there is something with goat feet out there, not
waiting for the WALK light, piping
life into West End window-boxes,
pollinating weeds around
condemned residential hotels,
and prancing along at the head
of every elbowing crowd on the West Side,
smgmg:
Follow me--it's spn'ng-–
and nobody dies,
THE DEATH OF THE HUMAN PARTICLE
Philip Appleman
I was just sitting here at my desk quietly reading and, I thought,
minding my own business, when I came upon an article containing
the fact that the cells in my body are dying by the millions every
few minutes--3,128,422 every three minutes was the exact fig–
ure. Also, the piece said that even should we just ever so slightly
touch something, the poor things become bruised by the billions.
Of course, it also explained, the body keeps replacing the extin–
guished cells, or otherwise each individual, such as the reader,
would instantly begin to dwindle away and disappear. That was
certainly a comforting thought, I thought, but still, it was some–
what disconcerting to learn that even when I wave hello to my
loved one as she approaches, by inviting her to wave back, I cause
her to kill a million of her particles by accelerating the pressures of
the air; should I greet her with a big kiss and a hug, I murder an
entire generation; and should it fall out that we fuck, we practi–
cally commit utter cellular genocide. What kind of humanists are
we anyway, we human beings whose existence keeps on producing
such tragedy with even the most sympathetic of our gestures? And
what kind of moralists are we, too? How can we go on after
finding out a thing like this about ourselves, except by telling
ourselves that we needn't worry, that since the body contains such
a great number of individuals, this decreases the importance of
