022521c

 

one of these a day

purges your microplastic load

pet safe too

122119e

Calcimicrobes, We Call Them

They look like a mound of slugs,

Huddled together for warmth,

But they weren't slugs at all,

Living in a salty sea;

What they were, no one knows.

He spends all his time in the lab now,

Looking through the tube

At things that died about

300 million years ago.

These are films of crystals engulfing other crystals,

But once they hung down from a roof

in a living reef,

They reproduced, their children found new homes

And they had children,

Not like his own children;

They were unknowing and unknown,

Spreading across what is now Alabama,

Cementing together the floor of an ancient sea,

A reef without corals,

Dead, no graves to visit,

Except these rocks,

Here, and in Belgium,

In Ireland, in Spain,

And god knows where else,

Doing their bit to hold things together.

102219c

bacteria finally got a handle
on the plastic crisis
the oceans get more pure every day
critters are healthier
the landscape cleaner
but things have started disintegrating
on store shelves
within every building, playground, car
and now eyeglasses, contacts,
pace-makers, subcutaneous pumps
almost everything is plastic now

090919

tailored bugs built to
suck metals from the landfills
dude, where's my car?

080119c

The native bugs
found the snippets of DNA
that had been inserted in our genomes
so we could thrive on their world,
they found these to be the tastiest bits,
and removed them all.
The next generation,
standard Earthling type,
don't last long:
our children are choking and can't eat our food

040419b

oil slick abubblin
those new bacteria clean
anything with CHON

022819

Instant Biodegradation

the cemeteries are full

Dad was gone before we said goodbye

everything but his gold tooth

the bugs are so aggressive

if Uncle Steve moves any slower

they won't wait that long

110918

plastic motes
colonized by bacteria
stick to one another

united they think
become plastic fish
congregate at river mouths
sources of plastic bonanzas
soon plastic sharks evolve
then leviathan
thar she blows

041918d

specially bred
to consume linoleum
costly as gold

102717c

What Comes Around

I’m sorry to report

the wildebeest, alas,

has been consumed, it gnu

too much, and tasted good;

the jackal (African,

coyote-ish) (hunger

compelled the savage beast;

it ate all but bones and

tendons) left what it could

not digest, a gift for

bacteria to munch,

some yummy leftovers

to birth a billion babes,

one-celled progeny to

decompose their betters.

042517b

high on rare earths
bacteria eat your phone
more importantly
they learn to like plastic
cleaning the oceans
but detroying
80% of modern devices
7.2 billion people
become humus
right after they learn how to converse again

102816

a bacterium never named Fred
got an idea in its head
in fact it had none
nor even a tum
that thoughtless bacterium Fred
(not)

082216b

It took the bacteria
generations to colonize the graham cracker
looking into the abyss
the pioneers saw another graham cracker
looking back at them

062316c

A Bacterium Begins Its Autobiography

Born in Evelyn

to an undistinguished parent...

013016b

Back in the Proterozoic

cyanobacteria ruled

their fossil reefs still clutter the landscape

they're still around, too

pretending to be algae

reminds me of "The Puppet Masters"

But these are real, less than 1 µm across, composed of pyrite, and clinging to the surface of an opening in Devonian shale collected more than 10,000 feet below the surface of the Earth. They're pretty cool, but I'm also looking for professional opinions from any who feel qualified to make them.

tanka

Detente

detente among
the hordes living on my skin
belly and flank
bacteria divide lebensraum
no microblitzkrieg planned