gait
as upright Man so often still behaves
like ancestors more fit to brachiate.
Old subroutines are cheap to rearrange
as duplicated genes are free to drift.
Among the clunkers, each time we make change,
collectibles are there, for us to sift.
Conserving features more like the sublime
absorbing bound'ries play the longest odds
repeating throughout eons of Deep Time
produced the physiognomy of gods.
Until biologists learned to do math
it took a genius to discern life's path.

beta blockers

When beta-adrenergic signals stop,
synuclein expression compensates
although systolic pressure's quick to drop,
grey Lewys body gunk accumulates.
Substantia nigra's killed off year by year
asymptomatic 'til it's almost dead
until the tremors suddenly appear
and dopa must come in PO, instead.
'Though anti-hypertensives quell stage-fright
they take a toll within our CNS
musicians damping down their "fight or flight"
can compromise their motor fine finesse.
Such pharmacology's a parlous art
to balance risk, and salve to head, and heart.

aleatory

The swallows jeer; the kestrel barely shrugs
each perfect in its own right as a gem.
Both masters on the wing, one lives on bugs
the other's better armed, and dines on them.
the Class of avians is broad and rich,
from hummingbirds to ponderous emu.
Exquisitely, each fits its proper niche
to masterfully thrive at what they do.
No Telos is implicit in design;
a hundred million years grinds smooth what's rough.
It's only us projecting a Divine
where mindless algorithms are enough.
High-aspect wings evolved in these two, twice.
And Darwin's God achieved it, casting dice.

you don't see what you don't look for

cDNA treats introns like mere waste
what got spliced out cannot convey the sense
the information tossed in cut-and-paste
is disregarded in our arrogance
prokaryotic genomes gently bend
but histones wind ours tightly onto spools
with telomers padding out each end
our metadata binds the text with rules
the genes are counted, but what's in between
defines how tissues differrentiate
the caterpillar munching garden greens
will only later need to aviate
the information gleaned from any book
is circumscribed by how you choose to look

top angler

Unflapping, as if painted on the sky,
her pinions balanced on the April breeze
no meal escapes her glitt'ring yellow eye
who perches on the air, as if in trees.
The osprey stoops, our breaths and heartbeats pause
she exits dreamtime, very much awake.
A trout now thrashes dumbly in her claws
that thought itself the big fish in this lake.
The timeless drama, predator and prey
the plumpest sacrifice the waters give
will feed her nestlings for another day
unless fish die, their predators can't live.
To mourn this death too much would be absurd;
my sympathy's entirely with the bird.

catharsis

unflapping, crucified against the sky
her pinions balanced on the April breeze
no fleeting ripple can escape her eye
who perches on the air, as if in trees
the osprey stoops, our breaths and heartbeats pause
she exits dreamtime, very much awake
a trout now thrashes dumbly in her claws
that thought itself the big fish in this lake
the timeless drama, predator and prey
the plumpest sacrifice the waters give
will feed her nestlings for another day
unless fish die, their predators can't live
to mourn this death too much would be absurd
my sympathy's entirely with the bird