Annexation

We annex each other
Then secede
(Land barons
Fighting over territory)
We carve each other up
With bloodied, broken fingernails
Then carve each other up again
With head-bowed settlement pacts

We never both withdraw
We maintain a fixed repulsion
Magnetically moving like a twin-set pair of creatures
Rehearse the territorial dance
Of horn-locked beetle dung-heap scrabblers
Never turning tail
To expose the other pole
And imbue a sense of lodestone pull
From flaunted nether-quarters

If you invade me
I reverse into the forest
But if I invade you
I must push you in the sea
I will get a scratched backside
But you will get a drowning
Oh you will get a drowning
And you will plunge like muddied eels
Into the greyed-out sea
And you will plunge your greyed-out image
In the wormed-out sea
(Bramble-rips aren’t sea-snake bites
You had the greater impetus)

We keep our distance
Our picture has the same-size frame
We share the selfsame borders
But borders are imposed
You know that, we know that
Borders have no nature
We know that, I know that
The sea is not a frontier
A river is no boundary
We scour our nib-sharp barriers
Upon each other’s yield-flesh
Like those old cartographers
Those arrogant homebound empire-builders
Etching paper world-views
Upon a rocky planet
Reaching down to rub you out
Erase you from the scene
So now you are gone
Nothing left but nicotine ghosts
Weed-smoke in the air
And spit among the weeds
I am the snuff you sniffed at then sneezed out;
The roguish blank reminder
Of the life you cast away