I cannot breathe, I cannot breathe
any more, blue mind
in which I have lived like a prisoner
for thirty years, manic and lonely,
barely daring to fill my lungs.
Sylvia dear, it’s time to say goodbye.
You’ve lived much too long——
marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
frightening effigy with cracked lips
silently holding your breath
and a head in the feverish oven
where it pours red over snow white
with the children asleep in the next room
I used to pray to recover you
oh, you.
In the American tongue, in the British town
blinded white by the tongue
of winter, winter, winter,
but the sadness within is old.
My British friend
says there have been a dozen or two
so I never could tell where you
put your mouth, your pen and ink,
I never could talk to you.
The words trapped in my throat.
Swallowed in a sea of tears
I, I, I, I,
I could hardly speak
I thought every woman was she.
and the looks pitiful
the madness, the madness
leaving me to be a lunatic.
A lunatic to Daddy, Teddy, Mother.
I began to write like a lunatic.
I think I may well be a lunatic.
The whites of my eyes, the memories of Boston
are no longer full of light and truth
with my average looks and mediocre mind
and my Bible and my Bible
I may be a bit of a lunatic.
I have always been scared of you,
with your books, your gobbledygoo.
And your coifed curls
and your German eye, mousy brown.
Crazy girl, crazy girl, O You——
not sane but locked up
so tight no eye could peep through.
Every man enjoys a Mother,
child suckling the breast, the mad
mad mind of a madness like you.
You stand tall and proud, Sylvia,
in the pictures I have of you,
a twitch in your hands instead of your eye
but no less a devil for that, no not
any less the deranged woman who
shattered my fragile mind in a million pieces.
I was scarcely a girl when I met 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 into the spotlight,
and painted a shiny new coat on me.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
a girl in blue with a look of despair.
And a love of the noose and pills
and I said I do, I do.
So Sylvia, dear, I’m finally through.
The telephone line is dead on this end,
the voices just can’t hear through this madness.
If they’ve killed the spirit, I’ve killed the body——
the ghost who said she was you
and drank my blood for a year,
ten years, if you must know.
Sylvia, you can close your eyes now.
There’s a gas in your brilliant, blue mind
and the other women never liked you.
They are praising your dead body.
They always knew it was you.
Sylvia, Sylvia, you witch, I’m through.