a brief reflection on the disease known as Brexit, by Martin Hayes

28 cows in a field
in which 1 of the cows has contracted
multiple cell dysfunction order.

Like what can happen in a failed experiment.

Like what can happen to anything
caught on the sticky peripheries
of a spider web.

Like what can happen in a disconnected blender
that comes alive while your fingers are still inside
trying to clean away the unwanted pulp
from its rotors.

Or when you run your finger hard
over a cracked mirror
above an old milk bottle;
the hordes of bacteria having gathered
at the summit of the congealed shoulder-blade-shape of what’s left
charging, blood-stained now
up and down the shallows of the host’s spinal fluid,
the network of significant afterthoughts
and hindsights,
confused as a rat in an upturned bucket.

The signs of this cellular dysfunction are:
a little blood appearing at the nostrils
on a warm August evening
while watching paint dry,
weeping sores
appearing on the outsides of both sexes’ reproductive organs
like used stamps stuck down again
with a lost generation of pus,
a tsetse settling on the frothy tip of a tornado-swirl
in the centre of a cup of tea
seconds after it has finished being stirred,
the unpredictable dislocations of hitherto needed utensils
such as toes, fingers and the intellect
so that they dangle uselessly from their owner’s bodies
while standing in a queue in a busy supermarket
and the sudden unannounced popping out of eyes
from the warm beds of their sockets
like a leg or foot dangling out of a duvet on a cold night
about to be mauled or bitten off
by the conjuring of the imagination.

And the final prognosis is:
this upsurge in white blood cells
stimulated by the Munchausen by Proxy infection
will further prolong the inevitable
by trying to protect the dead host
from dying even further.