You and I - 
a miracle,
though fugitive,
yet isn't loss the fate of all beauty?
                 -–a prelude

---
Today, I walked past a young couple,
who resembled us
the weekend 
we stood acoast Charles River.

Their hands interlocked,
quivered
as leaves rustle in the wind,
attached by a fragile string,
smitten by a late autumn hail,
then fall apart like all else.

Their bags
overflowed with rose petals,
spilling as they go
in this labyrinth called life
full of stops, turns, and cloverleaves
that no one could foretell.

"Be my harbor!"
"Be my pillow whispers!"
"Be my favorite book yellowed with age!"
A vow,
a skip-day rendezvous,
a "your-love-eats-me-alive."
Infatuation,
belongingness,
possessive­ness,
delirium–
I will betray the world
to chase your shadow.

Love ringed down the curtain
perfect as it was,
until I pulled the ribbon - 
a bow,
we came nicely undone.

As for now,
this afternoon,
on an escape made for two,
their gazes collided,
and two dots connected.
In a single blip of alignment
across time and space,
they offered each other the Universe.
Knowing this,
Is enough.

On the brim of my tree,
which sprouts and sprawls
and weaves a canopy that catches the sun,
perches a little ghost.

That's you,
Do you see?

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.

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 shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

No one can know your pain
Not nearly as well as yourself
But the rope won't take it away
It just gives it to someone else

cruelly,love
walk the autumn long;
the last flower in whose hair,
they lips are cold with songs

for which is
first to wither,to pass?
shallowness of sunlight
falls,and cruelly,
across the grass
Comes the
moon

love,walk the
autumn
love,for the last
flower in the hair withers;
thy hair is acold with
dreams,
love thou art frail

—walk the longness of autumn
smile dustily to the people,
for winter
who crookedly care.

To know you,
I have forgotten my impetuosity.
Silk reeling off from cocoons,
layer by layer,
as I spend every second unveiling
your happiness,
your stumbles,
things you despise,
things you love,
and things you live for.
I've gone from being infatuated
with your smile
to falling in love
with every facet of you.

Even the most ethereal semantics can not conjure
the lovely wishes we share:
maple-tinted sunsets,
heart-shaped pancakes,
kisses on the neck,
sporadic dances on the kitchen floor...

You strum the strings of a guitar
carelessly,
improvising a lovely tune
we heard
as we passed by the record store.
An enthralling picture,
how I long
to lay my eyes on you
for a lifetime.

One day,
I will show up in your city
wearing my prettiest dress
with all my butterflies
and dewy flowers
and fallen leaves,
searching
a destination for all my wanderings.

I hope the breeze
caresses your eyelids like velvet
when you gaze into my eyes.
Irregular heartbeats,
interlaced whims,
entwined arms...

You smile.

Suddenly,
the world fades.
Suddenly,
stars align.