Chemistry of love #1: The way you do the things you do 

     Fruitless splicing specifies male courtship behavior in Drosophila.  Cell 2005;121:785-94.

Change one protein in the fruit fly brain
and females dance while males forget.
Prairie voles pair up for life unless
the loyalty gene gets screwed
experimentally speaking. And people too
as volunteers and human subjects
are shown to trust each other more
when the hormone breast milk needs to flow
is taken as a nasal spray.
If chemistry is destiny—
tribal grudges, high school crushes,
the moth inside the light bulb—
then someone at work sighing all the time
because so and so is pressing all her buttons
(like those accordion buttons
that play a polka in a minor key),
is not so much a flakey pain in the ass
as just another victim.
Doesn’t everyone know someone
who took too much Acid in the 60s
and came back from Frisco with his mustache on backwards,
brain sunny side up?
Maybe he was bound for glory anyway,
maybe his genes were too tight
neuro-chemically speaking?
A synapse isn’t a sentence but one neuron
lets the octopus blush.
Doesn’t everyone know someone like that octopus?
All the time fight or flight, more sleeves than feelings,
flailing for attention, aroused
yet invertebrate, all foreplay,
necessary but not sufficient
when it comes down to survival of the species.
The fact that Drosophila can be tweaked in the lab
to perform preternatural transgender dances
wouldn’t surprise anyone who has been to Mardi Gras,
or Woodstock, or seen the movie, or knows someone
who went and was secretly appalled,
way too much mud….
Sure, chemistry is destiny or character or whatever,
but chaos isn’t just a theory.
The lava lamp is never the same experience twice.
Just because there’s a protein blueprint for courtship
doesn’t mean anyone can dance
the way we danced.

Chemistry of love #2: scents and sensibility

Dinner last night at your favorite place,
wine you can’t afford, someone you can,
you watch the sun sink, hear the ocean arrive,
touch something poignant underneath the tablecloth.
Now take a whiff:
smells just like now doesn’t it?
The same old family room ephemera—
dog hair, cold fire, damp sheets tumbling in the dryer.
What happened to the eau de pheromone summons
fluttering like a silk scarf on a long neck in a soft breeze?
Vanished. There is no waft and found.
On the other hand, love, like sulfur, has a residue,
a melting point.
When the Emperor finally changed his clothes
he also changed the bedding.
The fabric softener removes static
while offering a choice of outdoor scents.
The Empress selects scent free.
Aromatic hydrocarbons, benzene rings
with single bonds and double bonds,
the asparagus in urine trick that never fails
after dinner at your favorite place,
reports that pain is soothed by aroma,
tales of perfume curing coma—
ask Sleeping Beauty: was it his kiss or after shave?
His lips brushed hers, his cloak cloaked hers.
She’d say odor is what’s left of ardor
in the warm space under the quilt.