Last night I had a dream in which I very nearly died;
All round me raged a gruesome hoard of mad nucleotides.
The sugars and the bases put the phosphates into flight,
And SN2 reactions were occurring left and right.

Then BF₄ came sweeping in with hydride ions grim.
From then on, all carbonyl groups had chances very slim.
The poor hydroxys all around me begged, alas, in vain,
As all their sigma bonds with carbon friends were cut in twain.

When lithium di-isopropyl amide entered in,
It brutally removed all of the alpha hydrogens
And left the alpha carbons with their two electrons bare,
Which sat there waiting for some weaker compound they could snare.

Then nitric acid stole protons from H₂SO₄,
And thus was dehydrated, making NO₂s galore,
Who promptly kicked off hydrogen from aromatic rings,
Nitrating them at carbons numbers one and five and three.

A UV photon hit and made the pi electrons high,
And got them so excited that they thought that they could fly.
But while they were off soaring, the whole ring destabilized
And fell apart, exploding in a blinding flash of light.

I thought, as the expanding wave approached, “You’re out of luck.”
But then of course, for dreams can’t kill, I promptly woke right up.
But as I lay, I felt the gloom descend onto my chest,
For chemistry’s much safer dreamt than taken as a test.