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| Sylvia Plath, 1948 |
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| William Butler Yeats |
| Allen Ginsberg |
| The Lion For Real "Soyez muette pour moi, Idole contemplative..." I came home and found a lion in my living room Rushed out on the fire escape screaming Lion! Lion! Two stenographers pulled their brunnette hair and banged the window shut I hurried home to Patterson and stayed two days Called up old Reichian analyst who'd kicked me out of therapy for smoking marijuana 'It's happened' I panted 'There's a Lion in my living room' 'I'm afraid any discussion would have no value' he hung up I went to my old boyfriend we got drunk with his girlfriend I kissed him and announced I had a lion with a mad gleam in my eye We wound up fighting on the floor I bit his eyebrow he kicked me out I ended up masturbating in his jeep parked in the street moaning 'Lion.' Found Joey my novelist friend and roared at him 'Lion!' He looked at me interested and read me his spontaneous ignu high poetries I listened for lions all I heard was Elephant Tiglon Hippogriff Unicorn Ants But figured he really understood me when we made it in Ignaz Wisdom's bathroom. But next day he sent me a leaf from his Smoky Mountain retreat 'I love you little Bo-Bo with your delicate golden lions But there being no Self and No Bars therefore the Zoo of your dear Father hath no lion You said your mother was mad don't expect me to produce the Monster for your Bridegroom.' Confused dazed and exalted bethought me of real lion starved in his stink in Harlem Opened the door the room was filled with the bomb blast of his anger He roaring hungrily at the plaster walls but nobody could hear outside thru the window My eye caught the edge of the red neighbor apartment building standing in deafening stillness We gazed at each other his implacable yellow eye in the red halo of fur Waxed rhuemy on my own but he stopped roaring and bared a fang greeting. I turned my back and cooked broccoli for supper on an iron gas stove boilt water and took a hot bath in the old tup under the sink board. He didn't eat me, tho I regretted him starving in my presence. Next week he wasted away a sick rug full of bones wheaten hair falling out enraged and reddening eye as he lay aching huge hairy head on his paws by the egg-crate bookcase filled up with thin volumes of Plato, & Buddha. Sat by his side every night averting my eyes from his hungry motheaten face stopped eating myself he got weaker and roared at night while I had nightmares Eaten by lion in bookstore on Cosmic Campus, a lion myself starved by Professor Kandisky, dying in a lion's flophouse circus, I woke up mornings the lion still added dying on the floor--'Terrible Presence!'I cried'Eat me or die!' It got up that afternoon--walked to the door with its paw on the south wall to steady its trembling body Let out a soul-rending creak from the bottomless roof of his mouth thundering from my floor to heaven heavier than a volcano at night in Mexico Pushed the door open and said in a gravelly voice "Not this time Baby-- but I will be back again." Lion that eats my mind now for a decade knowing only your hunger Not the bliss of your satisfaction O roar of the universe how am I chosen In this life I have heard your promise I am ready to die I have served Your starved and ancient Presence O Lord I wait in my room at your Mercy. Paris, March 1958 |
| Mad Girl's Love Song I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. (I think I made you up inside my head.) The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, And arbitrary blackness gallops in: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane. (I think I made you up inside my head.) God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade: Exit seraphim and Satan's men: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. 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.) |
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Marraige Should I get married? Should I be Good? Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustaus hood? Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries and she going just so far and I understanding why not getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel! Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky-- When she introduces me to her parents back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie, should I sit knees together on their 3rd degree sofa and not ask Where's the bathroom? How else to feel other than I am, often thinking Flash Gordon soap-- O how terrible it must be for a young man seated before a family and the family thinking We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou! After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living? Should I tell them? Would they like me then? Say All right get married, we're losing a daughter but we're gaining a son-- And should I then ask Where's the bathroom? O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded just waiting to get at the drinks and food-- And the priest! He looking at me if I masturbated asking me Do you take this woman for your lawful the bride all those corny men slapping me on the back She's all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha! And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going on-- then all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoes Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers! Chocolates! All streaming into cozy hotels All going to do the same thing tonight The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen The lobby zombies they knowing what The whistling elevator man he knowing The winking bellboy knowing Everybody knowing! I'd be almost inclined not to do anything! Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye! Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon! running rampant into those almost climatic suites yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel! O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls I'd sit there the Mad Honeymooner devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of bigamy a saint of divorce-- From Marraige |
| Broken Dreams There is grey in your hair. Young men no longer suddenly catch their breath When you are passing; But maybe some old gaffer mutters a blessing Because it was your prayer Recovered him upon the bed of death. For your sole sake - that all heart's ache have known, And given to others all heart's ache, From meagre girlhood's putting on Burdensome beauty -- for your sole sake Heaven has put away the stroke of her doom, So great her portion in that peace you make By merely walking in a room. Your beauty can but leave among us Vague memories, nothing but memories. A young man when the old men are done talking Will say to an old man, 'Tell me of that lady The poet stubborn with his passion sang us When age might well have chilled his blood.' Vague memories, nothing but memories, But in the grave all, all, shall be renewed. The certainty that I shall see that lady Leaning or standing or walking In the first loveliness of womanhood, And with the fervour of my youthful eyes, Has set me muttering like a fool. You are more beautiful than any one, And yet your body had a flaw: Your small hands were not beautiful, And I am afraid that you will run And paddle to the wrist In that mysterious, always brimming lake Where those What have obeyed the holy law paddle and are perfect. Leave unchanged The hands that I have kissed, For old sake's sake. The last stroke of midnight dies. All day in the one chair From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged In rambling talk with an image of air: Vague memories, nothing but memories. |
| suppose Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head. young death sits in a cafe smiling, a pierce of money held between his thumb and first finger (i say "will he buy flowers" to you and "Death is young life wears velour trousers life totters, life has a beard" i say to you who are silent.--"Do you see Life? he is there and here, or that, or this or nothing or an old man 3 thirds asleep, on his head flowers, always crying to nobody something about les roses les bluets yes, will He buy? Les belles bottes--oh hear , pas cheres") and my love slowly answered I think so. But I think I see someone else there is a lady, whose name is Afterwards she is sitting beside young death, is slender; likes flowers. |
| ee cummings (Self-portrait) |
| suppose |
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| I have gone out, a possessed witch, haunting the black air, braver at night; dreaming evil, I have done my hitch over the plain houses, light by light: lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind. A woman like that is not a woman, quite. I have been her kind. I have found the warm caves in the woods, filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves, closets, silks, innumerable goods; fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves: whining, rearranging the disaligned. A woman like that is misunderstood. I have been her kind. I have ridden in your cart, driver, waved my nude arms at villages going by, learning the last bright routes, survivor where your flames still bite my thigh and my ribs crack where your wheels wind. A woman like that is not ashamed to die. I have been her kind. |
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| Anne Sexton |
| Her Kind |
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