An Ode to Coumarin

You are the wretched mimic of Vanilla,
And through the Tonka Bean you adulterate
All things sweet; ice-cream, chocolate, plastic bottles of flavouring.

You are disgraced: turned to additive, banned and shamed,
A toxic cancer creator, bitter in your aftertaste.

You live harmlessly in the strawberry, apricot, cherry,
A sugar creature spun from glycosides, simple, pure, at one with nature.

You are the meadow, and the fresh cut hay smells so sweetly
Of you. You are Lavender, Chamomile, Woodruff, Sweet Clover.
I will steep you as tea, through your maceration and destruction,
The product I create is your son.

Dicoumarol. Fathered by Mould, mothered by Meadow.
Killer of cows, who haemorrhage quietly to death by his hand.
Poisoner of rats, who bleed from foot and nose stigmata
To your anti-Christ.

His poison is Saviour of me, Destroyer of me.
My liver starved, my bones weakened, my blood thinned to water –
For I cannot thin alone. I piss out calcium, I bleed,
For blood and water are now equally as thick.

My clots slowly
Unravel.