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I May Never Be Happy, But Tonight I Am Content. Nothing More Than An Empty House, The Warm Hazy Weariness From A Day Spent Setting Strawberry Runners In The Sun, A Glass Of Cool Sweet Milk, And A Shallow Dish Of Blueberries Bathed In Cream. When One Is So Tired At The End Of A Day One Must Sleep, And At The Next Dawn There Are More Strawberry Runners To Set, And So One Goes On Living, Near The Earth. At Times Like This I'd Call Myself A Fool To Ask For More.

-Sylvia Plath

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I May Never Be

Sylvia Plath

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I May Never Be Happy, But Tonight I Am Content. Nothing More Than An Empty House, The Warm Hazy Weariness From A Day Spent Setting Strawberry Runners In The Sun, A Glass Of Cool Sweet Milk, And A Shallow Dish Of Blueberries Bathed In Cream. When One Is So Tired At The End Of A Day One Must Sleep, And At The Next Dawn There Are More Strawberry Runners To Set, And So One Goes On Living, Near The Earth. At Times Like This I'd Call Myself A Fool To Ask For More.

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Is There No Way Out Of The Mind?

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

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If The Moon Smiled, She Would Resemble You. You Leave The Same Impression Of Something Beautiful, But Annihilating.

I Wondered What I Thought I Was Burying.

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I Do Not Fear It: I Have Been There.

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

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

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

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It Is So Much Safer Not To Feel, Not To Let The World Touch Me.

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I Love My Rejection Slips. They Show Me I Try.

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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.

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

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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.

We Walk The Plank With Strangers.

The Day I Went Into Physics Class It Was Death.

After All, We Are Nothing More Or Less Than We Choose To Reveal.

Some Things Are Hard To Write About. After Something Happens To You, You Go To Write It Down, And Either You Over Dramatize It, Or Underplay It, Exaggerate The Wrong Parts Or Ignore The Important Ones. At Any Rate, You Never Write It Quite The Way You Want To.

They Had To Call And Call And Pick The Worms Off Me Like Sticky Pearls.

The Body Is Amazingly Stubborn When It Comes To Sacrificing Itself To The Annihilating Directions Of The Mind.

I Do Not Know Who I Am Tonight.

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

It Was Sometime In October; She Had Long Ago Lost Track Of All The Days And It Really Didn’t Matter Because One Was Like Another And There Were No Nights To Separate Them Because She Never Slept Any More.

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Don't Let The Wicked City Get You Down.

I Don’t Care About Anyone, And The Feeling Is Quite Obviously Mutual.

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

The Silence Between Us Was So Profound I Thought Part Of It Must Be My Fault.

Now I Am Silent, Hate Up To My Neck, Thick, Thick. I Do Not Speak.

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I Have A Violence In Me That Is Hot As Death-blood.

With That Strange Knowing That Comes Over Me, Like A Clairvoyance, I Know That I Am Sure Of Myself And My Enormous And Alarmingly Timeless Love For You; Which Will Always Be.

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

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

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.

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The Sheets Grow Heavy As A Lecher's Kiss.

If You Dissect A Bird / To Diagram The Tongue, / You'll Cut The Chord / Articulating Song.

I Must Not Be Selfless: Develop A Sense Of Self. A Solidness That Can't Be Attacked.

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I Felt Like A Racehorse In A World Without Racetracks.

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

Funny Best Friend

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I Felt Wise And Cynical As All Hell.

God, How I Ricochet Between Certainties And Doubts.

I Didn’t Want Any Flowers, I Only Wanted To Lie With My Hands Turned Up And Be Utterly Empty. How Free It Is, You Have No Idea How Free—— The Peacefulness Is So Big It Dazes You, And It Asks Nothing, A Name Tag, A Few Trinkets. It Is What The Dead Close On, Finally; I Imagine Them Shutting Their Mouths On It, Like A Communion Tablet.

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Perfection Is Terrible, It Cannot Have Children.

But Writing Poems And Letters Doesn't Seem To Do Much Good.

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

I Sank Back In The Gray, Plush Seat And Closed My Eyes. The Air Of The Bell Jar Wadded Round Me And I Couldn't Stir.

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O Heart, Such Disorganization!

Disorganization

You've Only Got So Long To Live.

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

And I, Stepping From This Skin Of Old Bandages, Boredoms, Old Faces Step To You From The Black Car Of Lethe, Pure As A Baby.

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.

I Am What I Feel And Think And Do.

The Abstract Kills, The Concrete Saves.

There Is More Than One Good Way To Drown.

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Eternity Bores Me, I Never Wanted It.

I Think I May Well Be A Jew.

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

Only I Wasn't Steering Anything, Not Even Myself.

I Wish To Cry. Yet, I Laugh, And My Lipstick Leaves A Red Stain Like A Bloody Crescent Moon On Top Of The Beer Can

How We Need Another Soul To Cling To.

The Truth Comes To Me. The Truth Loves Me.

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

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.

Perhaps You Considered Yourself An Oracle, Mouthpiece Of The Dead, Or Of Some God Or Other. Thirty Years Now I Have Labored To Dredge The Silt From Your Throat. I Am None The Wiser.

I Felt Very Low. I Had Been Unmasked Only That Morning By Jay Cee Herself, And I Felt Now That All The Uncomfortable Suspicions I Had About Myself Were Coming True. After Nineteen Years Of Running After Good Marks And Prizes And Grants Of One Sort And Another, I Was Letting Up, Slowing Down, Dropping Clean Out Of Race.

I Am Gone Quite Mad With The Knowledge Of Accepting The Overwhelming Number Of Things I Can Never Know, Places I Can Never Go, And People I Can Never Be.

I Didn’t Want My Picture Taken Because I Was Going To Cry. I Didn’t Know Why I Was Going To Cry, But I Knew That If Anybody Spoke To Me Or Looked At Me Too Closely The Tears Would Fly Out Of My Eyes And The Sobs Would Fly Out Of My Throat And I’d Cry For A Week. I Could Feel The Tears Brimming And Sloshing In Me Like Water In A Glass That Is Unsteady And Too Full.

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.

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Olivier Messiaen

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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