GM Dreaming

I am dreaming of my children

                                in fields of long green grasses and cornflower blue.

                   We are laughing under the skirts of the sky

                grabbing the heads of flowers in our fists

 as we hurl to the top of the hill.

 We will roll down to the water,

 we will swim in our reflection.

              At the crest we fall into the tall grasses,

    the green unclean on our clothes,

                bending the stems but they do not break.

                           Now, I am lying, here now, staring at the ceiling.

                                                                     It is not how I imagined it,

       the straight lines of more-than-blue

        planted beneath the grassy parapet.

                                                                     The lake was banked by…

                                                                      I cannot say it, what I saw

               yesterday, I went to buy some flowers,

                           I went to the supermarket to buy some flowers.

             I could see them through the window,

                   through the see-through plastic wrapping.

                                                                      I could have sworn

                                                                      they were too blue.

                The label said Farmed in Africa.            

                    The TV said the lake was half full of dying.

                            The TV said women were being raped in rows.

                                                                       I was thinking,

    they are spreading their spores

                                                                       into everything even

                                                                       this is how it is,

     cross-polluted by slow science.

                     The label said Long Life, but I am thinking

                                                                       they are dying already.

                         I could look away and keep my mouth shut,

          not to swallow their dreaming lies.

                   I could block my ears from all that noise

but still it would permeate;

                                                                        change me whilst I sleep

                                                                        through this life.

      I am pricked by their ambition,

       now pregnant with their desires

                                                                        for me. 

                                                                        I will give birth to

                                                                        What?

                                                                        I am the GM dream.

                                                                        They are watching me,

 reflecting me, directing me,

                                                                         giving me What I Want

   even though I don’t know it

                                                                         yet

         I am being made in their image.

I didn’t buy the flowers,

        I remembered the lake’s blue

                                  before it was banked by the bodies of animals,

                their carcasses curved in the water,

                                           breaking up the reflection of the sky like black holes.

   They are dying for flowers

                                                                          that aren’t even blue.

    I am dying into the mirror

                                                                           with no followers.

                        Louisa Tomlinson