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When I Was Nineteen, Pureness Was The Great Issue. Instead Of The World Being Divided Up Into Catholics And Protestants Or Republicans And Democrats Or White Men And Black Men Or Even Men And Women, I Saw The World Divided Into People Who Had Slept With Somebody And People Who Hadn’t, And This Seemed The Only Really Significant Difference Between One Person And Another.

-Sylvia Plath

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When I Was Nineteen,

Sylvia Plath

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When I Was Nineteen, Pureness Was The Great Issue. Instead Of The World Being Divided Up Into Catholics And Protestants Or Republicans And Democrats Or White Men And Black Men Or Even Men And Women, I Saw The World Divided Into People Who Had Slept With Somebody And People Who Hadn’t, And This Seemed The Only Really Significant Difference Between One Person And Another.

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

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.

I Started Adding Up All The Things I Couldn't Do.

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.

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

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.

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

The Journey Over The Bridge Had Unnerved Me. The River Water Passed Me By Like An Untouched Drink. I Suspected That Even If My Mother And Brother Had Not Been There I Would Have Made No Move To Jump.

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

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.

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

Love Life Day By Day, Color By Color, Touch By Touch.

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

Strange, When One Thinks Of All The Other Boys, Infinite Experimental Kisses, Test Tube Infatuations, Crushes, Pseudo-loves. All Through This Physical Separation, Through The Testing And The Trying Of The Others, There Has Been This Peculiar Rapport, Comradeship, Of Us Two So Alike, So Similar, But For Science-boy And Humanities-girl - The Introspection, Self Examination, Biannual Deep Summarizing Conversations, And Then The Platonic Parting.

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!

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

...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.

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

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

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

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

I Dream Too Much, Work Too Little.

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.

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

Love, Love, I Have Hung Our Cave With Roses.

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.

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

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

I Am Myself. That Is Not Enough.

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

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.

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

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.

…'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.

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.

And I Sit Here Without Identity: Faceless. My Head Aches.

..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.)

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

I Think I Made You Up Inside My Head.

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.

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.

How Many Different Deaths I Can Die?

So, Now I Shall Talk Every Night. To Myself. To The Moon. I Shall Walk, As I Did Tonight, Jealous Of My Loneliness, In The Blue-silver Of The Cold Moon, Shining Brilliantly On The Drifts Of Fresh-fallen Snow, With The Myriad Sparkles. I Talk To Myself And Look At The Dark Trees, Blessedly Neutral. So Much Easier Than Facing People, Than Having To Look Happy, Invulnerable, Clever.

I Think The Whole Emphasis In England, In Universities, On Practical Criticism (but Not That So Much As On Historical Criticism, Knowing What Period A Line Comes From) This Is Almost Paralysing. In America, In University, We Read - What? - T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Yeats, That Is Where We Began. Shakespeare Flaunted In The Background. I'm Not Sure I Agree With This, But I Think That' For The Young Poet, The Writing Poet, It Is Not Quite So Frightening To Go To University In America As It Is In England, For These Reasons.

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 Love My Rejection Slips. They Show Me I Try.

In Spite Of Everything, I Still Have My Good Old Sense Of Humor.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Perhaps Some Day I'll Crawl Back Home, Beaten, Defeated. But Not As Long As I Can Make Stories Out Of My Heartbreak, Beauty Out Of Sorrow.

I Am Afraid Of Getting Married. Spare Me From Cooking Three Meals A Dayspare Me From The Relentless Cage Of Routine And Rote.

I Am Afraid. I Am Not Solid, But Hollow. I Feel Behind My Eyes A Numb, Paralyzed Cavern, A Pit Of Hell, A Mimicking Nothingness.

Compared With Me, A Tree Is Immortal.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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 Wanted To Do Everything Once And For All And Be Through With It.

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

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

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

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

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

Unrequited Love

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.

No, I Won't Try To Escape Myself By Losing Myself In Artificial Chatter 'did You Have A Nice Vacation?' 'oh, Yes, And You?' I'll Stay Here And Try To Pin That Loneliness Down.

The Moon, Too, Abases Her Subjects, But In The Daytime She Is Ridiculous. Your Dissatisfactions, On The Other Hand, Arrive Through The Mailslot With Loving Regularity, White And Blank, Expansive As Carbon Monoxide. No Day Is Safe From News Of You, Walking About In Africa Maybe, But Thinking Of Me.

We Should Meet In Another Life, We Should Meet In Air, Me And You.

You Know What Lies Are For.

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've Eaten A Bag Of Green Apples. Boarded The Train, There's No Getting Off

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.

Like A Cat I Have Nine Times To Die.

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

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

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.

But Life Is Long. And It Is The Long Run That Balances The Short Flare Of Interest And Passion.

I Couldn’t See The Point Of Getting Up. I Had Nothing To Look Forward To.

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.

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

I Woke To The Sound Of Rain.

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.

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.

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.

The Only Reason I Remembered This Play Was Because It Had A Mad Person In It, And Everything I Had Ever Read About Mad People Stuck In My Mind, While Everything Else Flew Out.

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

My Flesh Winced, In Cowardice, From Such A Death.

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.

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

Slowly, Slowly, Catch The Monkey.

A Little Thing, Like Children Putting Flowers In My Hair, Can Fill Up The Widening Cracks In My Self-assurance Like Soothing Lanolin.

I Do Not Fear It: I Have Been There.

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.

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.

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."

The Abstract Kills, The Concrete Saves.

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 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.)

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

Once One Has Seen God, What Is The Remedy?

Last Year A Friend Went Dark In A Nervous City Alone, The Sea Flashing Against His Glasses, The Sea Sorted Out At Last In His Inner Ear So He Could Leave This World As He'd Entered It Through The Undependable Irrational Influence Of Water. -kevin Jeffery Clark 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 At.

I Said: I Must Remember This, Being Small.

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

…* To Learn That Money Makes Life Smooth In Some Ways, And To Feel How Tight And Threadbare Life Is If You Have Too Little. * To Despise Money, Which Is A Farce, Mere Paper, And To Hate What You Have To Do For It, And Yet To Long To Have It In Order To Be Free From Slaving For It. * To Yearn Toward Art, Music, Ballet And Good Books, And Get Them Only In Tantalizing Snatches.

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

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

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.

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

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 Cut You Out Because I Couldn't Stand Being A Passing Fancy.

If You Love Her", I Said, "you'll Love Somebody Else Someday.

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.

The Worst Enemy To Creativity Is Self-doubt.

There Is No Life Higher Than The Grasstops

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

You've Only Got So Long To Live.

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

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.

I Cannot Life For Life Itself: But For The Words Which Stay The Flux. My Life, I Feel, Will Not Be Lived Until There Are Books And Stories Which Relive It Perpetually In Time. I Forget Too Easily How It Was, And Shrink To The Horror Of The Here And Now, With No Past And No Future. Writing Breaks Open The Vaults Of The Dead And The Skies Behind Which The Prophesying Angels Hide. The Mind Makes And Makes, Spinning Its Web.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

We Walk The Plank With Strangers.

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

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

Tomorrow Is Another Day Toward Death.

Tomorrow Is Another Day

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

I Felt Like A Racehorse In A World Without Racetracks.

This Is The Light Of The Mind, Cold And Planetary. The Trees Of The Mind Are Black. The Light Is Blue.

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.

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.

And There's The Fallacy Of Existence: The Idea That One Could Be Happy Forever And Age With A Given Situation Or Series Of Accomplishments.

I Keep Wanting To Crawl Back Into The Womb.

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

I Am Silver And Exact.i Have No Preconceptions.

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

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.

To The Person In The Bell Jar, Blank And Stopped As A Dead Baby, The World Itself Is A Bad Dream.

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.

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

I Was My Own Woman. The Next Step Was To Find The Proper Sort Of Man.

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

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

I Do Feel That Now And I Feel That This Development Of Recording Poems, Of Speaking Poems At Readings, Of Having Records Of Poets, I Think This Is A Wonderful Thing. I'm Very Excited By It. In A Sense, There's A Return, Isn't There, To The Old Role Of The Poet, Which Was To Speak To A Group Of People, To Come Across.

All I Want Is Blackness. Blackness And Silence.

There Is More Than One Good Way To Drown.

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.

It's A Hell Of A Responsibility To Be Yourself. It's Much Easier To Be Somebody Else Or Nobody At All.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Although, I Admit, I Desire, Occasionally, Some Backtalk From The Mute Sky, I Can't Honestly Complain: A Certain Minor Light May Still Lean Incandescent Out Of Kitchen Table Or Chair As If A Celestial Burning Took Possession Of The Most Obtuse Objects Now And Then --

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

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.

I Must Say That I Am Not Very Genteel And I Feel That Gentility Has A Stranglehold: The Neatness, The Wonderful Tidiness, Which Is So Evident Everywhere In England Is Perhaps More Dangerous Than It Would Appear On The Surface.

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.

I Felt Wise And Cynical As All Hell.

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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George Hickenlooper

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