Bleach

You nourish yourself on my thin bleach-milk

that draws your skin tighter

across your skull with every sip.

And if you reject it, I will sharpen your teeth to a point.

I see you nip at nitric acid to level yourself,

enceinte with indigo,

but balance is more

than conflicting poisons.

You bail out the trawler five times a day,

for if this ship sinks you are its no-one.

Sometimes I confound you,

replacing water

with great waves of already hardening tar,

whispering into a hurricane with words

that would stop a man dead

if only they could be heard.

Your glass skeleton dissolves

at the first breeze

returning to sand, neutralised at last.