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 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.)"

Time does not erase
nor can it heal,
it dulls, like whiskey,
the edge of real
sins and griefs,
but they remain,
living souvenirs
of our human pain.
Try as we must
to drive away
the debts of hurt
and not to pay
any attention
to the lingering woe
of scars incurred
in the long ago,
the best we can do,
with a brave face,
is bind them tight
in a secret place,
in a shabby box
that sits apart,
in the dusty attic
of our mortal heart.
  - mce

The morning smelt like one of those lost summers,
those bright mornings I remember as a child
before I understood beauty.
It tasted like the cool milk I’d sipped on the cusp of a promising day,
when the stern rebukes of my father could not dim
the power of the blue sky to lift my spirits.
Sadness barely grazed my knees as I walked on the dewy grass
for everything was a masterpiece I'd never examined properly.
The air was warm and golden,
and I was the knight or the lost hero and the afternoon was
set to be filled with imagination and friendships
that I clasped so dear.
But we were sitting on the wall of the Garden of Eden,
looking in and drinking in its beauty, but knowing,
behind us that a dark fiend lurked,
yet never minding to turn around to look properly.
It was when who we were was not quite tangible,
when the light softened the whirling confusion of growing and forming
and we could smile and laugh
and think never mind tomorrow, it's today.
Yes, for a moment, the morning smelt like a lost summer,
so quickly fleeting.