Lady Lazarus

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it----

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi 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 dreamt of Sylvia Plath last night. It was one of the most horrifying things I've ever witnessed. I love her work, don't get me wrong, but it puts me in a strange dark place, a place I seldom like to visit within my mind because it takes so long to abscond from the gloom it renders. But this dream was different for the reason that every horrible juncture that ensued was immediately amended by some glorious affair. So I awoke without despair, instead, possessing a spirit of rectification.
It was awesome. I was disgusted by some of the images my mind conjured up, some things were so vile that if I had been awake to view them, I might have puked.
But before any negative reaction could impose on my countenance, something beautiful would happen, a psychedelic air would envelop all bad things and cast a beautiful light over the grisly cadavers and equally appalling things so that they could no longer be considered abhorred-
just stunning.