by C.A. Porter
T'was five days prior to this glorious day,
When we marched from Thymus all the way,
To the province of Oropharynx,
Past the warm and throaty River Larynx,
Gurgling and babbling in some confusion,
Alarmed, the invader's mass profusions,
Of legions capped in spiked bacilli,
Armed with toxins, rashes papilli,
Advancing in round columns circular,
Forcing upon us their battle-cry most peculiar,
An unknown script of ATTCAGA.
At first the hamlet, caught unaware,
Of fattening lipids on the rolling moor's pink fare,
Were wholly unprepared, such poor epithelium,
Doomed at spear-thrust and sword-point; alas! poor requiem!
Millions lost in that first assault,
Innocent squamous, so tender and without fault,
Left fallow, scratchy, and raw by the enemy's advance,
A ruthless malice planned to leave nothing to chance,
Surreptitiously secreting vile waste,
Enveloping capsules caught in a vast cellular snare.
At once salvation's army round' the coming bend,
“Vanquish prokaryia!” the vanguard rallied to defend,
Out from reticular forests thick they fell,
With a rapture that burst from artery to cell,
Reports came to our command of our dire bodily remedies,
Left me equating our own tactics to the viciousness of the Enemy,
Some neutral-stain loving soldiers strapped Cytochrome-C to their vests,
And ran head-long, screaming, at the enemies' chests,
Detonating their grim payloads with horrific effect,
Or others engulfing whole enemies by their creed, “Ours is to Protect,”
Along that long road from Thymus the sight of dead bacteria torn and rent.
One day became two days; three became five,
Tumor-necrosis-factor-alpha faithfully held the line,
Interleukin-6 gassed the deep cartilage trenches where they hid,
Enraged big eaters swelled to burst they felt so livid,
Natural killers we unleashed from behind covert walls,
To silence enemy troops crushed under iron mace mauls,
As dawn's flame spread 'cross the fifth day,
A shipment of amoxycillin ammunition came our way,
To turn the tides of war, launching us as high as an army can,
Delivering us the perfect weapon to puncture membranes of peptidoglycan,
Now we rest upon the hill content to repel foreign invaders another time.
