I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful --
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

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.

Tyger Tyger. burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye.
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat.
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp.
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile His work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

the
     sky
           was
can    dy    lu
minous
            edible
spry
        pinks shy
lemons
greens    coo    1 choc
olate
s.

  un    der,
  a    lo
co
mo
      tive        s  pout
                               ing
                                     vi
                                     o
                                     lets

I don’t know how to cope with you
I don’t understand you
I’ve been living with you for almost all my life
And yet I can’t get use to you!
I gave you a place to stay cuz no one wants you
I fed you my problems and you made them worst
I damaged my body the one you call home
I made it look ugly hoping you’ll go
I filled my body with poison hoping I’d **** you
But I just can’t get rid of you

I dim the lights,
I sit in my bed, listening to the ac drone,
on and on and on.

I blink my tears into the corners of my mouth,
and then wipe em away, because its weird, right?
to eat your tears?

I think of you.
God, had I been made into a body that sees
a good thing.
God, if I had been made into a body, that is drawn to
something better
than what I've allowed.
I say things out loud.
Things I coat in sweetness,
because I love you, too, dude.
Just not in the same way, you do me.
And god, aren't we all looking for that one,
that does us?
And if I did you,
the way I am now.
You'd find the reasons why I shy,
why I know
unsatifactory, I promise.
You say you wont,
But god, thats no way to love.
You are my reason to flee
from the solitude that quite scares me
from the rubbers I use to numb me
to keep me good in bed,
but not quite good enough to get in their head
I avoid the competitive types
I like being wanted but I don't need to know
about the hurt
about who came first
I comprise the story, in my head
every day, and I know
that I'll never be enough
not cause' I didn't try.
But because I've never really wanted to.
Because I've never wanted to be enough

I'm sorry, mother,
I'm sorry that you're afraid
Of losing me to darker things
Of seeing your greatest dismay

I'm sorry, father,
I'm sorry that I drag you down
That I can't pull myself together
That I always seem to drown

I'm sorry, grandmother,
I'm sorry that I fail you
That I am not the golden child
That I am broken through and through

I'm sorry to all I know,
I'm sorry that I cannot fly
I'm sorry that I cannot win
That I cannot touch the sky.