by Nick Gisburne
So keen to stretch my secondary spine
My systems miss the Ministry’s machine
And all the pulsing organs that are mine
In sequence are assigned to quarantine
Intrinsic though they all pretend to be
The inorganic pith, when prised apart
Is not the fruit of evolution’s tree
A humanoid, I have no human heart
A surgeon strips the secrets from my face
Synthetic, to the stem of every cell
A Variant, a resurrected race
Forbidden on the streets in which we dwell
He winks, with something, not a living eye
My kin, a clone, he will not let me die
