Monday, March 28, 2016

Sylvia Plath Reads 'Daddy'

I think I had always imagined Sylvia Plath's voice would sound more like crackers.... like mine.... but her voice resonates strength, certainty and clarity, and with a slightly contemptuous, transcontinental accent that lends authenticity to her existence on this earth as an accomplished writer.

Sunday, March 27, 2016

Many Lives, Just Not Mine




I’ve lived many lives
but none of them mine
like trains from Auschwitz
emptied of life
but also of horror.

I’ve been the old woman
haggard and worn
peaceably ruined by self-induced
solitude,
afraid of her own Dark.

I’ve been an infant
complete, omniscient
before the infinity of possible dendrite pathways 
wilted in the
familiarity of ignorance.

I’ve been a giant
too large for his own shoes
whose tears carved craters and canyons;
His bones impassible mountains
unscathed by Lilliputian archaeologists.

I’ve even been you,
you watching me;
puzzled by your own inner stirrings,
reminiscent of another dimension perhaps, or
longing to open the gates
to set me free.

But listen –

I’ve never lived inside
my own soul.
I’ve never even been
where you are searching for me.

Will I Get an A?



(Aug 2, 2002)

I wonder
Will I get an “A” in dying
Or earn a degree in pouring
Over sepia photographs on 
Yellowed paper of people
I don’t know.

My mother needs to know
Who they were, I think, and why,
Or who they are -
If you believe in reincarnation
Which I can’t, because the moment 
You were born, you began to die

I’ve outlived myself
infinite times 
But I hope one day
To escape back into
A sweeter eternity than this
Because I doubt there are any awards
For not having the courage
To die.

Still Waters



(Oct 12, 2001 – Austin, TX)

I have no more facades.

This blank slate
I hold against my face
has been fused with
lifetimes of alienation
and misconstrued intent…

So

don’t go searching for
what lies beneath;

Sometimes still waters

are just still…




Bathtubs



Sometime I'll think of my sometimes poet friend, Kathleen
who tried to leave him fourteen times and then
wrote herself into a Greek myth scribbled into the tile
above the bathtub
and then
sucked herself down the drain.

Sometime I'll think of the boy I married once
- just once -
though he swore we were perennial siblings reincarnate
when he laid in the bathtub with
a cigarette and Ray Bradbury while
his sister's baby was suffocating in the water bed
all blue and breath-stuck.

Or sometime I'll think of my Self
the Other Self
the One without breasts or worries
wriggling about naked in the bathtub imagining
dolphins and eels and lovely sharks' teeth and Jonah and Gepetto
not wanting to grow up to bleed half to death
and memorize formulas for everything.

Sometime I'll think of Nothing.
There'll be no words or images
no colors or pity or rage or lust or lamentation or last judgment

and none of this will matter anymore
because then I'll be that much closer to Fine.