Pythons at War

Why don’t we keep the blinds closed?
Shut all the windows and let smoke fill the room,
so we can bathe in miasma, swim laps through the fumes.
Because it’s just me and you, and a pipe.

All the company we choose packed into a pan flute,
tunes that soothe the soul to a man’s root and I believe my roots are here,
in the hours you spent drawing locks between my shoulder blades,
while I kissed you to the melody of every song
we should have left between the covers.

I have fins, and you have sails, that’s all we need to take off.

We take rocks, forsake locks we’re just socks and bed knocks.
Our bed rocks quake bedrock so downstairs get pissed off and we find that so fucking funny,
because we know they won’t come in,
they don’t want to risk a look at my bare ass, no one wants that,
I mean, you do, but you’re weird and so good at sex.

When we are coiled like pythons at war, it is tender and warm.
From dusk ’til dawn, we are contented,
like millennia could evaporate before your next shift and we’d still have time to spoon.
Like we could live past the day after tomorrow with nothing but haze, condoms and bottled water,
and if the black dog comes scratching at our door I’ll wrestle it to the ground
and ride it like a horse just to see you smile again.

Please, please just smile again. Smile for both of us when I am left breathless,
having drawn the last few notes from an ash-laden chorus.
Smile when you lay down, to backstroke through smokescreens
and meet the daylight with eyes, bloodshot and alive, after I refused to.

After the dust settled on the wake of a habit,
and you found me still clinging to the coffin
as if it were my own, or yours.

It’s alright love. The earth is a kind place
to ground a poet who can no longer find his feet, so instead,
chooses to float from roof tiles to patios.

I’m not prepared for a crash landing,
less for fear of my skull making an impact with the earth
twenty years in the making and more for the fear of knowing you won’t be there to watch.
To see me take the steps you made look so easy, like you were singing, or sailing.

I just hope you can be there, when I finally decide not to drown.