discarded suicide note (1975)

don't offer me pretend existence
don't bare your breasts to me unless
you mean this love
don't offer consolation prizes
like crisp kisses misunderstood
don't tell me of my murder
unless it's today's murder
the shots whistling if I don't come
I'll die in this car you'll only
weep at the funeral
it does me no good
to be told I am not dying

rather/lock me in the closet and deny
me everything tell me/be strong baby
or give up for there is no hope
take my picture and burn it
write me a postcard and forget to send it
remember me and remember rooms
remember dreams that once were true
cut me open take my liver from me
and throw it out
make me understand what lies
behind your clear eyes

don't promise me reincarnation
when my time has passed
give me back my dust


(Another dark poem that grows from my long weird relationship with Alison Gaughan. Some of these things she did do; take my picture and burn it. That is a kind of sympathetic magic I have worked and perhaps may work again. Alison Gaughan had those kind of egyptian eyes, like the amulet, the eye of Horus. She wrote at least two pieces in which her persona is that of the serpent. Raised catholic we both interpreted that as the demon, but I think, in retrospect, it was racial memory harking back to a pre-xtian meaning. Alison had numerous dreams in which she participated in human sacrifice under the aegis of a redheaded priestess. We assumed these were racial memories.)