I have always been drawn to it

before the words took shape in my mouth.

Tennant and Marley and Smith and Chapman

lived in my body like a second bloodstream.

Dreads and guitars, hairspray and synths.

If dying was art, then dying was living.

And when the words began to form, music came with it.

Guitar lines over a phone call,

a song for the dying girl,

earphones at a HIV screening,

a CD mixtape for a dying butterfly.

Concerts and clubs full of sweaty bodies,

running ink and mascara, makeup and blood.

If death defines us; and it always has,

Do not go gently. Go fast, go hard, go loud.