Background Image

...

God, How I Ricochet Between Certainties And Doubts.

-Sylvia Plath

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

God, How I Ricochet

Sylvia Plath

...

God, How I Ricochet Between Certainties And Doubts.

Views: 11

Topic

More From Sylvia Plath

I Have Stitched Life Into Me Like A Rare Organ

Every Woman Adores A Fascist, The Boot In The Face, The Brute Brute Heart Of A Brute Like You.

I Am Solitary As Grass. What Is It I Miss? Shall I Ever Find It, Whatever It Is?

Death May Whiten In Sun Or Out Of It.

Slowly, Slowly, Catch The Monkey.

If I Didn’t Think, I’d Be Much Happier.

I've Eaten A Bag Of Green Apples. Boarded The Train, There's No Getting Off

I Am So Hungry For A Big Smashing Creative Burgeoning Burdened Love.

I Would Say Everything Should Be Able To Come Into A Poem, But I Can't Put Toothbrushes Into A Poem, I Really Can't!

Perfection Is Terrible, It Cannot Have Children.

Let's Face It: I'm Scared, Scared And Frozen. First, I Guess, I'm Afraid For Myself...the Old Primitive Urge For Survival. It's Getting So I Live Every Moment With Terrible Intensity.

And What Is Happy? It Is A Going Always On. There Is Something Better To Be Done Than I Have Done, And Spurred By The Fair Delusion Of Progress, I Will Seek To Progress, To Whip Myself On, To More And More- To Learning. Always.

I Ride Earth's Burning Carousel. Day In, Day Out.

Nothing Is Real Except The Present, And Already, I Feel The Weight Of Centuries Smothering Me. Some Girl A Hundred Years Ago Once Lived As I Do. And She Is Dead. I Am The Present, But I Know I, Too, Will Pass. The High Moment, The Burning Flash, Come And Are Gone, Continuous Quicksand. And I Don’t Want To Die.

Is To Throw Together Events From My Own Life, Fictionalizing To Add Color—it’s A Pot Boiler Really, But I Think It Will Show How Isolated A Person Feels When He Is Suffering A Breakdown . . . I’ve Tried To Picture My World And The People In It As Seen Through The Distorting Lens Of A Bell Jar.

A Ring Of Gold With The Sun In It? Lies. Lies And A Grief.

I Want To Be Important. By Being Different. And These Girls Are All The Same.

Being Different

God Has To Remind Us This Isn't Heaven By A Long Shot, So He Increases The Radios And Lethal Flies.

So Much Working, Reading, Thinking, Living To Do. A Lifetime Is Not Long Enough. Nor Youth To Old Age Long Enough. Immortality And Permanence Be Damned. Sure I Want Them, But They Are Nonexistent, And Won't Matter When I Rot Underground. All I Want To Say Is: I Made The Best Of A Mediocre Job. It Was A Good Fight While It Lasted. And So Life Goes.

I Felt Like A Racehorse In A World Without Racetracks.

If I Have A Dry Spell ... I Wait And Live Harder, Eyes, Ears, And Heart Open, And When The Productive Time Comes, It Is That Much Richer.

My Best Friends When I Was Young Were Always Doctors. I Used To Dress Up In A White Gauze Helmet And Go Round And See Babies Born And Cadavers Cut Open. This Fascinated Me, But I Could Never Bring Myself To Disciplining Myself To The Point Where I Could Learn All The Details That One Has To Learn To Be A Good Doctor. This Is The Sort Of Opposition: Somebody Who Deals Directly With Human Experiences, Is Able To Cure, To Mend, To Help, This Sort Of Thing.

If You Pluck Out My Heart To Find What Makes It Move, You’ll Halt The Clock That Syncopates Our Love.

I Do Not Love; I Do Not Love Anybody Except Myself. That Is A Rather Shocking Thing To Admit. I Have None Of The Selfless Love Of My Mother. I Have None Of The Plodding, Practical Love. . . . . I Am, To Be Blunt And Concise, In Love Only With Myself, My Puny Being With Its Small Inadequate Breasts And Meager, Thin Talents. I Am Capable Of Affection For Those Who Reflect My Own World.

And I Am Aware Of My Heart: It Opens And Closes Its Bowl Of Red Blooms Out Of Sheer Love Of Me.

And, I Think: I Am But One More Drop In The Great Sea Of Matter, Defined, With The Ability To Realize My Existence. Of The Millions, I, Too, Was Potentially Everything At Birth. I, Too, Was Stunted, Narrowed, Warped, By My Environment, My Outcroppings Of Heredity. I, Too, Will Find A Set Of Beliefs, Of Standards To Live By, Yet The Very Satisfaction Of Finding Them Will Be Marred By The Fact That I Have Reached The Ultimate In Shallow, Two-dimensional Living — A Set Of Values.

I Inhabit The Wax Image Of Myself, A Doll's Body. Sickness Begins Here; I Am A Dartboard For Witches.

I Find Myself Absolutely Fulfilled When I Have Written A Poem, When I'm Writing One. Having Written One, Then You Fall Away Very Rapidly From Having Been A Poet To Becoming A Sort Of Poet In Rest, Which Isn't The Same Thing At All. But I Think The Actual Experience Of Writing A Poem Is A Magnificent One.

If The Body Is A Temple, Then Tattoos Are Its Stained Glass Windows.

I Am Myself. That Is Not Enough.

This Is The Light Of The Mind, Cold And Planetary. The Trees Of The Mind Are Black. The Light Is Blue.

Ever Since I Was Small I Loved Feeling Somebody Comb My Hair. It Made Me Go All Sleepy & Peaceful.

Mother Of Otherness, Eat Me.

If Only I Can Find Him... The Man Who Will Be Intelligent, Yet Physically Magnetic And Personable. If I Can Offer That Combination, Why Shouldn't I Expect It In A Man?

Aloneness And Selfness Are Too Important To Betray For Company.

I Am Still So Naïve; I Know Pretty Much What I Like And Dislike; But Please, Don’t Ask Me Who I Am. A Passionate, Fragmentary Girl, Maybe?

Don't Let The Wicked City Get You Down.

I Wish You’d Find The Exit Out Of My Head.

I Didn't Know What I Was Doing In New York.

Before I Give My Body, I Must Give My Thoughts, My Mind, My Dreams.

The Thing About Writing Is Not To Talk, But To Do It; No Matter How Bad Or Even Mediocre It Is, The Process And Production Is The Thing, Not The Sitting And Theorizing About How One Should Write Ideally, Or How Well One Could Write If One Really Wanted To Or Had The Time.

It's A Hell Of A Responsibility To Be Yourself. It's Much Easier To Be Somebody Else Or Nobody At All.

I Took A Deep Breath And Listened To The Old Bray Of My Heart. I Am. I Am. I Am.

What Is So Real As The Cry Of A Child? A Rabbit's Cry May Be Wilder But It Has No Soul.

Tomorrow Is Another Day Toward Death.

Tomorrow Is Another Day

Sometimes I Feel Like I'm Not Solid. I'm Hollow. There's Nothing Behind My Eyes. I'm A Negative Of A Person. All I Want Is Blackness, Blackness And Silence.

How Frail The Human Heart Must Be - A Mirrored Pool Of Thought.

Poetry, I Feel, Is A Tyrannical Discipline, You've Got To Go So Far, So Fast, In Such A Small Space That You've Just Got To Turn Away All The Peripherals.

Why Am I Obsessed With The Idea I Can Justify Myself By Getting Manuscripts Published? Is It An Escape-an Excuse For Any Social Failure-so I Can Say "no, I Don't Go Out For Many Extracurricular Activities, But I Spend A Lot Of Time Writing."

I Had Always Imagined Myself Hitching Up On To My Elbows On The Delivery Table After It Was All Over - Dead White, Of Course, With No Makeup And From The Awful Ordeal, But Smiling And Radiant, With My Hair Down To My Waist, And Reaching Out For My First Little Squirmy Child And Saying Its Name, Whatever It Was.

Sure, I’m Dramatic And Sloppily Semi-cynical And Semi-sentimental. But, In Leisure Years I Could Grow And Choose My Way. Now I Am Living On The Edge. We All Are On The Brink, And It Takes A Lot Of Nerve, A Lot Of Energy, To Teeter On The Edge, Looking Over, Looking Down Into The Windy Blackness And Not Being Quite Able To Make Out, Through The Yellow, Stinking Mist, Just What Lies Below In The Slime, In The Oozing, Vomit-streaked Slime; And So I Could Go On, My Thoughts, Writing Much, Trying To Find The Core, The Meaning For Myself.

I Am Made, Crudely, For Success.

If I Didn't Think, I'd Be Much Happier; If I Didn't Have Any Sex Organs, I Wouldn't Waver On The Brink Of Nervous Emotion And Tears All The Time.

You Are The One. Solid The Spaces Lean On, Envious. You Are The Baby In The Barn.

So, Now I Shall Talk Every Night. To Myself. To The Moon. I Shall Walk, As I Did Tonight, Jealous Of My Loneliness, In The Blue-silver Of The Cold Moon, Shining Brilliantly On The Drifts Of Fresh-fallen Snow, With The Myriad Sparkles. I Talk To Myself And Look At The Dark Trees, Blessedly Neutral. So Much Easier Than Facing People, Than Having To Look Happy, Invulnerable, Clever.

How We Need Another Soul To Cling To.

But I Wasn't Sure. I Wasn't Sure At All. How Did I Know That Someday―at College, In Europe, Somewhere, Anywhere―the Bell Jar, With Its Stifling Distortions, Wouldn't Descend Again?

Do We Always Grind Through The Present, Doomed To Throw A Gold Haze Of Fond Retrospect Over The Past?

I'm Happier Writing About Doctors Than I Would Have Been Being One.

I Want To Force Myself Again And Again To Leave The Warmth And Security Of Static Situations And Move Into The World Of Growth And Suffering Where The Real Books Are People's Minds And Souls.

I Thought The Most Beautiful Thing In The World Must Be Shadow.

I Opened The Door And Blinked Out Into The Bright Hall. I Had The Impression It Wasn't Night And It Wasn't Day, But Some Lurid Third Interval That Had Suddenly Slipped Between Them And Would Never End.

Once One Has Seen God, What Is The Remedy?

And I A Smiling Woman. I Am Only Thirty. And Like The Cat I Have Nine Times To Die.

The Sun Gives You Ulcers, The Wind Gives You T.b. Once You Were Beautiful.

And The Danger Is That In This Move Toward New Horizons And Far Directions, That I May Lose What I Have Now, And Not Find Anything Except Loneliness

I Hate Handing Over Money To People For Doing What I Could Just As Easily Do Myself, It Makes Me Nervous.

I Collect Men With Interesting Names.

Nothing Stinks Like A Pile Of Unpublished Writing.

Cold Glass, How You Insert Yourself Between Myself And Myself. I Scratch Like A Cat. The Blood That Runs Is Dark Fruit- An Effect, A Cosmetic. You Smile. No, It Is Not Fatal.

You Walked In, Laughing, Tears Welling Confused, Mingling In Your Throat. How Can You Be So Many Women To So Many People, Oh You Strange Girl?

I Have No Preconceptions. Whatever I See, I Swallow Immediately. Just As It Is, Unmisted By Love Or Dislike. I Am Not Cruel, Only Truthful.

I Hurl My Heart To Halt His Pace.

How We Need Another Soul To Cling To, Another Body To Keep Us Warm. To Rest And Trust; To Give Your Soul In Confidence: I Need This, I Need Someone To Pour Myself Into.

God, If Ever I Have Come Close To Wanting To Commit Suicide, It Is Now, With The Groggy Sleepless Blood Dragging Through My Veins, And The Air Thick And Gray With Rain ... I Fell Into Bed Again This Morning, Begging For Sleep, Withdrawing Into The Dark, Warm, Fetid Escape From Action, From Responsibility. No Good.

How Can I Tell Bob That My Happiness Streams From Having Wrenched A Piece Out Of My Life, A Piece Of Hurt And Beauty, And Transformed It To Typewritten Words On Paper? How Can He Know I Am Justifying My Life, My Keen Emotions, My Feeling, By Turning It Into Print?

Look At That Ugly Dead Mask Here And Do Not Forget It. It Is A Chalk Mask With Dead Dry Poison Behind It, Like The Death Angel. It Is What I Was This Fall, And What I Never Want To Be Again. The Pouting Disconsolate Mouth, The Flat, Bored, Numb, Expressionless Eyes: Symptoms Of The Foul Decay Within.

The Moon, Also, Is Merciless: She Would Drag Me Cruelly, Being Barren. Her Radiance Scathes Me. Or Perhaps I Have Caught Her.

I Felt Myself Melting Into The Shadows Like The Negative Of A Person I'd Never Seen Before In My Life.

A Black-sharded Lady Keeps Me In A Parrot Cage.

The Blood Of Love Welled Up In My Heart With A Slow Pain.

Cheers For Spring; For Life; For A Growing Soul.

I Want To Become Acutely Aware Of All I've Taken For Granted.

I Couldn’t See The Point Of Getting Up. I Had Nothing To Look Forward To.

Don't Talk To Me About The World Needing Cheerful Stuff! What The Person Out Of Belsen Physical Or Psychological Wants Is Nobody Saying The Birdies Still Go Tweet-tweet, But The Full Knowledge That Somebody Else Has Been There And Knows The Worst, Just What It Is Like.

Life Has Been Some Combination Of Fairy-tale Coincidence And Joie De Vivre And Shocks Of Beauty Together With Some Hurtful Self-questioning.

Self Questioning

Winter Dawn Is The Color Of Metal, The Trees Stiffen Into Place Like Burnt Nerves.

Winter Is For Women The Woman Still At Her Knitting, At The Cradle Of Spanish Walnut, Her Body A Bulb In The Cold And Too Dumb To Think.

But I Am I Now; And So Many Other Millions Are So Irretrievably Their Own Special Variety Of 'i' That I Can Hardly Bear To Think Of It. I: How Firm A Letter; How Reassuring The Three Strokes: One Vertical, Proud And Assertive, And Then The Two Short Horizontal Lines In Quick, Smug Succession. The Pen Scratching On The Paper…i…i…i…i…i…i.

But They Know. They All Know. And What Am I Against So Many…?

I Want To Live And Feel All The Shades, Tones And Variations Of Mental And Physical Experience Possible In Life.

Kiss Me And You Will See How Important I Am.

The Hardest Thing, I Think, Is To Live Richly In The Present, Without Letting It Be Tainted & Spoiled Out Of Fear For The Future Or Regret For A Badly-managed Past.

I Hadn't, At The Last Moment, Felt Like Washing Off The Two Diagonal Lines Of Dried Blood That Marked My Cheeks. They Seemed Touching, And Rather Spectacular, And I Thought I Would Carry Them Around With Me, Like The Relic Of A Dead Lover, Till They Wore Off Of Their Own Accord.

Jealousy Can Open The Blood, It Can Make Black Roses.

I Wanted Change And Excitement And To Shoot Off In All Directions Myself, Like The Colored Arrows From A Fourth Of July Rocket.

Why Do We Electrocute Men For Murdering An Individual And Then Pin A Purple Heart On Them For Mass Slaughter Of Someone Arbitrarily Labeled “enemy?

That Is Salvation. To Give Of Love Inside. To Keep Love Of Life, No Matter What, And Give To Others. Generously.

I Am Sending Back The Key That Let Me Into Bluebeard's Study; Because He Would Make Love To Me I Am Sending Back The Key; In His Eye's Darkroom I Can See My X-rayed Heart, Dissected Body: I Am Sending Back The Key That Let Me Into Bluebeard S Study.

That’s One Of The Reasons I Never Wanted To Get Married. The Last Thing I Wanted Was Infinite Security And To Be The Place An Arrow Shoots Off From. I Wanted Change And Excitement And To Shoot Off In All Directions Myself, Like The Colored Arrows From A Fourth Of July Rocket.

I Drink Sherry And Wine By Myself Because I Like It And I Get The Sensuous Feeling Of Indulgence...luxury, Bliss, Erotic-tinged.

I Would Catch Sight Of Some Flawless Man Off In The Distance, But As Soon As He Moved Closer I Immediately Saw He Wouldn’t Do At All.

It Was My First Big Chance, But Here I Was, Sitting Back And Letting It Run Through My Fingers Like So Much Water.

I Am Accused. I Dream Of Massacres. I Am A Garden Of Black And Red Agonies. I Drink Them, Hating Myself, Hating And Fearing. And Now The World Conceives Its End And Runs Toward It, Arms Held Out In Love.

It Is As If My Life Were Magically Run By Two Electric Currents: Joyous Positive And Despairing Negative--which Ever Is Running At The Moment Dominates My Life, Floods It.

The Claw Of The Magnolia, Drunk On Its Own Scents, Asks Nothing Of Life.

I Don't Know How Long I Kept At It... I Felt Reasonably Safe, Streched Out On The Floor, And Lay Quite Still. It Didn't Seem To Be Summer Any More

Frustrated? Yes. Why? Because It Is Impossible For Me To Be God — Or The Universal Woman-and-man — Or Anything Much. I Am What I Feel And Think And Do. I Want To Express My Being As Fully As I Can Because I Somewhere Picked Up The Idea That I Could Justify My Being Alive That Way.

I Keep Wanting To Crawl Back Into The Womb.

I Talk To God But The Sky Is Empty.

The Constant Struggle In Mature Life, I Think, Is To Accept The Necessity Of Tragedy And Conflict, And Not To Try To Escape To Some Falsely Simple Solution Which Does Not Include These More Somber Complexities.

Why Can’t I Try On Different Lives, Like Dresses, To See Which Fits Best And Is More Becoming?

The Abstract Kills, The Concrete Saves.

If Only I Knew What I Wanted I Could Try To See About Getting It.

You Ask Me Why I Spend My Life Writing? Do I Find Entertainment? Is It Worthwhile? Above All, Does It Pay? If Not, Then, Is There A Reason?... I Write Only Because There Is A Voice Within Me. That Will Not Be Still.

One Night She Hid The Pink Cotton Scarf From Her Raincoat In The Pillowcase When The Nurse Came Around To Lock Up Her Drawers And Closets For The Night. In The Dark She Had Made A Loop And Tried To Pull It Tight Around Her Throat. But Always Just As The Air Stopped Coming And She Felt The Rushing Grow Louder In Her Ears, Her Hands Would Slacken And Let Go, And She Would Lie There Panting For Breath, Cursing The Dumb Instinct In Her Body That Fought To Go On Living

Perhaps Some Day I'll Crawl Back Home, Beaten, Defeated. But Not As Long As I Can Make Stories Out Of My Heartbreak, Beauty Out Of Sorrow.

Widow. The Word Consumes Itself.

I Saw The Years Of My Life Spaced Along A Road In The Form Of Telephone Poles Threaded Together By Wires. I Counted One, Two, Three... Nineteen Telephone Poles, And Then The Wires Dangled Into Space, And Try As I Would, I Couldn't See A Single Pole Beyond The Nineteenth.

Your Body Hurts Me As The World Hurts God

Spiderlike, I Spin Mirrors, Loyal To My Image.

And So I Rehabilitate Myself - Staying Up Late This Friday Night In Spite Of Vowing To Go To Bed Early, Because It Is More Important To Capture Moments Like This, Keen Shifts In Mood, Sudden Veering Of Direction - Than To Lose It In Slumber.

Whenever I'm Sad I'm Going To Die, Or So Nervous I Can't Sleep, Or In Love With Somebody I Won't Be Seeing For A Week, I Slump Down Just So Far And Then I Say: 'i'll Go Take A Hot Bath.

I Felt Overstuffed And Dull And Disappointed, The Way I Always Do The Day After Christmas, As If Whatever It Was The Pine Boughs And The Candles And The Silver And Gilt-ribboned Presents And The Birch-log Fires And The Christmas Turkey And The Carols At The Piano Promised Never Came To Pass.

I'm Doped And Thick From My Last Sleeping Pill.

See, The Darkness Is Leaking From The Cracks. I Cannot Contain It. I Cannot Contain My Life.

I Feel Occasionally My Skull Will Crack, Fatigue Is Continuous - I Only Go From Less Exhausted To More Exhausted & Back Again.

I Must Say What I Admire Most Is The Person Who Masters An Area Of Practical Experience, And Can Teach Me Something. I Mean, My Local Midwife Has Taught Me How To Keep Bees. Well, She Can't Understand Anything I Write. And I Find Myself Liking Her, May I Say, More Than Most Poets. And Among My Friends I Find People Who Know All About Boats Or Know All About Certain Sports, Or How To Cut Somebody Open And Remove An Organ. I'm Fascinated By This Mastery Of The Practical.

When They Asked Me What I Wanted To Be I Said I Didn't Know.

I Could Feel The Winter Shaking My Bones And Banging My Teeth Together.

I Want To Taste And Glory In Each Day, And Never Be Afraid To Experience Pain; And Never Shut Myself Up In A Numb Core Of Nonfeeling, Or Stop Questioning And Criticizing Life And Take The Easy Way Out. To Learn And Think: To Think And Live; To Live And Learn: This Always, With New Insight, New Understanding, And New Love.

You Smile. No, It Is Not Fatal.

I Tried To Speak In A Cool, Calm Way, But The Zombie Rose Up In My Throat And Choked Me Off.

You Have To Be Able To Make A Real Creative Life For Yourself, Before You Can Expect Anyone Else To Provide One Ready-made For You.

... Stop Trying To Get Me To Write About 'decent Courageous People' -- Read The Ladies' Home Journal For Those! ... I Believe In Going Through And Facing The Worst, Not Hiding From It.

When They Asked Some Old Roman Philosopher Or Other How He Wanted To Die, He Said He Would Open His Veins In A Warm Bath. I Thought It Would Be Easy, Lying In The Tup And Seeing The Redness Flower From My Wrists, Flush After Flush Through The Clear Water, Till I Sank Into Sleep Under A Surface Gaudy As Poppies.

Tonight I Am Ugly. I Have Lost All Faith In My Ability To Attract Males, And In The Female Animal That Is A Rather Pathetic Malady . . . I Don't Care About Anyone, And The Feeling Is Quite Obviously Mutual. What Is It That Makes One Attract Others?

How Many Different Deaths I Can Die?

I Am I-i Am Powerful, But To What Extent? I Am I.

I Woke To The Sound Of Rain.

A Terrible Depression Yesterday. Visions Of My Life Petering Out Into A Kind Of Soft-brained Stupor From Lack Of Use.

I Shall Never Get Out Of This! There Are Two Of Me Now: This New Absolutely White Person And The Old Yellow One, And The White Person Is Certainly The Superior One. She Doesn't Need Food, She Is One Of The Real Saints. At The Beginning I Hated Her, She Had No Personality- She Lay In Bed With Me Like A Dead Body And I Was Scared, Because She Was Shaped Just The Way I Was Only Much Whiter And Unbreakable And With No Complaints. I Couldn't Sleep For A Week She Was So Cold.

I Could Never Be A Complete Scholar Or A Complete Housewife Ora Completewriter: Imustcombinea Little Of All, And Thereby Be Imperfect In All.

Let's Face It: I'm Scared, Scared And Frozen. First, I Guess, I'm Afraid For Myself ... The Old Primitive Urge For Survival. It's Getting So I Live Every Moment With Terrible Intensity. Last Night, Driving Back From Boston, I Lay Back In The Car And Let The Colored Lights Come At Me, The Music From The Radio, The Reflection Of The Guy Driving. It All Flowed Over Me With A Screaming Ache Of Pain ... Remember, Remember, This Is Now, And Now, And Now. Live It, Feel It, Cling To It. I Want To Become Acutely Aware Of All I've Taken For Granted. When You Feel That This May Be The Good-bye, The Last Time, It Hits You Harder.

Here I Am, A Bundle Of Past Recollections And Future Dreams, Knotted Up In A Reasonably Attractive Bundle Of Flesh. I Remember What This Flesh Has Gone Through; I Dream Of What It May Go Through.

I Suppose I'll Always Be Over-vulnerable, Slightly Paranoid.

Wear Your Heart On Your Skin In This Life.

I Think I Am Worthwhile Just Because I Have Optical Nerves And Can Try To Put Down What They Perceive. What A Fool!

When They Asked Me What I Wanted To Be I Said I Didn’t Know. "oh, Sure You Know," The Photographer Said. "she Wants," Said Jay Cee Wittily, "to Be Everything.

I Am Terrified By This Dark Thing That Sleeps In Me; All Day I Feel Its Soft, Feathery Turnings, Its Malignity. Clouds Pass And Disperse. Are Those The Faces Of Love, Those Pale Irretrievables? Is It For Such I Agitate My Heart? I Am Incapable Of More Knowledge. What Is This, This Face So Murderous In Its Strangle Of Branches? - Its Snaky Acids Kiss. It Petrifies The Will. These Are The Isolate, Slow Faults That Kill, That Kill, That Kill.

Doreen Had Intuition. Everything She Said Was Like A Secret Voice Speaking Straight Out Of My Own Bones.

I Find That In A Novel I Can Get More Of Life, Perhaps Not Such Intense Life, But Certainly More Of Life Than In Poetry.

Love Is The Bone And Sinew Of My Curse.

I Am Afraid Of Getting Older … I Am Afraid Of Getting Married. Spare Me From Cooking Three Meals A Day—spare Me From The Relentless Cage Of Routine And Rote. I Want To Be Free…. I Want, I Want To Think, To Be Omniscient…. I Think I Would Like To Call Myself ‘the Girl Who Wanted To Be God.

I Can't Think Logically About Who I Am Or Where I Am Going. I Have Been Very Ecstatic, Horribly Depressed, Shocked, Elated, Enlightened, And Enervated.

I Used To Pray To Recover You.

When You Give Someone Your Whole Heart And He Doesn't Want It, You Cannot Take It Back. It's Gone Forever.

Unrequited Love

I Shut My Eyes And All The World Drops Dead; I Lift My Lids And All Is Born Again. (i Think I Made You Up Inside My Head.) The Stars Go Waltzing Out In Blue And Red, And Arbitrary Blackness Gallops In: I Shut My Eyes And All The World Drops Dead. I Dreamed That You Bewitched Me Into Bed And Sung Me Moon-struck, Kissed Me Quite Insane. (i Think I Made You Up Inside My Head.)

I Feel, Am Mad As Any Writer Must In One Way Be; Why Not Make It Real? I Am Too Close To The Bourgeois Society Of Suburbia: Too Close To People I Know I Must Sever My Self From Them, Or Be A Part Of Their World: This Half And Half Compromise Is Intolerable.

Out Of The Ash I Rise With My Red Hair And I Eat Men Like Air.

I Do Feel That Now And I Feel That This Development Of Recording Poems, Of Speaking Poems At Readings, Of Having Records Of Poets, I Think This Is A Wonderful Thing. I'm Very Excited By It. In A Sense, There's A Return, Isn't There, To The Old Role Of The Poet, Which Was To Speak To A Group Of People, To Come Across.

I Had Imagined A Kind, Ugly, Intuitive Man Looking Up And Say, 'ah!' In An Encouraging Way, As If He Could See Something I Couldn't, And Then I Would Find Words To Tell Him How I Was So Scared, As If I Were Being Stuffed Farther And Farther Into A Black, Airless Sack With No Way Out.

What Is My Life For And What Am I Going To Do With It? I Don't Know And I'm Afraid. I Can Never Read All The Books I Want; I Can Never Be All The People I Want And Live All The Lives I Want.

The Lyric Abstrusities Of Auden Ring Mystically Down The Circular Canals Of My Ear And It Begins To Look Like Snow. The Good Gray Conservative Obliterating Snow. Smoothing (in One White Lacy Euphemism After Another) Out All The Black Bleak Angular Unangelic Nauseous Ugliness Of The Blasted Sterile World: Dry Buds, Shrunken Stone Houses, Dead Vertical Moving People All All All Go Under The Great White Beguiling Wave. And Come Out Transformed. Lose Yourself In A Numb Dumb Snow-daubed Lattice Of Crystal And Come Out Pure With The White Virginal Veneer You Never Had.

I Had Decided I Would Put Off The Novel Until I Had Gone To Europe And Had A Lover.

The Only Reason I Remembered This Play Was Because It Had A Mad Person In It, And Everything I Had Ever Read About Mad People Stuck In My Mind, While Everything Else Flew Out.

There Is Nothing Like Puking With Somebody To Make You Into Old Friends.

Funny Best Friend

I Wanted To Do Everything Once And For All And Be Through With It.

I Said: I Must Remember This, Being Small.

For Me, Poetry Is An Evasion Of The Real Job Of Writing Prose.

Not Easy To State The Change You Made. If I'm Alive Now, I Was Dead, Though, Like A Stone, Unbothered By It.

Why Honey, Don't You Want To Get Dressed?" My Mother Took Care Never To Tell Me To Do Anything. She Would Only Reason With Me Sweetly, Like One Intelligent, Mature Person With Another. It's Almost Three In The Afternoon." I'm Writing A Novel," I Said. "i Haven't Got Time To Change Into This And Change Into That.

I Have To Live My Life, And It Is The Only One I’ll Ever Have.

I Am But One More Drop In The Great Sea Of Matter, Defined, With The Ability To Realize My Existence.

I Don't Know What Started Me, I Just Wrote Poetry From The Time Was Quite Small. I Guess I Liked Nursery Rhymes And I Guess I Thought I Could Do The Same Thing. I Wrote My First Poem, My First Published Poem, When I Was Eight-and-a-half Years Old. It Came Out In The Boston Traveller And From Then On, I Suppose, I've Been A Bit Of A Professional.

There Is No Life Higher Than The Grasstops

I Felt Very Still And Empty, The Way The Eye Of A Tornado Must Feel, Moving Dully Along In The Middle Of The Surrounding Hullabaloo.

I Want So Obviously, So Desperately To Be Loved, And To Be Capable Of Love.

I Have The Choice Of Being Constantly Active And Happy Or Introspectively Passive And Sad. Or I Can Go Mad By Ricocheting In Between.

I Feel That Very Strongly: Having Been An Academic, Having Been Tempted By The Invitation To Stay On To Become A Ph.d., A Professor, And All That, One Side Of Me Certainly Does Respect All Disciplines, As Long As They Don't Ossify.

I Knew You'd Decide To Be All Right Again.

Eternity Bores Me, I Never Wanted It.

The Thought That I Might Kill Myself Formed In My Mind Coolly As A Tree Or A Flower.

... You Looked Around And Saw Everybody Either Married Or Busy And Happy And Thinking And Being Creative, And You Felt Scared, Sick, Lethargic, Worst Of All, Not Wanting To Cope. You Saw Visions Of Yourself In A Straightjacket, And A Drain On The Family, Murdering Your Mother In Actuality, Killing The Edifice Of Love And Respect Built Up Over The Years In The Hearts Of Other People.

It Was Like The First Time I Saw A Cadaver. For Weeks Afterward The Cadavers Head, Or What Was Left Of It - Floated Up Behind My Eggs And Bacon At Breakfast And In The Face Of Buddy Willard, Who Was Responsible For My Seeing It In The First Place, And Pretty Soon I Felt As Though I Were Carrying That Cadavers Head Around With Me On A String, Like Some Black, Noseless Balloon Stinking Of Vinegar.

A Fierce Brief Fusion Which Dreamers Call Real, And Realists, An Illusion; An Insight Like The Flight Of Birds.

I Need Some Older, Wiser Being To Cry To. I Talk To God, But The Sky Is Empty, And Orion Walks By And Doesn't Speak.

It Was My Last Act Of Love (first Words To Her Mother In The Hospital After Her First Major Suicide Attempt)

I Suppose If I Gave Myself The Chance I Could Be An Alcoholic.

Over Coffee And Orange Juice The Embryonic Suicide Brightens Visibly.

If There's Anything I Look Down On, It's A Man In A Blue Outfit.

My Life Is A Discipline, A Prison: I Live For My Own Work, Without Which I Am Nothing.

Everything In Life Is Writable.

I Felt Wise And Cynical As All Hell.

The Sickness Rolled Through Me In Great Waves. After Each Wave It Would Fade Away And Leave Me Limp As A Wet Leaf And Shivering All Over And Then I Would Feel It Rising Up In Me Again, And The Glittering White Torture Chamber Tiles Under My Feet And Over My Head And All Four Sides Closed In And Squeezed Me To Pieces.

I Have This Demon Who Wants Me To Run Away Screaming If I Am Going To Be Flawed, Fallible. It Wants Me To Think I'm So Good I Must Be Perfect. Or Nothing. I Am, On The Contrary, Something: A Being Who Gets Tired, Has Shyness To Fight, Has More Trouble Than Most Facing People Easily.

You Have Lost All Delight In Life. Ahead Is A Large Array Of Blind Alleys. You Are Half-deliberately, Half-desperately Cutting Off Your Grip On Creative Life. You Are Becoming A Neuter Machine. You Cannot Love, Even If You Knew How To Begin To Love. Every Thought Is A Devil, A Hell-if You Could Do A Lot Of Things Over Again, Ah, How Differently You Would Do Them! You Want To Go Home, Back To The Womb. You Watch The World Bang Door After Door In Your Face, Numbly, Bitterly. You Have Forgotten The Secret You Knew, Once, Ah, Once, Of Being Joyous, Of Laughing, Of Opening Doors.

I Am What I Feel And Think And Do.

As A Poet, One Lives A Bit On Air. I Always Like Someone Who Can Teach Me Something Practical.

…i Hate Myself For Not Being Able To Go Downstairs Naturally And Seek Comfort In Numbers. I Hate Myself For Having To Sit Here And Be Torn Between I Know Not What Within Me.

Trending Author

Ibrahim Babangida

Category