Babylon by Ash M (15, Canada)*

i am sitting on the tightrope of september’s last stand
it is precarious, that the endings have unwrapped themselves
again and again as we hurtle down the quiet bus routes
down screaming highway centres that glide away in a moment’s notice ​

---

this is the taste of pink candy and fresh strawberry poison
of the girls that let their fingernails dig into bruised flesh
and they are a tangled type, lathered up and made for show 
that breaks like glass on the state lines and bleeds like gold 

we’ll put it all up on the billboards, neon headlights and all
your fragile little promises that paint the streets in gray
the blood is bubbling hot, sugar spiked and made for sipping
the concrete is boiling, this is sour-tasting condolence 

there is a rising in our throats that splashes down the city
gutted in our insolence, then raised from the dead in glory
i’ll remember the tang of the good old days 
i’ll think it such a sweet reconcile, such a tragic loss 

the wood of the cradle splinters like a blessing 
that is nothing but sanguine nonchalance in the heat of fire
they have scooped out our brains and filled them up
with the sharpened knives we lay the streets with 

there is no quiet revolution in this world, no violet dystopia
ours is not a way that is flaked with rose-tinted lenses
this is heartbreak city, built up on the bones of its founders
and here we are again, to tear it all down. 

​