The Voltage Gate (Porphyrion)

Lyrics

[Intro]

Porphyrion, my king of stone,
in the gray dawn of Mount Olympus,
you lift that jagged boulder from 700 BCE,
Hesiod's words still echoing in the ravines.

[Verse 1]
Feel the ozone sting, sharp as Zeus's bolt,
that acrid tang mixing with scorched earth,
on your skin, windswept and cold at 5,000 feet.
You're the gate, voltage climbing to -55 millivolts,
sodium channels cracking open like thunder.
I whisper to you, my buried ion pump,
addressing the sodium-potassium exchange,
in this intimate chamber of the axon hillock.

[Chorus]
Oh, Porphyrion, threshold crossed,
action potential fires down the line,
from soma to synapse, February 12, 1952,
Hodgkin and Huxley's squid axon pulsing.
You hurl the boulder, earth-shaking,
but the membrane depolarizes, relentless.

[Verse 2]
In the Bibliotheca's faded ink, 1st century CE,
Pseudo-Apollodorus notes your fall,
struck by lightning and Heracles' arrow,
yet here, in my neural metaphor,
you're the refractory period, absolute,
no second spike till repolarization hits.
The rumble vibrates through my bones,
like potassium efflux at -70 millivolts.

[Bridge]
What if Gaia's unnamed sister birthed you,
lost to scholia on Pindar's odes,
a gap in the record like silent pathways.
But you, my giant, tear up Delos island whole,
hurling it at Olympus, explosive as overshoot.

[Verse 3]
Dawn light breaks, pale gray over crags,
heat searing from divine fire, then icy gusts.
You're the voltage gate, sodium rushing in,
propagating the signal to the terminal bouton.
I hold you close, in this axonal room,
whispering of myelin sheaths and nodes of Ranvier.

[Chorus]
Oh, Porphyrion, threshold crossed,
action potential fires down the line,
from soma to synapse, February 12, 1952,
Hodgkin and Huxley's squid axon pulsing.
You hurl the boulder, earth-shaking,
but the membrane depolarizes, relentless.

[Outro]
Rest now, my king, in ataraxia's calm,
the gate closes, hyperpolarization lingers.
Gigantomachy ends, but the neuron fires on.