I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it----

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a **** lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
0 my enemy.
Do I terrify?----

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart----
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash ---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

when i spilled onto this earth,
i was born with a human head
and a mane
no one thought anything strange about this
of course
not so strange to have a mane
i was just ahead of the curve
(which would not be a trend)

i grew and so did my mane
it blossomed bushily
i got my name
and, when the first fist arrived at my ribcage,
i got my first fang

sulfurous and shaking
rank marlboro breath
reeking from sorry bones he called teeth
the first of many came
and showed me that my human head
was soft
resilient
and surprisingly springy
bouncing with less pain than i thought
off of banisters
and landings
(ironically named the moment you land on one,
don’t you think?
but i digress)

must have been from all that bouncing
that my human head began
to shift
into something else
but it was made real the moment
those haunted knuckles knocked on the door to my heart
my jaw snapped
like my mind
and i bit
just bit
deep and visceral
his glazed eyes wide
with surprise
maybe fear
(although not for long
before the first was joined
by the second
but
still)
as i sailed away through the air
about to bless a landing with its purpose
i saw the arc
monument of my malicious maw
broken into skin
an insidious smile
but not that of a child
my head was a lions now
as my follicles foresaw
on my zeroth day

i was eight when i got my horns
it was surprising actually
third week of third grade
prismatic fissures of light
creating colorful schisms
in the asphalt of the church’s parking lot
i drank in the bittersweet view
as my face fell toward it
my travel sponsored by another boy
more sadism than sense
and two years past the rest
a fact never languished on for long

as most trophy hunters do,
he inspected his ****
a little too much hubris
about a little thing he just did
my chubby form rose
like Dracula from his coffin at dusk
stiff and unyielding
despite the protestations of my body below
and delivered my forehead to his own
the eponymous number of times
face newly painted in a scarlet shade
half blood below the skin
half above
he said you’re crazy
i didn’t know he was right, you see?
so that statement very much offended me
and so i added one to my quota and left
the nuns told me not to be so stubborn
not to hurt other kids
Jesus would turn the other cheek, they said
but Jesus also turned up dead
they said i was stubborn as a goat
my hair wild and unkempt
canines glistening wetly with blood
and, as if to suggest it knew what a goat was,
a **** on my scalp split open
just a bit more
just enough for sable spirals to rush forth

i was thirteen when i got my venom

I remember a girl…

Her hair branched
out like tree roots,
but shine like crimson
leaves of autumn bloom.
The last thing I saw,
I noticed her eyes.
Her eyes glow
cold but bright—
Her dark sea blue eyes
could stare out from
the endless ocean
miles within.

Her skin,
covered in scars.
The Crooked Man
cut through  
her beautiful
skin.

The last thing I heard.
Her voice—
A sound of
nature’s broken
beauty.
An echo haunting—
almost of a violin
screaming for peace.
Her heart’s stolen
by the shadows,
lurking inside
her cold, dark
Sea Blue Eyes

frozen still in silver secretion
forever perceived in a million
concepts; a story engrained, and
it goes...

Beneath the weight of infinite skies,

her eyes, two wells of drowning sighs.

A tear, like a wounded star, descends,

tracing the map where sorrow bends,

and love, unspoken, forever ends.