This is How I Destroy You
Not with words or with pens or with bombs or by friends, not with missiles not with harpoons or by seeing you again, not by hook nor by crook nor by poems or by books, never texts never flowers, never weakness never power, not by sage not by spells nor with things brought from hell not by grieving not by seething not by making you atone just by leaving just by going, just by leaving you alone just by nothing just by silence leave you begging me for violence, wanting fists, wanting this, wanting noise, wanting conflict, you want words, you want hurt, you want closure, want catharsis, have your guesses, have your headspace, have your prison where no guard is, have those spies, have those lies, every corner a surprise.
This is how I destroy you, this is how the fires spread. From the moment your head hits the pillow to the second you leave your bed.
This is how I destroy you, this is how you are unmade. Not by fanfare or by battlegrounds or wars throughout an age.
This is how I destroy you, written gospel verse and page, not by valour or compassion, not with softness or with rage.
I don’t need to be the one to bring the sickness to your health.
I never raised one finger, you just won’t stop hitting yourself.
This is how I destroy you, when your roads all start to turn.
You realise there’s no fight here.
As I let you live and burn.
Crowcore
Black coats and trinkets that tinkle and shine.
Objects and thingies I have cuz’ they’re mine.
Screaming and strutting and hissing and rages
and darkness and laughter of mimics in cages.
Cities or countries or beaches and sand.
Moving and twisting where brotherhood bands.
Flying and kicking and scrapping and din.
Music and Nordics and symbols and sin.
Knifing and stabbing, alone or in groups.
frantically fun in a sad little troupe
or pecking or necking, bright beads like your eyes.
Seaglass, tincture, semi-precious and booze.
Lying and painting one big beautiful ruse.
Rusty locket, green agate, small chicken bone rind.
Pulling your feathers like other corvids that we have left behind.
Bones and glitter, spreading glass shards in your head.
There’s rum in my body and stains on your bed.
Exploring and tapping and loving you best.
Seeing your partnered pigeon, knowing to flee your nest.
Charlie Chitty is an author from Birmingham in the U.K. His work has been featured in Rabid Writes, Alien Buddha Press, Soft Cartel, Back Patio Press, Steel Jackdaw, and Expat Press. Charlie is the author of Everything Fun is Illegal or Immoral, available from Terror House Press.
