Joseph Meister at the Door

Lyrics

**Central Image: The swan-necked flask — the experiment that proved spontaneous generation false**

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[Verse 1]
You bent the glass like light through water,
curved the neck down, then up again—
a question mark in borosilicate,
asking if the world generates itself
or if it carries seeds.
Your hands were steady. Your mind was already
mapping the invisible.

[Chorus]
You taught the body how to listen to itself,
how synapses fire when poison enters,
how the mirror neurons of your thinking
showed us: we are not alone with our germs.
Your clarity was contagious.

[Verse 2]
Inside that flask, the theta waves of broth
would have screamed chaos—but you sealed it,
let it sing only to itself.
The myelination of your logic grew thick and bright:
if nothing enters, nothing blooms.
Long-term potentiation in a single stroke—
your brain rewiring ours,
showing us that disease is not divine,
that prediction lives in preparation,
that the body speaks in chemical whispers
we can learn to answer.

[Chorus]
You taught the body how to listen to itself,
how synapses fire when poison enters,
how the mirror neurons of your thinking
showed us: we are not alone with our germs.
Your clarity was contagious.

[Bridge]
Your hands inside the hippocampal memory of medicine—
consolidating what we'd forgotten:
that smallpox obeys, that fever can be negotiated,
that your own certainty lived in the glass,
in the curve, in the sealed geometry of proof.

[Chorus]
You taught the body how to listen to itself,
how synapses fire when poison enters,
how the mirror neurons of your thinking
showed us: we are not alone with our germs.
Your clarity was contagious.

[Outro]
The flask still holds its question mark,
still proving: nothing grows from nothing.
You bent the curve and the world straightened.