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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.

-Sylvia Plath

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Let's Face It: I'm

Sylvia Plath

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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.

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

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

I Felt The First Man I Slept With Must Be Intelligent, So I Could Respect Him.

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

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.

I Do Not Know Who I Am Tonight.

The Door Of The Novel, Like The Door Of The Poem, Also Shuts. But Not So Fast, Nor With Such Manic, Unanswerable Finality.

Widow. The Word Consumes Itself.

I Like People Too Much Or Not At All. I've Got To Go Down Deep, To Fall Into People, To Really Know Them.

..i Fancied You'd Return The Way You Said, But I Grow Old And I Forget Your Name. (i Think I Made You Up Inside My Head.) I Should Have Loved A Thunderbird Instead; At Least When Spring Comes They Roar Back Again. I Shut My Eyes And All The World Drops Dead. (i Think I Made You Up Inside My Head.)

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?

Mother Of Otherness, Eat Me.

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.

She Stared At Her Reflection In The Glossed Shop Windows As If To Make Sure, Moment By Moment, That She Continued To Exist.

I Have Been Holding A Dialogue With Myself And Girding Myself To Stand Fast Without Running.

The Frost Makes A Flower, The Dew Makes A Star.

There Is So Much Hurt In This Game Of Searching For A Mate, Of Testing, Trying. And You Realize Suddenly That You Forgot It Was A Game, And Turn Away In Tears.

You've Only Got So Long To Live.

You Smile. No, It Is Not Fatal.

Stars Open Among The Lilies. Are You Not Blinded By Such Expressionless Sirens? This Is The Silence Of Astounded Souls.

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

Antoine St. Exupery Once Mourned The Loss Of A Man And The Secret Treasures That He Held Inside Him. I Loved Exupery; I Will Read Him Again, And He Will Talk To Me, Not Being Dead, Or Gone. Is That Life After Death — Mind Living On Paper And Flesh Living In Offspring? Maybe. I Do Not Know.

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

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.

The Blood Jet Is Poetry And There Is No Stopping It.

She Looks Like A Woman Who Has Found It Ridiculous To Commit Herself To A Single Emotional Stance In Anything, But Must Always Ride High Heavy Irony.

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

Death May Whiten In Sun Or Out Of It.

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.

Maybe Forgetfulness, Like A Kind Snow, Should Numb And Cover Them. But They Were A Part Of Me. They Were My Landscape.

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.

I Am Not A Historian, But I Find Myself Being More And More Fascinated By History And Now I Find Myself Reading More And More About History. I Am Very Interested In Napoleon, At The Present: I'm Very Interested In Battles, In Wars, In Gallipoli, The First World War And So On, And I Think That As I Age I Am Becoming More And More Historical. I Certainly Wasn't At All In My Early Twenties.

I Deserve That, Don't I, Some Sort Of Blazing Love That I Can Live With.

I Buried My Head Under The Darkness Of The Pillow And Pretended It Was Night. I Couldn't See The Point Of Getting Up. I Had Nothing To Look Forward To.

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

The Sheets Grow Heavy As A Lecher's Kiss.

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

What A Man Wants Is A Mate And What A Woman Wants Is Infinite Security,’ And, ‘what A Man Is Is An Arrow Into The Future And A What A Woman Is Is The Place The Arrow Shoots Off From.

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.

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

Do I Like To Write? Why? About What? Will I Give Up And Say, "living And Feeding A Man's Insatiable Guts And Begetting Children Occupies My Whole Life. Don't Have Time To Write"?

A Million Years Of Evolution, Eric Said Bitterly, And What Are We? Animals.

The Man Creates A Pseudonym And Hides Behind It Like A Worm

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.

The Lawn Was White With Doctors

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

If Neurotic Is Wanting Two Mutually Exclusive Things At One And The Same Time, Then I'm Neurotic As Hell.

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

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 Love The People,' I Said. 'i Have Room In Me For Love, And For Ever So Many Little Lives.

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.

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.

I Am Learning Peacefulness, Lying By Myself Quietly, As The Light Lies On These White Walls, This Bed, These Hands. I Am Nobody; I Have Nothing To Do With Explosions.

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.

Love Set You Going Like A Fat Gold Watch. The Midwife Slapped Your Footsoles, And Your Bald Cry Took Its Place Among The Elements.

What Have I Eaten? Lies And Smiles.

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

Being Different

It Is A Feeling That No Matter What The Ideas Or Conduct Of Others, There Is A Unique Rightness And Beauty To Life Which Can Be Shared In Openness, In Wind And Sunlight, With A Fellow Human Being Who Believes In The Same Basic Principles.

As I Lay On My Back In Bed Staring Up At The Blank, White Ceiling The Stillness Seemed To Grow Bigger And Bigger Until I Felt My Eardrums Would Burst With It.

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

I Feel Self-repressed Again. The Old Fall Disease. Where Is My Willpower? The Idea Of A Life Gets In The Way Of My Life...i Dream Too Much, Work Too Little.

Once One Has Seen God, What Is The Remedy?

What I Hate Is The Thought Of Being Under A Man's Thumb," I Had Told Doctor Nolan. "a Man Doesn't Have A Worry In The World, While I've Got A Baby Hanging Over My Head Like A Big Stick, To Keep Me In Line.

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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.

My Wanting To Write Books Annihilates The Original Root Impulse That Would Have Me Bravely And Blunderingly Working On Them.

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

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I Began To Think Vodka Was My Drink At Last. It Didn’t Taste Like Anything, But It Went Straight Down Into My Stomach Like A Sword Swallowers’ Sword And Made Me Feel Powerful And Godlike.

I Believe That One Should Be Able To Control And Manipulate Experiences, Even The Most Terrific, Like Madness, Being Tortured, This Sort Of Experience, And One Should Be Able To Manipulate These Experiences With An Informed And An Intelligent Mini.

Is It The Sea You Hear In Me? Its Dissatisfactions? Or The Voice Of Nothing, That Was Your Madness? Love Is A Shadow. How You Lie And Cry After It.

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

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 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.

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.

I Believe That One Should Be Able To Control And Manipulate Experiences, Even The Most Terrifying, Like Madness, Being Tortured...with An Informed And Intelligent Mind.

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

Let Me Live, Love And Say It Well In Good Sentences.

The More Hopeless You Were, The Further Away They Hid You.

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

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

Because Wherever I Sat—on The Deck Of A Ship Or At A Street Café In Paris Or Bangkok—i Would Be Sitting Under The Same Glass Bell Jar, Stewing In My Own Sour Air.

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.

I Love Life. But It Is Hard And I Have So Much, So Very Much To Learn.

The Worst Enemy To Creativity Is Self-doubt.

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.

Very Depressed Today. Unable To Write A Thing. Menacing Gods. I Feel Outcast On A Cold Star, Unable To Feel Anything But An Awful Helpless Numbness.

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

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.

Bright Beads Of Red Are Rising Through The Ink, Hearts-blood Bubbles Smearing Out Into The Black Stream

The Artist's Life Nourishes Itself On The Particular, The Concrete.

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

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!

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

I Think That In Poetry Personal Experience Is Very Important, But Certainly It Shouldn't Be A Kind Of Shut-box And Mirror Looking, Narcissistic Experience. I Believe It Should Be Relevant, And Relevant To The Larger Things, The Bigger Things Such As Hiroshima And Dachau And So On.

I Talk To God But The Sky Is Empty.

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

How We Need Another Soul To Cling To.

I Wonder About All The Roads Not Taken And Am Moved To Quote Frost...but Won't. It Is Sad To Be Able Only To Mouth Other Poets. I Want Someone To Mouth Me.

I Thought The Most Beautiful Thing In The World Must Be Shadow, The Million Moving Shapes And Cul-de-sacs Of Shadow. There Was Shadow In Bureau Drawers And Closets And Suitcases, And Shadow Under Houses And Trees And Stones, And Shadow At The Back Of People's Eyes And Smiles, And Shadow, Miles And Miles And Miles Of It, On The Night Side Of The Earth.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

It Is A Terrible Thing To Be So Open: It Is As If My Heart Put On A Face And Walked Into The World.

But When It Came Right Down To It, The Skin Of My Wrist Looked So White And Defenseless That I Couldn't Do It.

I Want, I Think, To Be Omniscient. I Think I Would Like To Call Myself "the Girl Who Wanted To Be God." Yet If I Were Not In This Body Where Would I Be-perhaps I Am Destined To Be Classified And Qualified. But, Oh, I Cry Out Against It.

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.

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

We Know A Thing By Its Opposite Corollary; Hot By Having Experienced Cold; Good By Having Decided What Is Bad; Love By Hate.

I've Got To Have Something. I Want To Stop It All, The Whole Monumental Grotesque Joke, Before It's Too Late. But Writing Poems And Letters Doesn't Seem To Do Much Good.

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.

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

... 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.

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

I Like People Too Much Or Not At All.

I Do Not Fear It: I Have Been There.

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.

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

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.

When I Fell Out Of The Light, I Entered The Stomach Of Indifference, The Wordless Cupboard.

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

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

I Hate Technicolor. Everybody In A Technicolor Movie Seems To Feel Obliged To Wear A Lurid Costume In Each New Scene And To Stand Around Like A Clotheshorse With A Lot Of Very Green Trees Or Very Yellow Wheat Or Very Blue Ocean Rolling Away For Miles And Miles In Every Direction.

I Have Never Found Anybody Who Could Stand To Accept The Daily Demonstrative Love I Feel In Me, And Give Back As Good As I Give.

What I Want Back Is What I Was Before The Bed, Before The Knife, Before The Brooch-pin And The Salve Fixed Me In This Parenthesis; Horses Fluent In The Wind, A Place, A Time Gone Out Of Mind.

What Did My Arms Do Before They Held You?

I Shut My Eyes And All The World Drops Dead; I Lift My Eyes And All Is Born Again.

I Do Not Love; I Do Not Love Anybody Except Myself. That Is A Rather Shocking Thing To Admit.

Shocking Things

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.

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

Spiderlike, I Spin Mirrors, Loyal To My Image.

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

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.

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

I May Never Be Happy, But Tonight I Am Content. At Times Like This I'd Call Myself A Fool To Ask For More.

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

A Bad Dream.to The Person In The Bell Jar, Blank And Stopped As A Dead Baby, The World Itself Is The Bad Dream.a Bad Dream.i Remembered Everything.i Remembered The Cadavers And Doreen And The Story Of The Fig-tree And Marco's Diamond And The Sailor On The Common And Doctor Gordon's Wall-eyed Nurse And The Broken Thermometers And The Negro With His Two Kinds Of Beans And The Twenty Pounds I Gained On Insulin And The Rock That Bulged Between Sky And Sea Like A Grey Skull.maybe Forgetfulness, Like A Kind Snow, Should Numb And Cover Them.but They Were Part Of Me. They Were My Landscape

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.

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.

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

Your Room Is Not Your Prison. You Are.

On The Train: Staring Hypnotized At The Blackness Outside The Window, Feeling The Incomparable Rhythmic Language Of The Wheels, Clacking Out Nursery Rhymes, Summing Up Moments Of The Mind Like The Chant Of A Broken Record: God Is Dead, God Is Dead. Going, Going, Going. And The Pure Bliss Of This, The Erotic Rocking Of The Coach. France Splits Open Like A Ripe Fig In The Mind; We Are Raping The Land, We Are Not Stopping.

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.

You Know What Lies Are For.

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

I Have Stitched Life Into Me Like A Rare Organ

... 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.

I, Love, I Am The Pure Acetylene Virgin Attended By Roses.

The Reason I Haven't Been Writing In This Book For So Long Is Partly That I Haven't Had One Decent Coherent Thought To Put Down.

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

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

I Didn't Really See Why People Should Look At Me. Plenty Of People Looked Queerer Than I Did.

...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.

If They Substituted The Word 'lust' For 'love' In The Popular Songs It Would Come Nearer The Truth.

I Think Writers Are The Most Narcissistic People. Well, I Musn't Say This, I Like Many Of Them, A Great Many Of My Friends Are Writers.

…beating Time Along The Edge Of Thought.

To Learn And Think; To Think And Live; To Live And Learn: This Always, With New Insight, New Understanding, And New Love.

So Learn About Life. Cut Yourself A Big Slice With The Silver Server, A Big Slice Of Pie. Open Your Eyes. Let Life Happen.

The Silence Depressed Me. It Wasn't The Silence Of Silence. It Was My Own Silence.

The One Man In The Room Who Was As Big As His Poems, Huge, With Hulk And Dynamic Chunks Of Words.

I Think The Coming Of Spring, The Stars Overhead, The First Snowfall And So On Are Gifts For A Child, A Young Poet.

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

The Floor Seemed Wonderfully Solid. It Was Comforting To Know I Had Fallen And Could Fall No Farther.

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

I May Have Made A Straight A In Physics, But I Was Panic-struck. Physics Made Me Sick The Whole Time I Learned It.

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

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.

At Twenty I Tried To Die And Get Back, Back, Back To You. I Thought Even The Bones Would Do.

I'm Never Going To Get Married." "you're Crazy." Buddy Brightened. "you'll Change Your Mind." "no. My Mind's Made Up.

What Is So Real As The Cry Of A Child?

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 Think If I Had Done Anything Else I Would Like To Have Been A Doctor. This Is The Sort Of Polar Opposition To Being A Writer, I Suppose.

I Keep Wanting To Crawl Back Into The Womb.

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 Felt Overstuffed And Dull And Disappointed, The Way I Always Do The Day After Christmas.

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

I Am Terrified By This Dark Thing That Sleeps In Me; All Day I Feel Its Soft, Feathery Turnings, Its Malignity.

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."

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.

What I Didn't Say Was That Each Time I Picked Up A German Dictionary Or A German Book, The Very Sight Of Those Dense, Black, Barbed-wire Letters Made My Mind Shut Like A Clam.

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.

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.

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

Love Is A Shadow. How You Lie And Cry After It

What Is My Life For And What Am I Going To Do With It? I Don't Know And I'm Afraid.

God, It Was Good To Let Go, Let The Tight Mask Fall Off, And The Bewildered, Chaotic Fragments Pour Out. It Was The Purge, The Catharsis.

We Walk The Plank With Strangers.

I Am Myself. That Is Not Enough.

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

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