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.

For breakfast, I brought my self-loathing undisguised by bruised, hollow eyes and disquieted moaning,
all crunched up into the contours of your hard edges,
like thin-veined broken and browned, misused leaves orphaned from its parent.

My desperate limbs always reaching, wretched, to shoddy fill into the gaps that your self-confidence casual posture had formed on the floor;
empty-air spaces and pervasive shadow caverns I have claimed without verbal invite, promise or asylum.
No self-confidence to speak from, anguish and primal, seeking shelter;
pain entwined with pain making easy comfort in forgetting.

A soul disquieted;
there are pieces stripped straight down, pinned together in different places, unspun and uneven smears of paste that don't ease closed the obvious imperfections.
A harmful machination unexplained, fitted negligently back together,
the design with no catalyst to begin, untended and purposefully without purpose.
No comprehensible enrichment, selfish perversity plodding culmination,
almost complete.
Build, re-build; conspiracy laced with nonchalance; twisted person alchemy.

Any or Each of Many becoming
the godhead of a shallow, malcontented deception,
rudiment contortions to mangle, punish, ruin
an altruistic heart; a beaten wooden phoenix shaped from past wrongdoings and misery.
More burning away, combustion of reclaiming, bones and sinew steeped in the truth of the universe.

Unjustified and never the differentiation my heart once blamed, not good nor bad.
We, two souls alike in circumstance, circumference, cylindrical,
watching the world make more of us, clutching bird-like shoulders merged through a pale waning.
Existent time-limited victims of disappointed alliances,
made in the land entrenched in the business of making monsters who make monsters.

& now I know we share Oscar Peterson in common
I want to love you all the more,
till the world ends
Let our beloved rain fall
Let our days howl of our Ginsberg
Plath, Eliot & Dylan
& others, more obscure
Let us buy that Edward Hopper
we both love
& let us sleep in your car
out on the Yorkshire Moors
You're the milk in my coffee
Let me be the billboard
you advertize our love on
lets be breathless metaphors
of each other
the quotation marks
around each others words
high on the ******* of stars
& always read
each others poems
drag each other to open mics
& drink too much
let's make Cupid jealous
of the fiery arrows
we use to stab
one another
if it doesn't work out
& make the Angels
jealous of our heaven
if it does
lets be a restless breeze
that blows
through the world
& stirs each leaf
with our words
lets just be us
fellow hermit
fellow poet
Soulmate
that's
the word

Where evil lives, goodness thrives
If there’s no dead, there’s none alive
Angels come because demons ****
Peace exists because blood was spilled
If there’s no hate, then there’s no love
If there’s no hell, there’s no heaven above
The same pattern seen repeated here
Do you get it yet? It’s all so clear
That if there’s no you, then there’s no me
So stay, don’t go, for this I plea
Take one step, and I’ll be no more –
Don’t come back, you were so sure
And don’t regret, cause you chose this
You’re not someone I’m going to miss
Oh, that’s a lie, but I don’t care
It was just a silly love affair
But if there’s no pain, then there’s no gain
I’ve walked all year through the pouring rain
Finally now, I see the sun
Back then I lost, but now I’ve won

the stillness
of some nights
has few equals

owls sounds
out of nowhere
under this canopy

honeyed darkness
wrapped around
my lonely steps

I know the pain you feel is deep,
your want from life is simple peace.
And though I cannot guarantee,
please listen closely, as I speak.

Presently you stroll alone,
searching for a hand to hold.
You feel your sorrow in your bones,
in harshest sun, you still feel cold.

Pre - dawn, however, is darkest night
that must be followed by morning light.
I pray you won't give up the fight,
the universe will set things right.

I know at times, it seems unclear
that happiness is always near.
But wholly I believe my dear,
someday soon, you'll find some cheer.