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 Apr 2022 Ayesha
Anne Sexton
for Sylvia Plath
O Sylvia, Sylvia,
with a dead box of stones and spoons,
with two children, two meteors
wandering loose in a tiny playroom,
with your mouth into the sheet,
into the roofbeam, into the dumb prayer,
(Sylvia, Sylvia
where did you go
after you wrote me
from Devonshire
about rasing potatoes
and keeping bees?)
what did you stand by,
just how did you lie down into?
Thief --
how did you crawl into,
crawl down alone
into the death I wanted so badly and for so long,
the death we said we both outgrew,
the one we wore on our skinny *******,
the one we talked of so often each time
we downed three extra dry martinis in Boston,
the death that talked of analysts and cures,
the death that talked like brides with plots,
the death we drank to,
the motives and the quiet deed?
(In Boston
the dying
ride in cabs,
yes death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)
O Sylvia, I remember the sleepy drummer
who beat on our eyes with an old story,
how we wanted to let him come
like a sadist or a New York fairy
to do his job,
a necessity, a window in a wall or a crib,
and since that time he waited
under our heart, our cupboard,
and I see now that we store him up
year after year, old suicides
and I know at the news of your death
a terrible taste for it, like salt,
(And me,
me too.
And now, Sylvia,
you again
with death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)
And I say only
with my arms stretched out into that stone place,
what is your death
but an old belonging,
a mole that fell out
of one of your poems?
(O friend,
while the moon's bad,
and the king's gone,
and the queen's at her wit's end
the bar fly ought to sing!)
O tiny mother,
you too!
O funny duchess!
O blonde thing!
 Apr 2022 Ayesha
Delton Peele
Life
 Apr 2022 Ayesha
Delton Peele
In wardly an awkward line ,
Lies........
Somehow betwixt kudos and mockery.
And generally a ***** or an incline
Determination of which ....
Established sadly by the one walking it.
I. E. ME, growing up lacking temperament and confidence,
I told everyone I wanted to be a comedian........
They all laughed at me.......
I took it the wrong way
And tried to be a poet .
I think maybe I was  a little to sensitive....
Life,........
Isn't funny .....
Er idk........
So yah follow your heart .
But have some fun and don't be so ...
Idk .....

Like me ......
 Mar 2022 Ayesha
Sylvia Plath
Revolving in oval loops of solar speed,
Couched in cauls of clay as in holy robes,
Dead men render love and war no heed,
Lulled in the ample womb of the full-tilt globe.

No spiritual Caesars are these dead;
They want no proud paternal kingdom come;
And when at last they blunder into bed
World-wrecked, they seek only oblivion.

Rolled round with goodly loam and cradled deep,
These bone shanks will not wake immaculate
To trumpet-toppling dawn of doomstruck day :
They loll forever in colossal sleep;
Nor can God's stern, shocked angels cry them up
From their fond, final, infamous decay.
 Mar 2022 Ayesha
Sylvia Plath
Lesbos
 Mar 2022 Ayesha
Sylvia Plath
Viciousness in the kitchen!
The potatoes hiss.
It is all Hollywood, windowless,
The fluorescent light wincing on and off like a terrible migraine,
Coy paper strips for doors --
Stage curtains, a widow's frizz.
And I, love, am a pathological liar,
And my child -- look at her, face down on the floor,
Little unstrung puppet, kicking to disappear --
Why she is schizophrenic,
Her face is red and white, a panic,
You have stuck her kittens outside your window
In a sort of cement well
Where they crap and puke and cry and she can't hear.
You say you can't stand her,
The *******'s a girl.
You who have blown your tubes like a bad radio
Clear of voices and history, the staticky
Noise of the new.
You say I should drown the kittens. Their smell!
You say I should drown my girl.
She'll cut her throat at ten if she's mad at two.
The baby smiles, fat snail,
From the polished lozenges of orange linoleum.
You could eat him. He's a boy.
You say your husband is just no good to you.
His Jew-Mama guards his sweet *** like a pearl.
You have one baby, I have two.
I should sit on a rock off Cornwall and comb my hair.
I should wear tiger pants, I should have an affair.
We should meet in another life, we should meet in air,
Me and you.

Meanwhile there's a stink of fat and baby crap.
I'm doped and thick from my last sleeping pill.
The smog of cooking, the smog of hell
Floats our heads, two venemous opposites,
Our bones, our hair.
I call you Orphan, orphan. You are ill.
The sun gives you ulcers, the wind gives you T.B.
Once you were beautiful.
In New York, in Hollywood, the men said: 'Through?
Gee baby, you are rare.'
You acted, acted for the thrill.
The impotent husband slumps out for a coffee.
I try to keep him in,
An old pole for the lightning,
The acid baths, the skyfuls off of you.
He lumps it down the plastic cobbled hill,
Flogged trolley. The sparks are blue.
The blue sparks spill,
Splitting like quartz into a million bits.

O jewel! O valuable!
That night the moon
Dragged its blood bag, sick
Animal
Up over the harbor lights.
And then grew normal,
Hard and apart and white.
The scale-sheen on the sand scared me to death.
We kept picking up handfuls, loving it,
Working it like dough, a mulatto body,
The silk grits.
A dog picked up your doggy husband. He went on.

Now I am silent, hate
Up to my neck,
Thick, thick.
I do not speak.
I am packing the hard potatoes like good clothes,
I am packing the babies,
I am packing the sick cats.
O vase of acid,
It is love you are full of. You know who you hate.
He is hugging his ball and chain down by the gate
That opens to the sea
Where it drives in, white and black,
Then spews it back.
Every day you fill him with soul-stuff, like a pitcher.
You are so exhausted.
Your voice my ear-ring,
Flapping and *******, blood-loving bat.
That is that. That is that.
You peer from the door,
Sad hag. 'Every woman's a *****.
I can't communicate.'

I see your cute décor
Close on you like the fist of a baby
Or an anemone, that sea
Sweetheart, that kleptomaniac.
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.
 Mar 2022 Ayesha
Delton Peele
Some day I believe
There there will come
A time
In which I might think ,
That I ........
Retrospectively
Wished I would have
Seen this coming..
Then again that would have surely taken some of the fun out of it.
Cause knowing me....
If I had known..............
I dont think I would have done it
I  know I would have done it anyway......
And there's one more  reason why ,
Its so sorta unrewarding
To read books backwards
 Mar 2022 Ayesha
Evie G
Coffee
 Mar 2022 Ayesha
Evie G
A conversation over a cup of coffee
(Sainsbury’s low quality)

The kettle burbles in the background
Bartering bubbles for blatant babbling

The granules flop, shake if they stop
Right from the top, into brown slop.  

Stir with a spoon,
Stare into the eye of the storm:

Vanilla swirls, auburn curls,
Minding their manners, glances from girls.

Hazelnut eyes, thinking they’re wise.
Smile contradicting the, frankly, **** skies.

Pupils dilate,
Chalk dusted slate,
Tea leaves are telling me this must be fate

Dumb conversation,
Mind saying more,
Something unsaid seems to open a door

I’d rather its shut, its dangerous but
Sugar, im just an emotional ****

I’ll let you in, this time you win
‘Another coffee?’
You ask, with a grin.
My mirror is full of soft clouds
that may surprise you
their subtle qualities cast shadows
around my heavy head and ask
what might the darkened night intend
it is surely sacred to ironic nymphs
and the moon
whose night ambassadors
glow across the winds

a tender cheek
being ill-qualified and virginal
can admit sadly that
nothing much happened
but the pale beats of a jumprope
counted out the letters so
now I know your name
and that is some comfort
at a glance the horses offer
a wilderness
my aristocracy is hardening
landed within the seasons, intermittent
the sky secured a safe space grimly
the world rose and fell
and wore the hue of heaven
 Feb 2022 Ayesha
Pablo Neruda
We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.

I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?

The book fell that always closed at twilight
and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

Always, always you recede through the evenings
toward the twilight erasing statues.
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