Conjuring Lead From Gold Poem by Tony Jolley

Object of your gruesome experimentation,
You stuck their megavolt electrodes
Of hearsay, revisionism, hatefulness and received un-wisdom
To my temples past, present and future
Like some screwed up anti-alchemist:
A Pavlov with no need of dog
Salivating at the prospect
Of conjuring Lead from our Gold,
And threw the ‘Old Sparky’ switch
With such dispassionate detachment
I couldn’t recognize you
Though you looked so much like me.

I convulsed silently, internally,
As ampères of indifference and rejection
Surged their shockwaves through
Rivers of blood suddenly thinner than water,
Feeling my DNA helix slowly unravelling:
Unpicked at the stiletto steels
Of knitting needles and crochet hooks
Cropping me head-first
As fast as your Mme Defarge fingers
Could unmake me.

Static.
No longer shaped like me.
No more kinetic.
No longer shaped like you.
Relegated to an inert element
Not even a sun’s nuclear reactor
Can transmute:
.... Only a daughter’s.