The Blood Orange Bat

You were far too keen to see us

as one of the harbingers of the end

of the world; a herald, not of Spring

but of an eternal Winter; a carrier

of the plague; of SARS, of Ebola,

and, of course, Covid-19. How then,

could you have ever come up with

the ridiculous idea of crossing me

with my South American cousin, 

the blood sucking Vampire? It looks 

as though you might well have created 

your own flying nightmare; a bat 

with a love of the red stuff, whether 

it should come from a blood orange 

hanging from the branch of a tree, 

or from the punctured vein of one 

of you, so gratefully imbibed by me.

The Monochromatic Chameleon

It looks as if something, somewhere, 

has gone badly wrong. As if any colour 

sensitivity which I might have had before 

the procedure is now completely gone. 

It looks as though the nanocrystals 

in my iridophore cells which used to 

react instinctively to my emotions have, 

somehow, been damped down. My skin, 

no longer able to transmit either blue 

and green for relaxation, or red and yellow 

for excitement, is now a deathly shade of 

grey. Lay me down on any vibrant colour, 

and I'll be stumped, but place me on top 

of a colourless sheet of newspaper, and I'll 

still be able to mirror its unsettling headlines 

back to you in dreadful black and white.