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.

Snow turned into water
As clothes were shed
skin seen more often.
I lived amongst
Palm trees and clouds of smoke paradise
Returned to the mountains
found your lips no longer called for mine.
I asked you to tell me why
you reassured me not to worry.
Sunscreen perfume
ray-ban eyes.
Your skin a ghost,
your scent
cleaned from my sheets.
I don’t know the color of you eyes
I don’t know what
Your laugh sounds like
And you will fade
More with the seasons.

It's not the voices of my head
that keep me up til three am.
But my seemingly sincere
******* heart chanting;
he was worth it,
but you didn't give him a chance.
You locked all your gates
and never let him in.
Look at what you have done,
made yourself lonely and sad.
For what?
You lost another
beautiful face, says my head,
but you have never lost a beautiful soul
and that's the difference.

You begin to feel lonely
living in an empty house,
that is not four walls
but two eyes and lungs.
Vacant stomach full
of whiskey to **** the demons
dormant in your cells.

You fight her ghost
until 3am.
Driven by
your drunken stupor,
you call her.

Your dial tone
is just as detrimental to her
as hearing your voice.
But you call her anyways
trying to make yourself less sick.

You hold all the things she gave you
to your chest as you put the
phone down
and her voice-mail
plays in the background.

You think of the hope
that was in your eyes
when she looked at you
and saw forever,
replay the image and wishing
it would be there tomorrow.

Too selfish to let go,
so you still haven't returned her veins
that you have embedded into your own.

Those things of hers you guard
are parts of her soul.
But,
she has learned to replace
those parts you stole
with feeling indifference.

You call her again
blind to the scars
you have caused to her heart
because your own hands
are lush and green
from the energy of others.

You've,
depleted her of everything
and left a skeleton,
yet you have the audacity
to ask her
for her bones also.

Her voice-mail plays
over again.
As you try to fall asleep
with her ghost.

Winter howls,
her fingertips prying
to enter the spiral maze
we attempt to control.

Yet, green eyes between here and how.
Chalkboard road blocks
of reflected memories in painted warped lights.
Rushing winds of passing trains,
run free with wolves.

Ah, but our bones are steady and grounded.

Another's skin could answer
mind riddles
or slur truth, like the lips of bottles.

Houses full of empty people.
Holding their own souls
in vacant palms jars
waiting to learn to trust.

What lonely arms to cherish.

Guilty words slip
from her lips as
the glass slipper
shatters at her toes.
While yours,
finely skilled
slither between her hips
snake their way
to her heart and
pull strings connected.

She has choked on
these condescending thorns
weaving through the holes and
arteriole walls;
slowly killing her,
as smoke fills his head blind.

She took a bite of
the forbidden fruit,
while mystery tempos
flowed from fingertips;
his tongue
grew different voice roots,
they were studded
flowers of good intentions.

As the whitewashed winter cleared,
she rips all weeds
from this ribbed caged Crimson clay.
Free from the deterioration
of broken backbone promises.

Yet blind eyes stare at the
spring cleaned garden
and ask where the weeds went,
why she didn't keep them?
She answers with a deep breath
simply without choking on chains.

And here I am
explaining to you how you put
people in your sky who aren't stars.
Here I am curing at you
and making you feel like ****.
And there you are hoisting me up
and placing me in your heavens
and ending our conversation with,
I love you and I will
Forever.