Les Fleurs du Mal

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Tue, 29 May 2012 20:11:43 -0400

"I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it— A sort of walking miracle, my..."

Tue, 29 May 2012 20:09:59 -0400

“

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.

”

- Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath

Photo

Tue, 29 May 2012 08:55:16 -0400

gammas & gerunds: Sappho, fr. 31

Tue, 29 May 2012 08:21:16 -0400

gammas & gerunds: Sappho, fr. 31:

gammasandgerunds:

He seems to me equal to gods that man
whoever he is who opposite you
sits and listens close
to your sweet speaking

and lovely laughing—oh it
puts the heart in my chest on wings
for when I look at you, even a moment, no speaking
is left in me

no: tongue breaks and thin
fire is racing under skin

"maybe death isn’t darkness, after all, but so much light wrapping itself around us—"

Tue, 29 May 2012 07:35:06 -0400

“maybe death
isn’t darkness, after all,
but so much light
wrapping itself around us—”

- Mary Oliver

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Mon, 28 May 2012 19:36:18 -0400

"Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too,..."

Mon, 28 May 2012 17:37:19 -0400

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”

- Mary Oliver

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Mon, 28 May 2012 15:26:33 -0400

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Mon, 28 May 2012 15:18:35 -0400

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Mon, 28 May 2012 15:18:27 -0400

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Mon, 28 May 2012 15:13:10 -0400

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Mon, 28 May 2012 15:12:51 -0400

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Mon, 28 May 2012 15:04:01 -0400

"the mind is its own beautiful prisoner. Mind looked long at the sticky moon opening in dusk her new..."

Mon, 28 May 2012 14:58:00 -0400

“

the mind is its own beautiful prisoner.
Mind looked long at the sticky moon
opening in dusk her new wings

then decently hanged himself,one afternoon.

The last thing he saw was you
naked amid unnaked things…

”

- E.E. Cummings

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Mon, 21 May 2012 22:27:15 -0400

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Mon, 21 May 2012 21:42:24 -0400

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Mon, 21 May 2012 21:41:04 -0400

"my mind is a big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and taste and smell and hearing and sight..."

Mon, 21 May 2012 21:09:45 -0400

“my mind is
a big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and taste and smell
and hearing and sight keep hitting and chipping with sharp fatal
tools
in an agony of sensual chisels i perform squirms of chrome and ex
-ecute strides of cobalt
nevertheless i
feel that i cleverly am being altered that i slightly am becoming
something a little different, in fact
myself
hereupon helpless i utter lilac shrieks and scarlet bellowings”

- E.E. Cummings

"I am stuck. I am stuck between wanting to get out of this terrible place and clinging on to..."

Mon, 21 May 2012 20:30:01 -0400

““I am stuck. I am stuck between wanting to get out of this terrible place and clinging on to something I’m not sure I know how to live without.””

- Bulimics on Bulimia (via poisonmewithyourlove)

"Anne, I don’t want to live… . Now listen, life is lovely, but I Can’t Live It. I..."

Mon, 21 May 2012 20:16:06 -0400

“Anne, I don’t want to live… . Now listen, life is lovely, but I Can’t Live It. I can’t even explain. I know how silly it sounds … but if you knew how it Felt. To be alive, yes, alive, but not be able to live it. Ay that’s the rub. I am like a stone that lives … locked outside of all that’s real… . Anne, do you know of such things, can you hear???? I wish, or think I wish, that I were dying of something for then I could be brave, but to be not dying, and yet … and yet to [be] behind a wall, watching everyone fit in where I can’t, to talk behind a gray foggy wall, to live but to not reach or to reach wrong … to do it all wrong … believe me, (can you?) … what’s wrong. I want to belong. I’m like a jew who ends up in the wrong country. I’m not a part. I’m not a member. I’m frozen.”

- Anne Sexton, Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters