I.
I do not see the (woman) hidden in the forest.

II.
I am attempting to justify myself in your eyes.  I care very little whether I seem to anyone to exist.

--------------------------------
Let your eyes rest on me,
Among the uninformed debris,
After their illicit glancings,
And their numerous advancings,
    I do not want your eyes on me:
Eyes that land yet never cease
Their wanderings and wonderings
On the color of my under things,
   And nauseate with their caprice.

While the scattered rest on the checkered floor
Position adjacent to the banquets,
Ask for more before
The completion of their pigs in blankets;
They ask for more,
As they lick their fingers free of grease
While discussing sports and Credit Suisse…

Perhaps I’ll have one - but just one,
I don’t want to become
    obese
Like a corpse distended in an attic -

I wish it had been me they licked their fingers of;
I wish that it is them I lick my fingers of…

There are eyes on me, I assume
As I rush to the little girls' room.

The truths of comets and little girls,
Death and a young girl
Skulk on painted toes in the murk,
Where Death and a young girl lurk:

    He is with a mannequin in the back,
Hugging it tight in order to lift,
Though the limbs are limp and head is slack,
He brims with hope
    Like a panner with his sift.

I go away and leave you now, I leave you and
go away.

    I know what it is to sprawl
Prostrate and empty in a stall
With these squalid fingers,
To hear the snickers and the whispers;
    I wish that it is me they lick their fingers of,

As they powder their noses
Then emerge from the gloom smelling roses,
They go away and leave me, they leave me and
go away.

   To know what it is to say,
“I am beautiful, o mortals, like a dream in stone!”
In a most definitely denigrating tone,
Though my words and eyes betray;
Or boast that my expertise is
    Spotting a prosthesis,
To call attention to one if I see it
   on display,
    [Including the curator’s toupee];
Or to pop a squat
On his prize Jean-Michel Basquiat,
    [Though He is my personal Jesus!]
You go away and leave me now, you leave me and
go away.

    He is with a mannequin on the checkered floor,
And when he is completed
He licks his fingers and asks for more;
I would show him my portrait and say
    “Ceci n’est pas une moi,”
And agree to disagree,
I would show them my portrait and say
    “This is not a me,”
And they would laugh at my simplicity,
Then whisper hatefully and frown
Into one another’s ear
How they wish they could fit into my evening gown,
     I wish I could dwindle down
And fit into an opaque sphere.

This is not a me, the powdered nose,
The needle between painted toes,
The creak of leather, the swinging chains,
The clumps of hair swirling in drains,
There is still beauty in blackened veins -
Was there beauty in these veins?
Mascara streaks like silent shrieks,
Do your eyes still rest on me?
I would cut them from your face,
But I need lines for me to trace,
Lines to guide me where to cut.
Do not take your eyes from me,
I will not be precise if they are shut.  
Do not go away and leave me now, do not leave me and
go away.

Do I drift between stations,
Bow and curtsy, nod and smile,
Titter courteously at prevarications,
    Struggling to suppress the bile? -

    “Oh my goodness, she got so big!”  
    “Yes, she must be back at it again” -
    “But I love her book club” -
    “Oh my goodness, me too!”
    “Ha ha!”
    “Ha ha.”

There are so many with me, so many eyes,
So many hands resting on my thighs…
I cannot find a solitude,
This is not a solitude.
    
I am a beautiful use of negative space.

I count my age in eyes I detect,
The older I grow, the less I collect.
    Time leaves us out of focus…

I do not want to grow old…I will not grow old,
Unless my mind loses hold.

In this sepulchral cattle car
    We ride,
Like cattle to the abattoir,
With our patron saints beside,
    We take them all along for the ride.
This is all so familiar,
    So familiar…So familiar…
Do I want it?
Time to gargle a gin and tonic
While being shocked catatonic.
Your eyes will still be with me in my vacant sleep,
To function as my guide.
Break me into bread and partake till no sign of me
lingers,
    They have all been taken for a ride,
And even God will lick His fingers.