The Patient Dyed

[A picture from our Inspiration Corner]

Is it branched tree in carmine sky,

a silver beech in silkscreen art;

is it red cabbage for the chop,

when pickled, with a meaty dish?

Is this rare steak, so marbled strange,

more flesh exhibit than a meal;

are these branched veins, the patient dyed,

or desiccated, mummified?

It may be all, or none of these -

for context, knowledge, how perceive;

so, art, cuisine and butchery,

the surgeon staring, scope or screen,

or Fleet Street demon barber dream?

I have met each in past life scenes -

but what of you, and where you’ve been -

what have you seen to raise the steaks,

to lay your bet on what is framed?

So much fake news, but this I know -

and not cause AI told me so -

this is the work of Sweeney Todd,

said surgeon barber, stripey pole,

who sliced his victims, well-preserved,

and served them, oriental meal;

chop-suey of short back and sides,

with cutthroat razor, threw a strop,

to lift his cargo, meaty dish.

So that’s my takeaway today,

that Mrs Lovett of meat pies,

a penny dreadful deceit, lies,

some fiction friction to deny.

As huddled in this corner space

with graphic prompts snipped down to size,

bred cabbage, brassica unfurled -

though whole, when split, still writhes white tree -

I find new worlds and words uncurled.

My aches retreat from inclined plane

(this rise-recline at angled choice),

my licenced verse unbalanced, fine,

as poetry my dopamine.