ON TOP OF THE MEMBRANE

by. E. Makower

to the tune of On Top Of Old Smoky

On top of the membrane

Got a nice cushy seat

On soft phospholipids

And proteins so neat.

The nucleus floats by

And what do I see,

A tangle of Chromosomes

Two times twenty-three.

A dark nucleolus

Of pure RNA

Will fashion the ribosomes

That make proteins all day.

They'll slip through the pores in

The double membrane so tough

And stick to the E. R.

Which then becomes rough.

Those cute mitochondria

Keep dashing around.

Without them in my cell

No energy is found.

The stacks of the Golgi

All piled up so high

Assembling large molecules

So my cell won't die.

The cytoplasms' streaming

I think I'll jump in.

I'll slip through the membrane

And go for a swim.

But I can't get through it

Can't seem to get down.

The membrane's selective

And it knows I'm a clown.