I just wanted to share with ye this (probably NSFW) poem to which I was introduced via Danielle Corsetto, who writes and draws one of my favorite webcomics, Girls With Slingshots. As she put it, "It is (in order of appearance) the funniest, raunchiest, sweetest and most intimate poem I’ve ever heard. I know you’ll love it." And I agree.


(In case you're like me and have trouble sometimes with parsing words when they're spoken aloud, I've included the text under the cut [let me know if I misrepresented anything in the transcript!].)


And now, without further ado: "Bloodbath," created and performed by Christian Drake.




It came in like the barking of dogs in your belly.
The clock in you unwound, the little room collapsed,
and the blood trickled out in a thin red ribbon,
licking the white sheets.


They call it a period, 
but it’s really a run-on sentence, isn't it?
Babbling on all week. The day-long math test of cramps
shooting through you like swimmer’s stitches
while you’re in the middle of the river.
And I watch you 
fight to swim to the other side
of the bed, kicking, gasping for air 
between gulps of chamomile tea.


But when the blood is calm, 
it is beautiful
as a bone-handled knife. 
It’s a presence, not like a ghost but like a memory
in your skin, changing the pitch and timbre
of your body as I pull my fingers across
your belly and you find my lips in the dark like a magnet
and I slip my fingers through your hair as gently as static
and you say,
“Baby, not tonight. I’m on my period.”


And I say,
Baby, 
I will make love to you until we look like a war zone.


Give me the sweet murder of your body
until they string up crime scene tape across the bedroom,
because period sex is awesome.
I will love you like surgery and I will transplant your heart.
I will love you like a horror movie,
’cause it’s about to be a bloodbath in here.
Because I need a hot transfusion of your love, type A-positive
because you can’t B-negative when I’m giving you my O, O, O!


I want to surf your crimson wave,
and invite your Aunt Flow in for a threesome.
I want to put my submarine in your Red Sea
and hunt for Red October, 
and do not hesitate to ask me to go snorkeling down there.
Because if I’m going to order the finest steak,
I’m going to eat it rare.
Yeah, because I crave the taste of blood,
and I want your nerves raw like a bullet-wound valentine.
And whether it’s hard or sweet, we’re going to leave
rorschachs on the sheets
and handprints on the walls.


So throw that tampon in the air like a cotton Sputnik, just lob it,
’cause in the end, I want to be bloodier than John Wayne Bobbitt.
Your time of the month has perfect timing
because you open like the elevator doors in The Shining.
I like some ketchup when I’m dining,
but I want to taste copper like I’m dying.
So let the woman in you make a man out of me.


Because this lovemaking is no less perfect
than the moon rising in you, 
and this lovemaking is the gospel music
made by the rhythm of flesh and blood and flesh and blood,
and this blood is the closest I will ever be to making love
to your insides, sailing through your veins and arteries.
This blood on my skin 
is the photograph I take
when I visit your heart.