Bloody Poets

Your body kept the score 

so we score over the score  

because we run deeper than trauma 

and  on your back  the ground comes to fore 

with the force he put you on all fours 

when you were twelve years old 

folded and bursting like a portfolio 

red ink and words at your core 

welled a poem so sweet yet so sore 

a reading so animal it still roars 

its rhythm repeats you inside his videos 

still spreading the source of yourself like sauce 

still tapping the source of yourself like code 

You met a man who finally cracked you  who tore 

your sex script up  who shook you  took you back to before 

black marks  hunger strikes  house points  test scores 

lent you his pen  some punctuation to order your bio 

question marks  line strikes  bullet points  underscores 

You made sense  you made metres  you filled blank pages’ black holes  

Your ravines became reservoirs of power to draw 

freehand  pain pouring  forming your dark child’s metaphors 

history arcs  memory stills  time seesaws  now see slow 

You’re fucking with a poet you don’t know. 

Do you feel my rhyme now, is it stronger than yours? 

Do you feel what you bring me back and forth 

was measured by my breath all along? My heart 

is your pendulum, moves by its own 

motion. At the count of five, at the stroke 

of five, come here, my iambic, let’s go: 

take my penknife and score over our score 

because our bodies run deeper than trauma. 

We run in writing, our lines are our borders. 

We’re bloody poets – our lines are our scores!  

I’m a bloody poet and my lines are my scores.