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.

the moon sleeps alone
controlling the tide as
you control my thoughts

I know a girl with eyes like oceans,
encircled by eyelashes like butterfly wings.
her hair is straight and thin and the color of sugar cookies.
she has the face of the moon.
when she speaks, her eyes widen and her voice shakes.
she makes my head spin.
but she doesn’t love me.

I know a girl with hair that is never one color.
it is short and frizzy but beautiful nonetheless.
her eyes are big and round,
and brown like coffee with too much milk.
she is ripped jeans and black shirts and drum sets.
her heart is rough but her hands are soft and small.
she makes my heart ache.
but she doesn’t love me.

I know a girl with skin like peaches in the summer,
and cream in the winter.
her hair is long and brown like chocolate.
she has a smile like the sun,
and a heart like the fire on its surface.
her eyes are rainy days,
but her lips are summer sunsets.
she makes my hands shake.
she tells me she loves me,
but I’m not sure if I believe her.

I have so much love in my heart.
all I need is someone to give it to.
but she doesn’t love me.

what changed?

some say we should keep personal remorse from the
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn't you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems:
I'm not Shakespeare
but sometime simply
there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;
there'll always be mony and ****** and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.

to my darling who feels she's not:
our separation is mere illusion.
truly, your pain strikes me as i write this;
your sensations of abandonment,
and the decisiveness they have caused,
bleed from my skin into the fibers of my clothes.
i am no longer clean.
i do not feel pure.

to my severed arm and shortened tendons:
destruction is merely another side of life.
out of disappearance comes all things-
without space, there would be nothing to contain us,
nothing to allow and enfold our beings' spirits,
and they would sputter and cease like my love's flame.
i am no longer yours.
i do not feel full.

to the farthest star that my eyes can see:
your light reaches me- i glimpse you!
in the perceived emptiness between us
there is no distance to be found;
around us exists the infinite potential for
further connection and deeper growth in closeness.
i am no longer alone.
i do not feel sorrow.

i loved you like a car crash.
i loved you skidding tires
and screeching brakes
and shattered glass.
i loved you three lanes shut down on the freeway.

i loved you cracked palms
and cigarette burns
and shredded skin.
i loved you mouthfuls of smoke
and blood
and prayers.
i loved you holy morning moments
and sips of coffee;
i loved you dopamine
and alprazolam.

i loved you sharp and cold and metal.

i loved you sweaty sunsets in your car
when you read the bruises on my thighs like rorsarch blots
and i traced constellations in your scars.

i loved you broken
because your shards fit so beautifully with mine.

i loved you ragged.
i loved you desperate.
i loved you hurting and wanting and whispering.

i used to wake up screaming every time i dreamed of you,
but these days i just wake up empty
and cold
and aching in the spaces your hands used to fill.