You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to **** you.
You died before I had time ----
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off the beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My ****** friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You ----

Not God but a *******
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the *****.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two ----
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagersnever liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you *******, I'm through.

You do not do, you do not do  
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot  
For thirty years, poor and white,  
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to **** you.  
You died before I had time——
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,  
Ghastly statue with one gray toe  
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic  
Where it pours bean green over blue  
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.  
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town  
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.  
My ****** friend

Says there are a dozen or two.  
So I never could tell where you  
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.  
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.  
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.  
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna  
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck  
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.  
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——

Not God but a *******
So black no sky could squeak through.  
Every woman adores a Fascist,  
The boot in the face, the brute  
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,  
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot  
But no less a devil for that, no not  
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.  
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,  
And they stuck me together with glue.  
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the *****.  
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I’m finally through.
The black telephone’s off at the root,  
The voices just can’t worm through.

If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——
The vampire who said he was you  
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There’s a stake in your fat black heart  
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.  
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you *******, I’m through.

Veins, veins,
length and breadth,
intertwined

beats to freedom
or desolation;
a terminus

lost on a circular.
An ebbing destination,
unchartered targets,

Follow the signs.
We are a one way street,
follow the signs

on software maps.
Stumped
by sequential lights

and us, caught
in a dragnet
within steely fish,

gasping for air,
choking on smoke,
bilious coughs,

hacking sputum,
gobbing phlegm globs
in interval gaps

within gridlocks;
nose to **** to
nose to ****.

The rage, the stares
the shouts, the finger,
the Grrr’s, the Rrrr’s,

the honks, the blares,
the bumper to bumper
expletive shares.

The rolling down,
the alighting,
the threats,

the fighting.
The falling down,
the separation,

reseating,
the rolling,
the thunder,

the trudge,
the stops, the starts.
Follow the signs,

follow the signs.
Robotic conveyors
for humans,

mechanical
fossil fueled
chariots,

grumbling, grunting,
wheee-ing and
screeching,

and screaming
and spewing
and chuffing

and guffing
black plumes,
air tarred,

veins, veins
clogged and bogged,
viscous, molasses,

liquid black blob.
Road fogged,
numbers logged.

Veins, veins,
follow the signs,
slow crawl.

Veins, veins,
follow the signs,
follow the signs,

sprawl.

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2017

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to **** you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My ****** friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--

Not God but a *******
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the *****.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you *******, I'm through.

-sylvia plath 1932 -1963

You do not do, you do not do  
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot  
For thirty years, poor and white,  
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to **** you.  
You died before I had time——
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,  
Ghastly statue with one gray toe  
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic  
Where it pours bean green over blue  
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.  
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town  
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.  
My ****** friend

Says there are a dozen or two.  
So I never could tell where you  
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.  
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.  
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.  
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna  
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck  
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.  
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——

Not God but a *******
So black no sky could squeak through.  
Every woman adores a Fascist,  
The boot in the face, the brute  
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,  
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot  
But no less a devil for that, no not  
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.  
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,  
And they stuck me together with glue.  
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the *****.  
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I’m finally through.
The black telephone’s off at the root,  
The voices just can’t worm through.

If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——
The vampire who said he was you  
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There’s a stake in your fat black heart  
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.  
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you *******, I’m through.

Sylvia Plath, “Daddy” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 1960, 1965, 1971, 1981 by the Estate of Sylvia Plath. Editorial matter copyright © 1981 by Ted Hughes. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Source: Collected Poems (HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 1992)

Wind whipping through naked limbs,
plastic bags like tumbleweeds.

Solace under an overcast sky.

Billows bellow out from the candied sunrise,
brief beauty unfolds in rippling hues
of taupe and ochre and violet.

I watch alone,
as the commuters argue over lanes.
As trucks trundle past.
I enjoy the parallax as
the chuffing dragon's breath
of their air brakes
grows, and then fades.

I watch alone as light begins to bathe all.
An upside-down ocean. A gorgeous abyss.

I watch alone, yet
I'd like someone
to share this morning with.

Express train chuffing
Inside the skull.
It's raging
Red to a fat face bull,
vipers,snipers everywhere
mind so dark
It's really not fair
Chemical,chemicals
Saturate the brain
Barbwiring me up
Inside acid rain

Tweet tweet! what a beautiful bird I am,
The sun a yellow comb, strokes
My little juniper tree and me.
La-dee-da.

I’ll fly across
The stone yew and its chuffing
Fugue.

I’ll watch the
Shotgun wedding of
smoke and leaves.

I'll watch their breathes
Catch and stumble
While the chimney boys sing
And the choir boys weep.
La-dee-da.

Filthy bird song! They shout
Like bullets.

As I fall onto my mother's nest.

She’ll unfold her downy hands
And there in the tickled pits of her palms,
Will splutter and wail
A filthy black bird
With its filthy smoked cloak

And
Her eyes will glaze,
Returning my dismal hums. She
Will fetch a shiny name for me
In the cracks of bourgeois cobble.
****!

And it will all just be a joke
La-dee-da

And I will be a joke
La-dee-da

And I will stretch my wings
and

drown.

When the skylarks would warble hover and sing
at about a hundred feet, high on the wing, and we…
on a heat clicking Sunday between Salt End and the sea,
well we knew - just from the ozone, on the breeze
that we’d be off …a shimmering heat haze convoy of old crocks,
Bud, Margaret, Brian and me to Tunstall,
a diminishing, mystical land of sun, sand, sea - and tumbling rocks.

But it wasn’t just us…it was a cavalcade - motors galore.
Uncles,  Aunties, Cousins, Grans, Grandads and more
in Austins, Morris’s, Vauxhalls and Fords,
And a big old Rover wi’them wide running boards,
a motor bike’n’sidecar with Maurice, Denise & our Val
to wring the best from the day a’la Plage de Tunstall’…

The beach crackled in the heat…
if you walked too slow it’d burn your feet.
and our Dads, our ‘civil engineers’, built a brick oven and in a
giggling gaggle… Mums cooked a real Sunday dinner.
Kids’d run back & forth to the sea and back
buckets & spades, hacking big holes and shots in goal,
cricket with fallen rocks for a wicket and,
after pudding, burying drunken dads in the sand.

Heavy, wet woolen cozzies, sand in groins,
...changing in turn, under a soaking wet, gritty towel.

“Don’t dry me with that, Ow! Buddy hell - watch my sunburn.”
Then, all back in the cars, for our return
into the sunset and driving away.

Chaffing sore shoulders.

Chuffing good day! - yeah…Parfait!!

dem streets ain’t know yo name
just be out there like hunger on parade
all Mardi coup de grace, with spiked tea-
and neon giblets… all draped over hot coals
and incandescent funk. with meter maids
and pidgeons-
sweeping thunder under rugs
everybody know
ain’t your real
Hair.

dem streets be like consequences
marching with a band of thieves. tuba prodigies adagio
with oily smoke and cauliflowers marinading
in umami and soiled alters.
switchblades are like optional candy.
sharkfins in buttermilk
more like an actual
Wednesday.

dem streets be soaking bullets in Kopi Luwak
chuffing pearl dust off a subway chit
while staggering home from a dust-up
at Berkley.
we keep telling ourselves
to tell ourselves something
but forget to remember
how to forget
about it

out loud.

I didn’t realize how late it was and kept eating cigars and spritzers.
chuffing on a spoonful of Mercury and bath salts, while having a debate
with a silent Mime. a mime, so ascetic that a grain of invisible rice
was a banquet. And pulling a rope made of empty-
was the gravy on the biscuit.
a flag at the summit
of a goosebump you were pawning
to a merchant
for a chill.

a bespoke menagerie of awkward McGillicuddy
carefully abandoned by the Hour… toppling the swiss clock
of our glockenspiel, over the horizon of my Optic Nerve.
serving the inkling of a thing is more rampant than devotion
to an actual god… and love has all the trappings of genius
as our serenity is an eternal war
that begs the Question
blindfolded

without asking.