YOUR SKIN, STAINED WITH WOAD

for P.

"Will you write a saga about me,
will you carve it into stone."

(Sun falls into the television,
in the dark corner.)

You are welcome to this primal hum,
this tour of bones.

My naked skull
has handed over all its gardens.

BECKY DOES BABYLON

So much for singing songs of better men
so much for sex hymns so much
for harmonies
wilder than the hell we ruin

Extol suicide extend all wars
extract all resources
decorate the dead skulls
with dung-drip and whistle

So much for harmonies so much
for sex hymns
so much
for singing songs of better men

I MUST GO ON

With the utmost care I lay with you,
nestled my bleeding lips into the brunt of your face.
Not a bright day, but a mindless afternoon.

As night fell, the sky creased into a paper fan.
Marine blue, the silence it gave off.
In the shadows of the room, I imagined a wild boar.

Now I walk with you with gin eyes,
shrouded as a voyeur's primal wound.
My breasts yawn, an abandoned archipelago.

There is a message
in this stupid prattle, a lush grenade.
Sunset presses the silt surface of the fading day.

Young god of sex, bury me
in the softest grave.
It's canonical, but I wish I'd not been born.

M. Elizabeth Scott is a poet & esotericist based in Glasgow.