Bio-Troopers

[Evan Shaw]

Chains of amino acids coalesce into proteins, proteins, proteins.
Building blocks, of carbon and hydrogen interlocked
Shall it produce a cell? Varying states, at exuberance, they excel.
Perhaps a bone? With collagen duly honed?
All throughout, intelligible method shouts - for patterns we see,
and similar causes appear to be. Carbon and protein around us endlessly.
Working as a system, for long, long, they went missin', these little factories
with encoded missions. Protect here, multiply there, purpose, purpose,
all doing their share. Do they know they are within a larger organism?
Or just focus, focus, focus? Like hocus pocus, self-reflective awareness provoked this.
Is that what they're working towards, or should we just go about our chores?
Investigate meaning, and with joy you'll be teeming. Is that not a sign?
Existence, existence, He left clues for you to find!

[cafolini]

True. Very good, I guess. But clues are not dues.

[AuntShecky]

The structure of your piece is more like prose than poetry.

[Evan Shaw]

The structure of your piece is more like prose than poetry.

Thnx for the response, with all due respect, doesn't poetry have more to do with the sound, or feeling of the piece, rather than following some archaic structure?

If I may ask, what to you constitutes poetry? I am very intrigued.

[Melanie]

I like your poem and see it more as a poem than prose although your statement that "structure [in poetry] is archaic" is not correct. It's very much alive and well today...it's just a different form than free verse. Sometimes people will take a story and just do some line breaks in spots that work well and present it as poetry, but I don't see that in your piece, more poetic than just a story. I even see lots of rhyming in your piece ("blocks/interlocked, cell/excel, bone/honed, be/endlessly, system/missin'/missions, here/their/share, focus/hocus pocus/this", etc. And I see many repetitions of words like "purpose, purpose, purpose" reflecting "patterns" you mentioned. Good poem. I don't get the comment above regarding "clues are not dues"?

[cafolini]

Thnx for the response, with all due respect, doesn't poetry have more to do with the sound, or feeling of the piece, rather than following some archaic structure?

If I may ask, what to you constitutes poetry? I am very intrigued.

I agree to a large extent. However, what's still being used cannot be archaic. Yet, form is intrinsic one way or another and cannot define poetry or prose.

[Evan Shaw]

Melanie, dig the Emerson quote. He would probably admonish me as well for that archaic comment! "Poetry must not only be as new as foam; it must be as old as rock."

[Delta40]

I didn't read it as prose and liked the rhyme scheme.