Penetrabit: Slime-Temples

by Rob Hardin

Life is a disease of matter.
--Goethe

I
30 cm. of creeping protoplasm,
absently gibbering spirals, hexahedrons, hillocks, trills
may indicate an autocatalytic reaction.
And the hypnotic figurations of nerve axons-

Receptive, active, quiescent-
turn like scrolls of electrolyzed plasma.
Both substances reveal a talent for spatial organization:
their dead thrashings trace patterns of cerebral complexity.

Similarly, the contractions of human heart muscle
resemble a wave spreading outward.
When the wave is broken, heart fibrillations
exhibit persistent patterns. And, often

these autocatalytic spirals of disease
are attended by failure and death.

II
The surface of the brain
may also erupt in a necropolis of spirals.
Reverberating cortical depression
brings with it a pattern of self-propagating forms.

Even a disc galaxy follows this rococo pathology:
its tentacles of stars are ragged whorls.
A parahuman architect is endless sketching cochlear temples to its own vacant energies.

If god is dead, he is dressed as a tendrillar Louis XIV,
and his fingers are twitching.