Seven Unpopular Things to Say about Blood

1
Our mothers bled, and bleed,
and our enemies,
and our enemies’ mothers.

2
It rushes to the finest 
nick, romances the blade.

3
It dreams
the primary dream of liquids:
to sleep, horizontally.

4
It is in the surgeon’s heart,
the executioner’s brain.

5
Vampires and journalists
are excited by it; poets
faint on sight.

6
I knew it better as a child,
kept scabs, like ladybirds, in jars.

7
Blood: now mine would be with yours
until the moon breaks orbit
and the nights run cold.