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.

there was a time in my life
when hope and heartache
overflowed from my eyes
the moment a man would touch me.
my skin, bruised and caressed
opened up like a flower
for the chance to be plucked,
paraded, pinch my cheeks
pierce my eyes, my heart
feels pain every time
i'm kissed, it is so hard
to keep trying to keep loving
to ask myself what is respect?
what is intimacy? why do you
need it so ******* badly?
why do you choose
to pawn yourself away to
thieves and criminals
and hide from princes?
the teeth marks on my neck,
it's almost as if my ******
is contingent on materializing
the constant crucifixions
of my heart, mary,
blow the boys away with those lips
mary, sing your soul out on
the ride home, mary,
be a good girl, be yourself, be
anything you want to be
(but not anything you need)

melting minutes
into memories,
in to mayday parades of
everything i should have done,
everything i couldn't,
everyone who said i had to.
the days are starting
to feel like distant places
where my past self lives;
it is a miracle that i made
it here, it is a miracle
that i'm leaving,
it is a miracle
that my muscle memory
hasn't made me ruin it.
i've been thinking about
those first days,
the majestic trauma of
eighteen now the
monstrosity of twenty-two.
ahead of me lies a path of
i don't even know what
but i made it here,
i can make it anywhere.

burrowed in lies and tears
i've decided i still need you.
wine drunk on a monday
i beat the record for
most blinded in love.
you, with your laughs and honey
tinted eyes and pink pink lips
and your absolute destruction of my heart.

i don't even want the remains, please
bury them beneath the overground station
or scatter them in the river Thames.
or keep them, broken and all,
within the depths of your sock drawer.

expectations of epiphanies brought
a sword through my stomach,
replaced butterflies with blood;
and yet, somehow (without a heart)
i still love you.

maybe one day i'll understand
why things have to be this way
but for now my drunken mondays
will continue to leak the poison from
my eyes in an endless desire
to be yours.

manicured nails tip tap
along my head, slowly
but surely,
removing every hair from its follacle
until my brain is exposed.

these same fingers used to clutch
weapons of destruction against
my arms and thighs and stomach.
pain is familiar and frequent.

though i've found joy in these fingertips, too,
they know me better than anything else.
pleasure like waterfalls have flown
from their touch.
they've created magic, art, love.

but they turn on me. glistening in the sun
those nails will build me a home
and tear it down, ruining that manicure,
trembling, gently wiping away those tears.

stagnant air hovering
in between the mouths,
table set for a party
and you ask about my knees,
about how many bruises they have,
about my neck and the tongues
it has felt and I sit silent,
shrinking myself into a
perfect mold of womanhood
(untouched, unburdened, unknown),
nodding and smirking, coyly,
when you ask if you could
walk me home
(my hand in yours burns raw))
hurricane humidity,
like walking through water
like drowning
like ******, like love

comfort; a sin and a saint,
false hopes and warmth
between the sheets of cotton.
weaving my hands into the threads,
my hair binding feathers and freckles
to this tiny piece of satisfaction
amongst the twisted doubts of December.

episodes of expectations;
hollow danger diseases threaten my
humor, humanity, humility;
i am frightened that my future
will implode, that the earth is dying,
that my words are not good enough,
that i am not good enough.

so this comfort i am clinging to,
sinking my nails into, resting
my head upon,
is keeping me from moving forward,
but saving me from giving up;
my stagnant sanctuary of twenty-two.