A Dirge to Exponential Growth

James Bowden

I once was an E. coli
Having a feast,
Floating through ravioli
Fending off indigestion and disease.
‘Til suddenly a splitting pain in my nucleoli
Ripped through me cytoskeleton causing my cell wall to crease.
As half of my ribosomes bade me goodbye
I lamented that I’d never grow as big as a yeast.

I tried to think
But there were two of me now
So almost in sync
Down on nutrients we did chow.
But before I could blink
Another two of me I did sow
‘Til my spacious precinct
Was jam packed as a powwow.

Now my sixth sense did tingle
And quorum bells did jingle
As signaling molecules did mingle
Oh, how I wished I were single!

Still our hunger intensified
And with no food in sight,
We ate up the lining and brought about our demise.
Little did we know of James’ great plight
Until we were suddenly flushed out with the tide.

So imagine my relief when I awoke from my nap
Eukaryotic, multicellular, and not drowning in crap!

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I wrote this for Bi1x my freshman year at Caltech–fun assignment :)