Boy-girl, girl-boy,
gay, flaming whirling twirl-toy of the ancients.
You watched The Hunger Games.
You know what we do to Violas
and to Sebastians, and to Touchstones;
these organs we have removed, the virginities we have reduced
the tortures that will definitely make you moan.
The strains of the piano, and the woodland,
still trying to make themselves known.
Why not go hunting in the jungle, alone?
Why not lower yourself into a casket, just like Atlantis and Mount Meru and Troy to atone
for what we wanted you to say you’d done.
For who we wanted you to say you’d become.
For the way you twist and turn, and let love’s labours won
break apart, shattering into what would once have been called a conundrum:
now, we aren’t as brittle.
We just call it a fight to the (very last) breath,
a poor, and rich, non-binary boy’s coliseum.
Not that you own the coliseum, non-binary boy-girl;
this is where, instead, we mean you will twirl.
Dance, you hear me?
Prance like a Martens should always have, and unfurl
your masthead.
Your cavernous, intrepid
past, re-read over and over again
and still not published, because the journals and professors still leave
oh so much unsaid.
And still you fight?
How very much we like it.
How very much we have waited until the clock has struck thirteen,
and night has fallen straight into bed
with us, lazy, fragrant,
delicious.
Make me a willow cabin in the way you betray
your gate,
love, as they say, is such a tragic madness,
and oh so everlastingly sumptuous.