choke me

hold me foetal           
like a precious, brittle thing  
easily snapped           
my bones are made of tight-packed sugar   
and I think if I stand now they will    
collapse
into shadow    
shatter glass  
if this is your revolution         
taping the authorities to the wall and trying to be  
more mature than they ever were   
then I think you could have done better than           
militia born and bred on coffee and blood   
veins was always a favourite word of mine  
don’t get confused     
there’s fear of not breathing
and then there’s having water rising, choking up     
lungs  
until breath is a thing of the past and you can’t remember how to            
inhale even if there wasn’t a flood inside of you      
forcing you silent       
and thrashing.
vultures settle on the wires   
oh, waiting for something just like you and I           
darling           
tumour flowering open and infectious         
rainless and brushfire           
and I thought about saying    
love isn’t a romanticised idiom        
the scientists say love is survival      
love is evolution and it lives parasitical in our hearts          
keeping us from throwing our minds into a pile and mingling our thoughts until   
we are indistinguishable       
though sometimes that’s all any of us want 
stumbling with a twisted tie and your hair isn’t slicked back           
you always drew a queen
running joke and your eyes light up like optical fibres too many sparkling stars

candle smoke
and dark dark dark

feedback onstage and the audience doesn’t wince because they’re too caught up in it all

nicotine stained teeth
it was always a favourite song of mine

vowel-slipping round your tongue through your sugar-bones and skulls

you wanted and you wanted and you didn’t have
so you took.