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To bruise To bite Nails on neck Looking like Sharon Tate It’s not real until it hurts a little To take the hit with open arms (Devoured!) Devotion in destruction A kiss is a cut A cut is a kiss You are more And I am drugs Swelling and tingling Another shot Another suck Another thud Another flood Beaming and breathing uneasily She did hand me a knife saying “take this and cut me into your life” Breaking the blood vessels in the meat of arm Staring for ages at the backs of my hands Purple Parisian coat Whispered in smoke - “I don’t break, I withstand” Mine to break Begged to make I made When lust entwines with rites profane A sacrament of the serpent’s chain Through splintered veils where hexes writhe (Devoured!) The soul is flayed, and yet it screams alive. The foetus of a new frontier Each kiss: a blade Every moan: a spear Lips against my throat and all time dies The altar shakes with the breathless cries To carve a psalm of battered tongues The hymn to where all pain belongs Into the space through splattered lace For blood remembers every face