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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.

-Sylvia Plath

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This Seemed A Dreary

Sylvia Plath

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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.

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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 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.

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

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

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 Never Train Myself In All The Skills I Want. And Why Do I Want? I Want To Live And Feel All The Shades, Tones And Variations Of Mental And Physical Experience Possible In Life. And I Am Horribly Limited.

Famous Inspirational

No Day Is Safe From News Of You.

What Is So Real As The Cry Of A Child?

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

What Did My Arms Do Before They Held You?

The Tulips Are Too Red...they Hurt Me.

If Doctor Nolan Asked Me For The Matches, I Would Say That I'd Thought They Were Made Of Candy And Had Eaten Them.

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.

But When It Came Right Down To It, The Skin Of My Wrist Looked So White And Defensless That I Couldn't Do It. It Was As If What I Wanted To Kill Wasn't In That Skin Or The Thin Blue Pulse That Jumped Under My Thumb, But Somewhere Else, Deeper, More Secret, And A Whole Lot Harder To Get.

The Day I Went Into Physics Class It Was Death.

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

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.

Opinions Are Like Orgasms...mine Matters Most And I Really Don't Care If You Have One.

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

Unrequited Love

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

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.

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.

The Only Thing I Could Think Of Was Turkey Neck And Turkey Gizzards And I Felt Very Depressed.

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 Want To Be Silverly Beautiful.

I Have Suffered The Atrocity Of Sunsets.

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.

Yes, I Was Infatuated With You: I Am Still. No One Has Ever Heightened Such A Keen Capacity Of Physical Sensation In Me. I Cut You Out Because I Couldn't Stand Being A Passing Fancy. Before I Give My Body, I Must Give My Thoughts, My Mind, My Dreams. And You Weren't Having Any Of Those.

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

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

What I Fear Most, I Think, Is The Death Of The Imagination.

The Truth Comes To Me. The Truth Loves Me.

Kiss Me And You Will See How Important I Am.

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

There Is More Than One Good Way To Drown.

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

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

Don't Let The Wicked City Get You Down.

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

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

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

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.

The Sheets Grow Heavy As A Lecher's Kiss.

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 Wondered Why I Couldn't Go The Whole Way Doing What I Should Any More. This Made Me Sad And Tired. Then I Wondered Why I Couldn't Go The Whole Way Doing What I Shouldn't, The Way Doreen Did, And This Made Me Even Sadder And More Tired.

Well, I Know Now. I Know A Little More How Much A Simple Thing Like A Snowfall Can Mean To A Person

Yes, My Consuming Desire Is To Mingle With Road Crews, Sailors And Soldiers, Barroom Regulars - To Be A Part Of A Scene, Anonymous, Listening, Recording - All This Is Spoiled By The Fact That I Am A Girl, A Female Always Supposedly In Danger Of Assault And Battery. My Consuming Interest In Men And Their Lives Is Often Misconstrued As A Desire To Seduce Them, Or As An Invitation To Intimacy. Yes, God, I Want To Talk To Everybody As Deeply As I Can. I Want To Be Able To Sleep In An Open Field, To Travel West, To Walk Freely At Night.

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

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

All I Want Is Blackness. Blackness And Silence.

Widow. The Word Consumes Itself.

People Or Stars Regard Me Sadly, I Disappoint Them.

I Have Let Things Slip, A Thirty-year~old Cargo Boat Stubbornly Hanging On To My Name And Address.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

I Am Sure There Are Things That Can't Be Cured By A Good Bath But I Can't Think Of One.

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

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

All The Heat And Fear Had Purged Itself. I Felt Surprisingly At Peace. The Bell Jar Hung Suspended A Few Feet Above My Head. I Was Open To The Circulating Air.

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

I Think I Made You Up Inside My Head.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

Outcast On A Cold Star, Unable To Feel Anything But An Awful Helpless Numbness. I Look Down Into The Warm, Earthy World. Into A Nest Of Lovers' Beds, Baby Cribs, Meal Tables, All The Solid Commerce Of Life In This Earth, And Feel Apart, Enclosed In A Wall Of Glass.

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

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.

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.

* To Know A Lot Of People I Love Pieces Of, And To Want To Synthesize Those Pieces In Me Somehow, Be It By Painting Or Writing. * To Know That Millions Of Others Are Unhappy And That Life Is A Gentleman's Agreement To Grin And Paint Your Face Gay So Others Will Feel They Are Silly To Be Unhappy, And Try To Catch The Contagion Of Joy, While Inside So Many Are Dying Of Bitterness And Unfulfillment.

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

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.

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

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.

What Horrifies Me Most Is The Idea Of Being Useless: Well-educated, Brilliantly Promising, And Fading Out Into An Indifferent Middle Age.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 Wonder Why I Don't Go To Bed And Go To Sleep. But Then It Would Be Tomorrow, So I Decide That No Matter How Tired, No Matter How Incoherent I Am, I Can Skip On Hour More Of Sleep And Live.

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 Do Not Know Who I Am Tonight.

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

O Love, How Did You Get Here?

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

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?

Everything In Life Is Writable.

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

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

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

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 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 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.

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.

My Mother Said The Cure For Thinking Too Much About Yourself Was Helping Somebody Who Was Worse Off Than You.

It Never Occurred To Me To Say No.

... 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 Collect Men With Interesting Names.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

...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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

The Moon Is No Door. It Is A Face In Its Own Right, White As A Knuckle And Terribly Upset. It Drags The Sea After It Like A Dark Crime; It Is Quiet With The O-gape Of Complete Despair. I Live Here.

I Am Disabused Of All Faith, And See Too Clearly.

I Began To See Why Woman-haters Could Make Such Fools Of Women. Woman-haters Were Like Gods: Invulnerable And Chock Full Of Power. They Descended, And Then They Disappeared. You Could Never Catch One.

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

At This Rate, I'd Be Lucky If I Wrote A Page A Day. Then I Knew What The Problem Was. I Needed Experience. How Could I Write About Life When I'd Never Had A Love Affair Or A Baby Or Even Seen Anybody Die? A Girl I Knew Had Just Won A Prize For A Short Story About Her Adventures Among The Pygmies In Africa. How Could I Compete With That Sort Of Thing?

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

When You Are Insane, You Are Busy Being Insane-all The Time ... When I Was Crazy, That Was All I Was.

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.

And By The Way, Everything In Life Is Writable About If You Have The Outgoing Guts To Do It, And The Imagination To Improvise. The Worst Enemy To Creativity Is Self-doubt.

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

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

I Never Feel So Much Myself As When I'm In A Hot Bath.

Tomorrow Is Another Day Toward Death.

Tomorrow Is Another Day

I Think I May Well Be A Jew.

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.

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

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

Funny Best Friend

Secretly, In Studies And Attics And Schoolrooms All Over America, People Must Be Writing.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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

The Night Sky Is Only A Sort Of Carbon Paper, Blueblack, With The Much-poked Periods Of Stars Letting In The Light, Peephole After Peephole--- A Bonewhite Light, Like Death, Behind All Things.

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

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

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

Being Different

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.

And I Identify Too Closely With My Reading, With My Writing.

I Like People, But To Learn About One Individual Always Appeals To Me More Than Anything.

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

I Don't See,' I Said, 'how People Stand Being Old. Your Insides All Dry Up. When You're Young You're So Self-reliant. You Don't Even Need Much Religion.

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

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

Is There No Way Out Of The Mind?

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I Thought It Sounded Just Like The Sort Of Drug A Man Would Invent. Here Was A Woman In Terrible Pain, Obviously Feeling Every Bit Of It Or She Wouldn't Groan Like That, And She Would Go Straight Home And Start Another Baby, Because The Drug Would Make Her Forget How Bad The Pain Had Been, When All The Time, In Some Secret Part Of Her, That Long, Blind, Doorless And Windowless Corridor Or Pain Was Waiting To Open Up And Shut Her In Again.

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

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

I Want To Write Because I Have The Urge To Excel In One Medium Of Translation And Expression Of Life. I Can't Be Satisfied With The Colossal Job Of Merely Living. Oh, No, I Must Order Life In Sonnets And Sestinas And Provide A Verbal Reflector For My 60-watt Lighted Head.

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

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 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 Felt Dull And Flat And Full Of Shattered Visions.

We Stayed At Home To Write, To Consolidate Our Outstretched Selves.

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

You Smile. No, It Is Not Fatal.

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

I 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.

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

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

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.

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Masaharu Morimoto

Yusef Komunyakaa

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