Fucking Poets 

My body kept the score  

so we score over the score  

because we cut deeper than trauma 

and  on my back  the ground comes to fore 

with the force he put me on all fours 

when I was twelve years old 

folded and bursting like a portfolio 

red ink and words at my core 

welled a poem so sweet yet so sore 

a reading so animal it still roars 

its rhythm repeats me inside his videos 

still spreading the source of myself like sauce 

still tapping the source of myself like code 

I met a man who finally cracked me  who tore 

my sex script up  who shook me  took me back to before 

black marks  hunger strikes  house points  test scores 

lent me his pen  some punctuation to order my bio 

question marks  line strikes  bullet points  underscores 

We made sense  we made metres  we filled blank pages black holes  

My ravines became reservoirs of power to draw 

freehand  pain pouring  forming my dark childs 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 brought 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 fucking poets – our lines are our scores!