The Subject in Crisis

The first English lecture I ever crashed was about "The subject in crisis". They reviewed an Emily Dickinson that really touched me at the time, but I can't even remember today. I think that this is not really about the same sort of thing because the crisis isn't the problem in may case, it is the thing that distracts me from my nihilism. I have created a lot of  problems with the way I have chosen to express my depression(drinking and alienation), but I think that my recent burst of perseverance is because I can focus my attentions on making things right rather than how meaningless my life is. I feel it start to creep back into my thoughts like a molester in the night. No matter how  I try to distract my mind, it will always be there in the shadows, waiting for me to be alone. There isn't a cure for nihilism because it is a disease. There isn't a cure for BPD because it is, in a way, fundamentally who I am. Maybe my best option is to constantly in crisis. Maybe my best option is to die.

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This is a poem I do remember form the lecture:

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
O 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.