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.