Poppies in July

Little poppies, little hell flames,
Do you do no harm?

You flicker. I cannot touch you.
I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns.

And it exhausts me to watch you
Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.

A mouth just ies.
Little y skirts!

There are fumes that I cannot touch.
Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?

If I could bleed, or sleep!----
If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!

Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule,
Dulling and stilling.

But colorless. Colorless.

20 July 1962

You know, no one can ever claim that Sylvia Plath wasn't honest. Tell me something, when you look into a field of poppies, are you lured by their visual beauty, or do you, too, feel compelled to drink their poison? One flower, holding two different feelings. Beauty and . But then again, perhaps these two views are one and the same for some of us.
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