“Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can’t give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They’re all blood, you see.”
– Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

I used to bleed.
Unafraid.
A sultry sanguine siren song,
Brimming thick with truth,
As I saw it, anyhow.

But I don’t bleed much anymore.
I skim the surface,
Depthless dalliances preferable
to digging deep.


I argue that there is no time
to spend on things buried,
to prise loose truths,
to burrow,
to dredge,
to uncover what might be uncomfortable.

And I’m right.
There is no time.
Which is exactly why
Blood is compulsory.