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I Saw The Days Of The Year Stretching Ahead Like A Series Of Bright, White Boxes, And Separating One Box From Another Was Sleep, Like A Black Shade. Only For Me, The Long Perspective Of Shades That Set Off One Box From The Next Day Had Suddenly Snapped Up, And I Could See Day After Day After Day Glaring Ahead Of Me Like A White, Broad, Infinitely Desolate Avenue.

-Sylvia Plath

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I Saw The Days

Sylvia Plath

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I Saw The Days Of The Year Stretching Ahead Like A Series Of Bright, White Boxes, And Separating One Box From Another Was Sleep, Like A Black Shade. Only For Me, The Long Perspective Of Shades That Set Off One Box From The Next Day Had Suddenly Snapped Up, And I Could See Day After Day After Day Glaring Ahead Of Me Like A White, Broad, Infinitely Desolate Avenue.

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Tomorrow Is Another Day Toward Death.

Tomorrow Is Another Day

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

I Laid My Face To The Smooth Face Of The Marble And Howled My Loss Into The Cold Salt Rain.

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.

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.

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

As From A Star I Saw, Coldly And Soberly, The Separateness Of Everything. I Felt The Wall Of My Skin; I Am I. That Stone Is A Stone. My Beautiful Fusion With The Things Of This World Was Over.

But When I Took Up My Pen, My Hand Made Big, Jerky Letters Like Those Of A Child, And The Lines Sloped Down The Page From Left To Right Horizontally, As If They Were Loops Of String Lying On The Paper, And Someone Had Come Along And Blown Them Askew.

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.

How Many Different Deaths I Can Die?

Joy:show Joy & Enjoy: Then Others Will Be Joyful.

God, Is This All It Is, The Ricocheting Down The Corridor Of Laughter And Tears? Of Self-worship And Self-loathing? Of Glory And Disgust?

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.)

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.

Your Room Is Not Your Prison. You Are.

I Must Bridge The Gap Between Adolescent Glitter And Mature Glow.

I Have The One Person I Could Ever Love In This World. Now I Must Work To Be A Person Worthy Of That.

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.

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.

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.

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

Can A Selfish Egocentric Jealous And Unimaginative Female Write A Damn Thing Worthwhile?

I Need The Reality Of Other People, Work, To Fulfill Myself. Must Never Become A Mere Mother And Housewife.

Some Pale, Hueless Flicker Of Sensitivity Is In Me. God, Must I Lose It In Cooking Scrambled Eggs For A Man.

My Thoughts Are Crabbed And Sallow, My Tears Like Vinegar, Or The Bitter Blinking Yellow Of An Acetic Star. Tonight The Caustic Wind, Love, Gossips Late And Soon, And I Wear The Wry-faced Pucker Of The Sour Lemon Moon. While Like An Early Summer Plum, Puny, Green, And Tart, Droops Upon Its Wizened Stem My Lean, Unripened Heart.

Hurl Yourself At Goals Above Your Head And Bear The Lacerations That Come When You Slip And Make A Fool Of Yourself. Try Always, As Long As You Have Breath In Your Body, To Take The Hard Way–and Work, Work, Work To Build Yourself Into A Rich, Continually Evolving Entity.

Writing, Then, Was A Substitute For Myself: If You Don't Love Me, Love My Writing & Love Me For My Writing. It Is Also Much More: A Way Of Ordering And Reordering The Chaos Of Experience.

The Slime Of All My Yesterdays Rots In The Hollow Of My Skull.

I Smile, Now, Thinking: We All Like To Think We Are Important Enough To Need Psychiatrists

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

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

The Worst Enemy To Creativity Is Self-doubt.

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

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.

This Is Newness: Every Little Tawdry Obstacle Glass-wrapped And Peculiar, Glinting And Clinking In A Saint's Falsetto. Only You Don't Know What To Make Of The Sudden Slippiness, The Blind, White, Awful, Inaccessible Slant. There's No Getting Up It By The Words You Know. No Getting Up By Elephant Or Wheel Or Shoe. We Have Only Come To Look. You Are Too New To Want The World In A Glass Hat.

I Do Not Know Who I Am, Where I Am Going - And I Am The One Who Has To Decide The Answers To These Hideous Questions.

I Think I May Well Be A Jew.

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.

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.

There Is More Than One Good Way To Drown.

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!

Happy! That Is Indefinable As Far As States Of Being Go.

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.

Then I Decided I Would Spend The Summer Writing A Novel. That Would Fix A Lot Of People.

I Thought How Strange It Had Never Occurred To Me Before That I Was Only Purely Happy Until I Was Nine Years Old.

Let Me Sit In A Flowerpot, The Spiders Won't Notice. My Heart Is A Stopped Geranium.

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

Over Coffee And Orange Juice The Embryonic Suicide Brightens Visibly.

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

There Ought, I Thought, To Be A Ritual For Being Born Twice - Patched, Retreaded And Approved For The Road.

England Offers New Comforts. I Could Write A Novel There.

I Think I Made You Up Inside My Head.

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.

Life Was Not To Be Sitting In Hot Amorphic Leisure In My Backyard Idly Writing Or Not Writing, As The Spirit Moved Me. It Was, Instead, Running Madly, In A Crowded Schedule, In A Squirrel Cage Of Busy People. Working, Living, Dancing, Dreaming, Talking, Kissing- Singing, Laughing, Learning.

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.

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

Perhaps, Perhaps This Would Be The One To Pull Me Out Of My Plunge.

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.

I Can't Deceive Myself Out Of The Bare Stark Realization That No Matter How Enthusiastic You Are, No Matter How Sure That Character Is Fate, Nothing Is Real, Past Or Future, When You Are Alone In Your Room With The Clock Ticking Loudly Into The False Cheerful Brilliance Of The Electric Light. And If You Have No Past Or Future Which, After All, Is All That The Present Is Made Of, Why Then You May As Well Dispose Of The Empty Shell Of Present And Commit Suicide.

I Think I Am Mad Sometimes.

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.

So Much Working, Reading, Thinking, Living To Do! A Lifetime Is Not Long Enough.

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.

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.

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

I Am Myself. That Is Not Enough.

Living With Him Is Like Being Told A Perpetual Story: His Mind Is The Biggest, Most Imaginative I Have Ever Met. I Could Live In Its Growing Countries Forever.

I Felt The Mask Crumple, The Great Poisonous Store Of Corrosive Ashes Begin To Spew Out Of My Mouth.

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

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.

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

Dancing Is The Normal Prelude To Intercourse.

Don't Let The Wicked City Get You Down.

If Only A Group Of People Were More Important To Me Than The Idea Of A Novel, I Might Begin A Novel.

And When At Last You Find Someone To Whom You Feel You Can Pour Out Your Soul, You Stop In Shock At The Words You Utter— They Are So Rusty, So Ugly, So Meaningless And Feeble From Being Kept In The Small Cramped Dark Inside You So Long.

I Collected Men With Interesting Names. I Already Knew A Socrates. He Was Tall And Ugly And Intellectual And The Son Of Some Big Greek Movie Producer In Hollywood, But Also A Catholic, Which Ruined It For Both Of Us.

I Felt Dull And Flat And Full Of Shattered Visions.

I Wondered What I Thought I Was Burying.

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

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

Spiderlike, I Spin Mirrors, Loyal To My Image.

I Used To Pray To Recover You.

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

So I Kiss Him, And There Is The Great Dark Sea Ahead.

So You Got Rid Of Your Astonishment That Someone Could Write So Much More Dynamically Than You. You Stopped Cherishing Your Aloneness And Poetic Differentness To Your Delicately Flat Little Bosom. You Said: She's To Good To Forget. How About Making Her A Friend And Competitor — You Could Learn Alot From Her. So You'll Try. So Maybe She'll Laugh In Your Face. So Maybe She'll Beat You Hollow In The End. So Anyhow, You'll Try, And Maybe, Possibly, She Can Stand You. Here's Hoping!

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

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

Character Is Fate.

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.

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

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.

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

Then I Thought, "no, I Broke It Myself. I Broke It On Purpose To Pay Myself Back For Being Such A Heel.

The Sky Leans On Me, Me, The One Upright Among All Horizontals.

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

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.

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.

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.

August Rain: The Best Of The Summer Gone, And The New Fall Not Yet Born. The Odd Uneven Time.

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

It Seemed Silly To Wash One Day When I Would Only Have To Wash Again The Next. It Made Me Tired Just To Think Of It.

There Is Something Demoralizing About Watching Two People Get More And More Crazy About Each Other, Especially When You Are The Only Extra Person In The Room.

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

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

Is There No Way Out Of The Mind?

A Skeptic, I Would Ask For Consistency First Of All.

You Cannot Regard Your Own Life With Objective Curiosity All The Time.

I Want To Kill Myself, To Escape From Responsiblity, To Crawl Abjectly Back Into The Womb.

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

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

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

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

A Dispassionate White Sun Shone At The Summit Of The Sky. I Wanted To Hone Myself On It Till I Grew Saintly And Thin And Essential As The Blade Of A Knife.

I Must Be Lean & Write & Make Worlds Beside This To Live In.

What I Cannot Forgive Is Dishonesty - And No Matter What, Or How Hard, I Would Rather Know The Truth Of Which I Today Had Such A Clear & Devastating Vision From His Mouth Than Hear Foul Evasions, Blurrings And Rattiness.

What Did My Fingers Do Before They Held Him? What Did My Heart Do, With Its Love?

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

I Am Silver And Exact.i Have No Preconceptions.

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

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

I’d Discovered, After A Lot Of Extreme Apprehension About What Spoons To Use, That If You Do Something Incorrect At Table With A Certain Arrogance, As If You Knew Perfectly Well You Were Doing It Properly, You Can Get Away With It And Nobody Will Think You Are Bad-mannered Or Poorly Brought Up. They Will Think You Are Original And Very Witty.

O Heart, Such Disorganization!

Disorganization

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.

Hour By Hour, Day By Day, Life Becomes Possible.

Worse Even Than Your Maddening Song, Your Silence.

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.

But Everybody Has Exactly The Same Smiling Frightened Face, With The Look That Says: "i'm Important. If You Only Get To Know Me, You Will See How Important I Am. Look Into My Eyes. Kiss Me, And You Will See How Important I Am.

I Am Terrified By This Dark Thing That Sleeps In Me.

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

There Must Be Quite A Few Things That A Hot Bath Won't Cure, But I Don't Know Many Of Them.

I Think My Poems Immediately Come Out Of The Sensuous And Emotional Experiences I Have, But I Must Say I Cannot Sympathise With These Cries From The Heart That Are Informed By Nothing Except A Needle Or A Knife, Or Whatever It Is.

I Have Done, This Year, What I Said I Would: Overcome My Fear Of Facing A Blank Page Day After Day, Acknowledging Myself, In My Deepest Emotions, A Writer, Come What May.

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

In A Rabbit-fear I May Hurl Myself Under The Wheels Of The Car Because The Lights Terrify Me, And Under The Dark Blind Death Of Wheels I Will Be Safe. I Am Very Tired, Very Banal, Very Confused. I Do Not Know Who I Am Tonight. I Wanted To Walk Until I Dropped And Not Complete The Inevitable Circle Of Coming Home.

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.

There Is A Certain Unique And Strange Delight About Walking Down An Empty Street Alone. There Is An Off-focus Light Cast By The Moon, And The Streetlights Are Part Of The Spotlight Apparatus On A Bare Stage Set Up For You To Walk Through. You Get A Feeling Of Being Listened To, So You Talk Aloud, Softly, To See How It Sounds.

There Is A Certain Clinical Satisfaction In Seeing Just How Bad Things Can Get.

Backward We Traveled To Reclaim The Day Before We Fell, Like Icarus, Undone; All We Find Are Altars In Decay And Profane Words Scrawled Black Across The Sun.

I Need Not To Be More With Others, But To Be More & More Deeply, Richly Alone. Recreating Worlds.

Every Day Is Precious And I Feel Infinitely Sad At This Time Melting Away From Me.

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

I Like You, But Not Too Much. I Don’t Want To Like Anybody Too Much.

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

I Desire The Things That Will Destroy Me In The End.

I Feel Terribly Vulnerable And 'not-myself' When I'm Not Writing.

This Seemed A Dreary And Wasted Life For A Girl With Fifteen Years Of Straight A's, But I Knew That's What Marriage Was Like, Because Cook And Clean And Wash Was Just What Buddy Willard's Mother Did From Morning Till Night, And She Was The Wife Of A University Professor And Had Been A Private School Teacher Herself.

In This Particular Tub, Two Knees Jut Up Like Icebergs, While Minute Brown Hairs Rise On Arms And Legs In A Fringe Of Kelp; Green Soap Navigates The Tidal Slosh Of Seas Breaking On Legendary Beaches; In Faith We Shall Board Our Imagined Ship And Wildly Sail Among Sacred Islands Of The Mad Till Death Shatters The Fabulous Stars And Makes Us Real.

Like A Cat I Have Nine Times To Die.

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

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.

The Woman Is Perfected. Her Dead Body Wears The Smile Of Accomplishment.

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

Intoxicated With Madness, I'm In Love With My Sadness

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.

What Is So Real As The Cry Of A Child?

A Living Doll, Everywhere You Look. It Can Sew, It Can Cook, It Can Talk, Talk, Talk. . . . My Boy, It's Your Last Resort. Will You Marry It, Marry It, Marry It.

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.

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

It Is Best To Meet In A Cul-de-sac, A Palace Of Velvet With Windows Of Mirrors. There One Is Safe, There Are No Family Photographs, No Rings Through The Nose, No Cries.

Let Me Not Be Weak And Tell Others How Bleeding I Am Internally; How Day By Day It Drips, And Gathers, And Congeals.

As A Poet I Would Say Everything Should Be Able To Come Into A Poem But I Can't Put Toothbrushes In A Poem. I Really Can't.

Wear Your Heart On Your Skin In This Life.

If I Rest, If I Think Inward, I Go Mad.

The First Time I Saw A Fingerbowl Was At The Home Of My Benefactress. [...] The Water Had A Few Cherry Blossoms In It, And I Thought It Must Be Some Clear Sort Of Japanese After-dinner Soup And Ate Every Bit Of It, Including The Crisp Little Blossoms.

Can You Understand? Someone, Somewhere, Can You Understand Me A Little, Love Me A Little? For All My Despair, For All My Ideals, For All That - I Love Life. But It Is Hard, And I Have So Much - So Very Much To Learn.

So Many People Are Shut Up Tight Inside Themselves Like Boxes, Yet They Would Open Up, Unfolding Quite Wonderfully, If Only You Were Interested In Them.

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

The Future Is What Matters — Because One Never Reaches It, But Always Stays In The Present — Like The White Queen Who Had To Run Like The Wind To Remain In The Same Spot.

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.

If Every Soldier Refused To Take Arms ... There Would Be No Wars; But No One Has The Courage To Be The First To Live According To Christ And Socrates, Because In A World Of Opportunists They Would Be Martyred.

To Annihilate The World By Annihilation Of Oneself Is The Deluded Height Of Desperate Egoism.

Nothing Stinks Like A Pile Of Unpublished Writing.

Good To Know That If I Ever Need Attention All I Have To Do Is Die.

I Am Jealous Of Those Who Think More Deeply, Who Write Better, Who Draw Better, Who Ski Better, Who Look Better, Who Live Better, Who Love Better Than I.

I Have Taken A Pill To Kill The Thin Papery Feeling.

…beating Time Along The Edge Of Thought.

Beached Under The Spumy Blooms, We Lie Sea-sick And Fever-dry.

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.

What Do You Have In Mind After You Graduate?" What I Always Thought I Had In Mind Was Getting Some Big Scholarship To Graduate School Or A Grant To Study All Over Europe, And Then I Thought I'd Be A Professor And Write Books Of Poems Or Write Books Of Poems And Be An Editor Of Some Sort. Usually I Had These Plans On The Tip Of My Tongue. "i Don't Really Know," I Heard Myself Say. I Felt A Deep Shock, Hearing Myself Say That, Because The Minute I Said It, I Knew It Was True.

Yes, There Is Joy, Fulfillment And Companionship But The Loneliness Of The Soul In Its Appalling Self-consciousness Is Horrible And Overpowering.

I Lean To You, Numb As A Fossil. Tell Me I'm Here.

I Dream Too Much, Work Too Little.

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.

I Am Still Raw. I Say I May Be Back. You Know What Lies Are For. Even In Your Zen Heaven We Shan't Meet.

The Moon Has Nothing To Be Sad About, Staring From Her Hood Of Bone. She Is Used To This Sort Of Thing. Her Blacks Crackle And Drag.

I May Never Be Happy, But Tonight I Am Content.

Sometimes I Feel So Stupid And Dull And Uncreative That I Am Amazed When People Tell Me Differently.

The Box Is Only Temporary.

There Is A Certain Unique And Strange Delight About Walking Down An Empty Street Alone.

Dying Is An Art, Like Everything Else. I Do It Exceptionally Well.

Now I Know What Loneliness Is, I Think. Momentary Loneliness, Anyway. It Comes From A Vague Core Of The Self - - Like A Disease Of The Blood, Dispersed Throughout The Body So That One Cannot Locate The Matrix, The Spot Of Contagion.

I Liked Looking On At Other People In Crucial Situations. If There Was A Road Accident Or A Street Fight Or A Baby Pickled In A Laboratory Jar For Me To Look At, I'd Stop And Look So Hard I Never Forgot It.

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