I tilt my face warmthward,
Chin slightly closer to the sun.
I don't know if I still believe in God.
Sometimes my soul rages with the question.
Sometimes it floods.
I am at a loss.
What to do with all the wind and water?
"Be still and know that I am God,"
Or don't know.
Be still and one at a time, take each impossible breath
Lean away from the wrenching paradoxes.
God or no God,
I've been allowed a moment without allegiance,
A moment free to not care I have no understanding.

You can obviously see that I'm
Under the influence, writing about my enemies
Trying to find a friend to meet
You can see the joy in me
We can love each other freely
Nothing stands between us
You're on the other side of a mountain
But our mouths are touching,
We are nothing
I'm coming to see you,
eventually I'll be you
Starring in a play you're directing
About me inventing you

We're all scared of dying,
But then we wish we could,
We're all afraid our love won't be enough,
But then it is.
I missed a chance
And I danced on your feet
But we'll always die together when we meet.

He said “you’re beautiful inside”
What it supposed to mean?
I think I just can’t see those things
that he is tend to see.

Of course I cannot see them.
My eyes are tightly closed,
my eyes are covered with my forehead
that’s tensioned on my nose.

“You’re beautiful inside,
I’m gonna prove.
But you should calmly lie
and please don’t make a move.”

He doesn’t care about my voice,
the language that I spoke,
about my dress,
about my face
and feeling they evoke.

He said “you’re beautiful inside”,
and made three deepest cuts.
Now he can see what’s inside me:
my lungs, my spleen, my guts.

He put his hand beneath my heart,
his fingers slowly shrunk.
With other hand, so calmly,
he dug into my flank.

He does not care that I'm too heavy,
My vessels he likes more.
He said they’re cleaner than they could be.
The inner beauty of the sore.

My mind does not seem spoiled to him,
or crazy, weird or strange.
he said that nothing wrong with me
He wouldn’t let it change.

I told him I am dull.
There’s something he can find
cutting out my nerves.
I’d rather he was blind.

He doesn’t know what I
was doing all night long,
that I was drawing kidneys
with arteries beyond.

The only thing he does
is wash away my blood
from table and his shoes
to give another cut.

I’m paralyzed and sliced,
my skin is livor mortis.
Spread out on the table
small pieces of my cordis.

He does not think I stink.
For him I’m full of stories.
He’s making notes with knifes
He cuts away my worries.

He cuts hearts on my knees
Love letters made by stings.
With quiet me he’s playing
tic tac toe on my hips.

He has got to the heart of me,
studied my every cell.
disassembled and gathered back,
sewed neatly. He did that well.

He said “beautiful inside”
But nothing about the rest.
Thank you autopsist
You have seen in me only the best.

"Why one writes is a question I can never answer easily, having so often asked it of myself. I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me – the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.
...
"We also write to heighten our own awareness of life. We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely … When I don’t write, feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing."
('The New Woman', 1974)