An Unsalvageable Sunflower

Spring frost thaws

When meeting the morning mist

In the     midst

            Of August.

My sun-kissed petals

Have become pallid.

And I sing the sentimental ballad

Of     loss.

Who am I

If I am not

A yellow sunflower?        

        Happiness is my only power,

And now that has                                 gone.

I am a figure painted by Keith Vaughan.

I have no face,

            No space,

                        To         be.

Floral phonetics

Are fractured at the stem.

I have no voice.

Omitted from the pages of James Joyce’s

Articulation of the demure drum

That is daily life.

Cast aside like a blunt breadknife -

Unable to fulfil its duty.

I am no longer a beauty.

I am off duty.

Redundant.

Irrelevant.

A sad sentiment

In my ballad of loss.

I dream of my days in Alsace.

Serving another

Being a lover

Of life

And loneliness

And even the melancholy;

                                The folly

                                        Of feeling,

                                                    Of being

Needed.

My seeded

Face

Has flaked away in the frost.

Some have scattered and become lost

In this large and liminal

                                                                                Space

                                                                                                That is living.

Exams:

Emaciation

Emancipation -

An incompatible combination.

My petals starved of the sun.

I fear that my food

Is fading                                                                                                                     away -

Reducing my body

To nothing.

Not even the semblance of a sunflower

Will stand.

Nature has abandoned me.

And I lay forgotten under the bespoke

Birch Tree.

I am delicious debris

To the grass flea

Amongst a sea

Of floral tombs.

Is my starvation measured in stilettos

At 30 Euston Square?

A begrudgingly bare

                            Arena

For the body of a bruised teenager.

A space of blue silk suits,

                                Quilts -

Quivering in Scotland;

A room of desperate dreams,

Frayed at the seams

Of sanity.

The brutality of Britain.

Victims of vicarious liability.

Traumatized by tradition,

And unconscious volition -

Aspiring solicitors.

Legally thwarted by the frost

On my petals;

My prophetically pathetic power -

Politically pressed

Into the pages

Of a book -

Hidden in the crook

Of calamity -

                Crazed on the chaos

Of kindness

When standing on the brink

                                                    Of Death.

A dreamscape of terror.

Trial and error.

I am weary now.

I have made a vow

To stand until the end.

Yet my colour has gone,

                            And I am

A dust ridden bookend,

A forgotten friend,

Unable to make amends -

Tragically unable to transcend

The tale of time.

Stolen before my prime.

I always preferred bedtime

In those nebulous hours

Between dusk and dawn,

When the world sleeps

And my mind creeps

Towards memories that it keeps

Locked in the trenches of

                    Internalised injury.

                    The carefree

Space of passing;

                                    Trespassing

Into retained realms

Of a woman who once was

As happy as a sunflower -

Shining brightly

In shades of yellow

Ignorant of her impending peril.

Deflated with untapped ambition.

Infatuated with the feeling of inferiority.

An aspiration to seek authority

Over my falling body.

                                    A dichotomy

Of deadly consequences.

Figurative fences erected

To severe my soul.

My seeds roasted into a human casserole -

Fired in the pits of an air-fryer.

                                        I have become dryer.

                                                                        I feel dire.

I will retire

Soon to rest

Now that I have confessed

That I will soon leave

                                        Life,

                                                So that one can replace that

Redundant bread knife.

The succulent summer

Will once again melt

Into sun-scorched earth.

Liquid life.

A river of fat.

Unsalted Irish oil;

My roots inhale this salubrious soil,

Until I dehydrate,

                    And abate

Into my mind’s abyss

Of perfectly palatable

                                    Pain.

Grasped by a stranger on

The precipice of life.

A tiptoe too soon -

Upon return from Teddington.

Clutched as though a prize,

A surprise

For a sad stranger;

A simple addition to an unforgiving bouquet,

Washed away

By pretentious pallets -

                                        Painted

And acquainted

With austerity.

My absent body is brilliant

In being tragically obscure

Amongst these other

Rays of light;

                A sight

That accentuates my plight.

My yellow is fading,

And I am trading

On the black market

Of mystery.

Fraudulent.

            Fictitious.

                       Suspicious

Of sole merchants

Making me glow

B r i g h t e r

    Then I truly am.

I am     dyed

And then     supplied

Under false pretences.

A betrayed body

Sipping on

The Grapes of Wrath -

Conversing with John Milton

Overlooking Paradise Lost.

A body befallen before God’s gracious greed,

Unable to ever be freed.

Sitting on the suburbs of complete starvation

I drink eucharistic elation.

Castration.

Damnation -

                    For the dead sunflower

                                                            Who refused

                                                                                To consume,

                                                                                                    To believe in an empty tomb.

No resurrection,

No protection,

        Anymore.

From anyone.

The frost has finally won.