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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.

-Sylvia Plath

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Sometimes I Feel Like

Sylvia Plath

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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.

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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.

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.

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 Guess They Call It Suicide, But I'm To Full To Swallow My Pride I Can't Stand Losing You The Police Dying Is An Art, Like Everything Else. I Do It Exceptionally Well.

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.

Doing All The Little Tricky Things It Takes To Grow Up, Step By Step, Into An Anxious And Unsettling World.

Sunday-the Doctor's Paradise! Doctors At Country Clubs, Doctors At The Seaside, Doctors With Mistresses, Doctors With Wives, Doctors In Church, Doctors In Yachts, Doctors Everywhere Resolutely Being People, Not Doctors.

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

I Think I Am Mad Sometimes.

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 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.

For The Few Little Successes I May Seem To Have, There Are Acres Of Misgivings And Self-doubt.

Spiderlike, I Spin Mirrors, Loyal To My Image.

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.

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. It's Like Watching Paris From An Express Caboose Heading In The Opposite Direction--every Second The City Gets Smaller And Smaller, Only You Feel It's Really You Getting Smaller And Smaller And Lonelier And Lonelier, Rushing Away From All Those Lights And Excitement At About A Million Miles An Hour.

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 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.

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

The Worst Enemy To Creativity Is Self-doubt.

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.

That Afternoon My Mother Had Brought Me The Roses. "save Them For My Funeral," I'd Said.

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.

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 Disabused Of All Faith, And See Too Clearly.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

I Keep Wanting To Crawl Back Into The Womb.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

Sometimes I Nursed Starfish Alive In Jam Jars Of Seawater And Watched Them Grow Back Lost Arms. On This Day, This Awful Birthday Of Otherness, My Rival, Somebody Else, I Flung The Starfish Against A Stone. Let It Perish.

I Do Not Fear It: I Have Been There.

Ash, Ash —- You Poke And Stir. Flesh, Bone, There Is Nothing There—— A Cake Of Soap, A Wedding Ring, A Gold Filling. Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware. Out Of The Ash I Rise With My Red Hair And I Eat Men Like Air.

Over Coffee And Orange Juice The Embryonic Suicide Brightens Visibly.

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 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.

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

The Sheets Grow Heavy As A Lecher's Kiss.

I'm Sarcastic, Skeptical, And Sometimes Callous Because I'm Still Afraid, Deep Down, Of Letting Myself Be Hurt.

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

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, To You, Am Lost In The Gorgeous Errors Of Flesh.

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

Slowly, Slowly, Catch The Monkey.

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

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

A Psychiatrist Is The God Of Our Age. But They Cost Money.

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

The One Thing I Was Good At Was Winning Scholarships And Prizes, And That Era Was Coming To An End.

Aloneness And Selfness Are Too Important To Betray For Company.

I Talk To God But The Sky Is Empty.

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

I Don't See What Women See In Other Women," I'd Told Doctor Nolan In My Interview That Noon. "what Does A Woman See In A Woman That She Can't See In A Man?" Doctor Nolan Paused. Then She Said, "tenderness.

I Write Only Because There Is A Voice Within Me That Will Not Be Still

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

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.

To Look At Her, You Might Not Guess That Inside She Is Laughing And Crying, At Her Own Stupidities And Luckiness, And At The Strange Enigmatic Ways Of The World Which She Will Spend Lifetime Trying To Learn And Understand.

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

If I Was Going To Fall, I Would Hang On To My Small Comforts, At Least, For As Long As I Possibly Could.

What Did My Arms Do Before They Held You?

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

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

I Wanted To Be Where Nobody I Knew Could Ever Come.

Read Widely Of Others' Experiences, Even If It'd Be More Comfortable To Snuggle Back In The Comforting Cotton-wool Of Blissful Ignorance.

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

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.

…'it Always Has To End, Doesn't It? We Always Have To Separate.' 'yes,' I Said. He Was Insistent, 'but It Doesn't Always Have To Be That Way. We Could Be Together Some Day For Always.' 'oh, No,' I Told Him, Wondering If He Knew It Was All Over. 'we Keep Running Till We Die. We Separate, Get Further Apart, Till We Are Dead.

I Had Hoped, At My Departure, I Would Feel Sure And Knowledgeable About Everything That Lay Ahead -- After All, I Had Been "analyzed." Instead, All I Could See Were Question Marks.

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.

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

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

Can You Understand? Someone, Somewhere, Can You Understand Me A Little, Love Me A Little?

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.

It Won't Happen Yet, Ellen Mused, Mashing Cooked Carrots For Jill's Lunch. Breakups Seldom Do. It Will Unfold Slowly, One Little Tell-tale Symptom After Another Like Some Awful, Hellish Flower.

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.

A Man's World Is Different From A Woman's World And A Man's Emotions Are Different From A Woman's Emotions And Only Marriage Can Bring The Two Different Sets Of Emotions Together Properly.

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.

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 Want To Be Able To Sleep In An Open Field, To Travel West, To Walk Freely At Night.

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

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.

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

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.

Go Out And Do Something. It Isn’t Your Room That’s A Prison, It’s Yourself.

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

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

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

Shocking Things

Oh, Something Is There, Waiting For Me. Perhaps Someday The Revelation Will Burst In Upon Me And I Will See The Other Side Of This Monumental Grotesque Joke. And Then I'll Laugh. And Then I'll Know What Life Is.

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

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

Please, I Want So Badly For The Good Things To Happen.

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

Oh What A Poet I Will Flay Myself Into.

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

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

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.

The Abstract Kills, The Concrete Saves.

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

The Silence Drew Off, Baring The Pebbles And Shells And All The Tatty Wreckage Of My Life.

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.

I Must Learn More About These People―try To Understand Them, Put Myself In Their Place. No, Instead I Am So Busy Keeping My Head Above Water That I Scarcely Know Who I Am, Much Less Who Anyone Else Is.

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

The Truth Comes To Me. The Truth Loves Me.

Please Let Him Come, And Give Me The Resilience & Guts To Make Him Respect Me, Be Interested, And Not To Throw Myself At Him With Loudness Or Hysterical Yelling; Calmly, Gently, Easy Baby Easy. He Is Probably Strutting The Backs Among Crocuses Now With Seven Scandinavian Mistresses. And I Sit, Spiderlike, Waiting, Here, Home; Penelope Weaving Webs Of Webster, Turning Spindles Of Tourneur. Oh, He Is Here; My Black Marauder; Oh Hungry Hungry. I Am So Hungry For A Big Smashing Creative Burgeoning Burdened Love: I Am Here; I Wait; And He Plays On The Banks Of The River Cam Like A Casual Faun.

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

Ironically, Henry James' Biography Comforts Me & I Long To Make Known To Him His Posthumous Reputation He Wrote, In Pain, Gave All His Life (which Is More Than I Could Think Of Doing I Have Ted, Will Have Children But Few Friends) & The Critics Insulted & Mocked Him, Readers Didn't Read Him.

Every Day One Has To Earn The Name Of 'writer' Over Again, With Much Wrestling.

I Collect Men With Interesting Names.

I Think That As Far As Language Goes I'm An American, I'm Afraid, My Accent Is American, My Way Of Talk Is An American Way Of Talk, I'm An Old-fashioned American. That's Probably One Of The Reasons Why I'm In England Now And Why I'll Always Stay In England.

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

All I Want Is Blackness. Blackness And Silence.

Like A Cat I Have Nine Times To Die.

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

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.

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

I Felt My Lungs Inflate With The Onrush Of Scenery—air, Mountains, Trees, People. I Thought, "this Is What It Is To Be Happy.

Why The Hell Are We Conditioned Into The Smooth Strawberry-and-cream Mother-goose-world, Alice-in-wonderland Fable, Only To Be Broken On The Wheel As We Grow Older And Become Aware Of Ourselves As Individuals With A Dull Responsibility In Life?

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

Compared With Me, A Tree Is Immortal.

I Am Inhabited By A Cry. Nightly It Flaps Out Looking, With Its Hooks, For Something To Love.

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

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

Funny Best Friend

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 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.

I Must Get My Soul Back From You; I Am Killing My Flesh Without It.

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 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 Thought If Only I Had A Keen, Shapely Bone Structure To My Face Or Could Discuss Politics Shrewdly Or Was A Famous Writer Constantin Might Find Me Interesting Enough To Sleep With. And Then I Wondered If As Soon As He Came To Like Me He Would Sink Into Ordinariness, And If As Soon As He Came To Love Me I Would Find Fault, The Way I Did With Buddy Willard And The Boys Before Him.

I Decided I Would Put Off The Novel Until I Had Gone To Europe And Had A Lover, And That I Would Never Learn A Word Of Shorthand. If I Never Learned Shorthand I Would Never Have To Use It.

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.

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.

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

It's The Living, The Eating, The Sleeping That Everyone Needs. Ideas Don't Matter So Much After All. My Three Best Friends Are Catholic. I Can't See Their Beliefs, But I Can See The Things They Love To Do On Earth. When You Come Right Down To It, I Do Believe In The Freedom Of The Individual.

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.

I Know The Bottom, She Says. I Know It With My Great Tap Root: It Is What You Fear. I Do Not Fear It: I Have Been There.

I Have Suffered The Atrocity Of Sunsets.

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.

I Am Flushed And Warm. I Think I May Be Enormous, I Am So Stupidly Happy, My Wellingtons Squelching And Squelching Through The Beautiful Red.

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

Today Is The First Of August. It Is Hot, Steamy And Wet. It Is Raining. I Am Tempted To Write A Poem. But I Remember What It Said On One Rejection Slip: 'after A Heavy Rainfall, Poems Titled 'rain' Pour In From Across The Nation.

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

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 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.

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

So I Began To Think Maybe It Was True That When You Were Married And Had Children It Was Like Being Brainwashed, And Afterward You Went About As Numb As A Slave In A Totalitarian State.

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

The First Time It Happened I Was Ten. It Was An Accident. The Second Time I Meant To Last It Out And Not Come Back At All. I Rocked Shut As A Seashell. They Had To Call And Call And Pick The Worms Off Me Like Sticky Pearls. Dying Is An Art, Like Everything Else. I Do It Exceptionally Well. I Do It So It Feels Like Hell. I Do It So It Feels Real. I Guess You Could Say I've A Call.

And You Grit Your Teeth, Despising Yourself For Your Tremulous Sensitivity, And Wondering How Human Beings Can Suffer Their Individualities To Be Mercilessly Crushed Under A Machinelike Dictatorship, Be It Of Industry, State Or Organization, All Their Lives Long.

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

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.

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

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.

Nothing Stinks Like A Pile Of Unpublished Writing.

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

I Dream Too Much, Work Too Little.

One Thing, I Try To Be Honest. And What Is Revealed Is Often Rather Hideously Unflattering.

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

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.

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.

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

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

I Wanted To Tell Her That If Only Something Were Wrong With My Body It Would Be Fine, I Would Rather Have Anything Wrong With My Body Than Something Wrong With My Head, But The Idea Seemed So Involved And Wearisome That I Didn’t Say Anything. I Only Burrowed Down Further In The Bed.

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

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 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.

The Trouble Was, I Had Been Inadequate All Along, I Simply Hadn't Thought About It.

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 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.

Masks Are The Order Of The Day - And The Least I Can Do Is Cultivate The Illusion That I Am Gay, Serene, Not Hollow And Afraid.

There I Went Again, Building Up A Glamorous Picture Of A Man Who Would Love Me Passionately The Minute He Met Me, And All Out Of A Few Prosy Nothings.

If You Expect Nothing From Anybody, You’re Never Disappointed.

You've Only Got So Long To Live.

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.

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

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 Felt Wise And Cynical As All Hell.

God, How I Ricochet Between Certainties And Doubts.

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