Science is a poem without rules,
a solution to a twisted conundrum.
Inside this poem are the molecules
which make up every other poem,
written, forgotten or yet to come.
Take this role as a gift in two
acts,
your audience willing you to risk
what they never could. Leave them
with your lines ringing: why do we
get all this life if we don’t use
it?
I saw you rouged in a dead man’s
gore.
I saw you work the diner. I saw
the silence
in your eyes fueling that barbed
kindness,
and though you don’t live there
anymore,
still I can never rinse away that
wildness.
I am the prince of melancholy,
my face an unchanging moon,
my voice like low tide. There is
drama in my stillness. You think
you know what I’m thinking?
You will know when I tell you.
The content of this Otwituary
has been judged to be too
horrifying for social media;
no firestorms burning through
Home Counties, no fallout, no
looters shot on the street, only
this nightmare, filmed as truth.