Carcinogen Lady Poem by Rifhan Miller

This Carcinogen Lady:
When God created humans out of soil,
A cigarette-smoking genie blew a balloon and thus she took shape.
While girls are made of sugar, spice and everything nice,
She was a factory produce with added flavour enhancers, preservatives and artificial colouring from dodgy sources.
She does not have a “from non-genetically modified soybeans” label.
Her aura’s murky brown. Sometimes, one can even see it with his naked eyes.

She loves the industrial era. She reads Charles Dickens and imagines herself part of his “Illuminated Fairyland”
She also reads Silvia Plath, only she sticks her head in an unlit oven for pleasure.
She sits at the back of a running exhaust for fresh air.
Her favourite water theme park lies deep underground where the interconnecting sewers slide her through wonderland.
She shampoos with industrial degreasers as it’s cleaner.
She dries herself by standing naked on top of a chimney
She dolls herself up yes she does. But construction paint she loves. And she looks gorgeous.
She uses the bristles of a broom for fake eyelashes.
She stands on her roof anticipating the occasional haze.
She had a boyfriend but his manhood shriveled away after their first night.

She once bought organic vegetables and suffered from an infected lung
She stopped by the park one day and suffocated from the clean air.
For Christmas last year, she was given a water filter – those that you stick to the tap for cleaner drinking water.
She collapsed on the floor then rushed to the hospital to get her stomach pumped.
She puked buckets of nuclear waste. The hospital charged her extra for polluting their equipment.
She was put on drips of untreated factory chemical by-products
As her internal organs failed… one… by… one…
She dreamt of mutagen woman: her childhood hero. She said: “I’ll see you in illuminated fairyland, my noxious little one and I have a gas oven waiting for you in carcinogenic heaven”

At her funeral, her loved ones wore gas masks.
As her corpse rapidly decomposed on the way to the cemetery,
A cleaner was hired to sweep up a Hansel and Gretel trail of dead maggots – Yes even they couldn’t survive on her venomous flesh.
As she was laid down to rest, her remains calmly and innocently decayed into the soil.
One month later, all the trees in the vicinity sadly withered from the contaminated dirt
Three generations later, an entire civilization of odd mutated creatures made the cemetery their home
- have you ever seen a metamorphosed dung beetle with ten heads and six hoofs?

And so Carcinogenic lady kicked the bucket, but she’ll always be remembered. Her legacy remains.
This is how one becomes truly immortal I guess.