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It might have escaped from a laboratory:
a biological curiosity
with the body of an octopus
but no limbs, a pudgy
limpid belly, jellified cheeks
and bulging condom eyes
with a Double Decker wrapper
for a tongue. The flushers
discovered its mother
snoozing in Whitechapel’s bowels
swaddled in a blanket of fat
a recumbent stalagmite
of discarded wet wipes
bringing London’s movements to a halt.
Now a gang of riveted children
gasp at a quivering sliver
caged behind strengthened glass
as it spawns an army of small flies
and wonder at the perversity
of a monstrous sculpture
carved out of our own bodies,
a disgusting portrayal in oils
of a terrible time of waste.
Julian Bishop is a former television journalist with a passion for poetry, gardens, running and dogs. He has had a lifelong interest in ecology since his childhood in rural Wiltshire, and now lives with his family in north London. The poem is from his last collection We Saw It All Happen, Fly on the Wall Press, 2023.