Magdalena Ball and I worked on this multimedia poem over a year ago to enter it in a competition where it would be part of a big medical symposium in London and Australia. It didn’t win, but we persevered and it’s just been published on Verity La.
Thanks Maggie for another excellent collaboration. My appreciation to Martyn Bloor (“airtone”), UK, and Melody Elwell Romancito (“Calling Sister Midnight”), US for permission to use their music.
Blood Oath
I want red on my lips
maroon, black, boiling
at this range of cold
only the full mammalian will do
structures of subordination inflame
the blood vessels
destroying my haemoglobin
blood everywhere and not enough
this tender body trying, failing
self-perpetuating
the protective instinct gone haywire.
Blood wages war with itself,
blood blinds, the burden of blood
finding the wrong/right blood type
at the point of transfusion
the place or point of origin from which
towards which
the matrix in motion.
Greatest circulating library of all –
the underground
all tube stations connecting in a loop
going with the flow
passing through all stops not stopping
collecting passengers and dropping
(the inspired and expired)
most liquid of connective tissues
resealing leaks tracks of iron
simultaneous wave and particle
like light
(a collaboration by Magdalena Ball and Rob Walker, © 2016)