7:09 pm 5/25/17

with the brook dried up,
your disquieting
sense of how you wanted
all these things to last forever
seemed to be extremely bleak.
after your eight hour shift
you visit.
hear nothing but grinding of water mills.
and you wanted to know;
if i were to be drowned here alone
would they find me or care to find me
in the dry banks of the brook?
you are a mysticist when it comes
to death
***
alcohol.
it didn't quite make sense why
you drifted chimerically into insanity
unable to stop the body from
coincidentally smashing into a stone
bludgeoning the skull. killing from
brute
force.

you more often thought about
drowning in the brook than admiring
it's whitewater beauty. you
more often broke yourself down at its
banks and thought the water was your blood.

with the brook dried up,
this place isn't real anymore.
you are not bleeding streams
you are again
a dry bank
empty and soulless.
somehow you were disappointed;
you were healed but empty.

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.

Better that every fiber crack
and fury make head,
blood drenching vivid
couch, carpet, floor
and the snake-figured almanac
vouching you are
a million green counties from here,

than to sit mute, twitching so
under prickling stars,
with stare, with curse
blackening the time
goodbyes were said, trains let go,
and I, great magnanimous fool, thus wrenched from
my one kingdom.

father runs the comb slow through ***** hair
a dream in wide tooth picks / throwing one in that afro
for effect / everyone always wanted to look like
questlove.

father runs his hands on the back
a dream in crying fits / throwing out “it’s okay’s”
and / “you’ll be fine’s.” all until you were
sixteen and tired. so tired of being alive
and you told him in this stern steel
and he broke into anger
threw his hands on your arms and shook you.
don’t you know i need you alive, boy!

father places his hand on your shoulder when you
are overdosed and dying, shaking you again
telling you wake up as he drives inexplicably fast
down the highway. father is one six shooter away
from doing what you’ve done.

father is crying alone at night. mother doesn’t
come by anymore. his lovers all left.
his daughter in the hospital. an arctic frigidity
of things sliding quickly out of mortal control;
don’t you know we’re all ******?

father is eating oatmeal in the hospital.
sitting next to you in this
inexplicable unbreakable silence
where your insanity is a six shooter
and his hand is on yours / letting you know
at anytime, i could shoot.

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.