The stranger in the lavatory mirror
puts on a public grin, repeats our name
but scrupulously reflects the usual terror.
        -“TALE OF A TUB”, SYLVIA PLATH

But I, incompetent fool of mortality,
have appeared in the mirror as nothing
but stretched skin and pained bones
with diluted features robbed
from ancestors before me. Ah,
the recognition of prior greats; it
strikes me in the soul, knowing
that I will never live to the expectations
held before me, dangled above me
like raw, dripping veal over the unfed
lioness of my heart, plucked away one by one
like grapes being fed to Caesar. Appropriate,
perhaps; the phrase of “Et tu, Brute?”
slips from my disarmed lips far too often.

A world of nothing sacred leaves me
lost in the swirling cyclone of cracked glass,
where fighting only brings deep, jagged
lacerations of mind and body
with struggling glances of withered reflection,
of girl battling demons upon demons
on the brink of crippling surrender.
Bonded to this body of paper and lead,
but filled with notions of ink and poison,
the sight has become an old friend, breaking
through the fogged haze of glorified reality.

Brace me against the past, dear
strength, I ask of you, and allow me
to plunge beyond this frosted pane,
to shatter the veil of uncertainty in a manner
to be immortalized for generations of dust
to see, to believe, to trust more than the
painted smile dancing upon my haunted lips
in the belligerent light of the medicine cabinet’s bulbs.

Colors of ocean, slate, lichen,
Swirl behind fairy tale dollhouses,
Their shutters closed tightly,
Occupants fretfully dreaming.
Winds like cold-
Hearted demons roar through the trees.

Strong through the torrents,
With nimble branches,
Scalloped-trunk,
An arc of leafed limbs
Shudders with pain that
Causes it to stand *****.

A shadowy moonrise
Sliver by crescent sliver
Casts the street luminescent
And out of the storming clouds
Of Devil's Point
Falls streaked lightning.

She contemplated death
as coolly as the opening of
a lotus.

Its light spread on
her mad-locked smile
drained
of his mournful red,
like unfinished smears
of butter on toast.

The moon called upon my madness anew,
I closed my eyes and fought against the chains
That kept me waiting, waiting here for you.

You gulped down my world without so much a chew,
Enveloped everything with your scent, became my raving bane.
The chains, the chains garlanded in lilac and rue,

Alone keep me from going moonlight-mad, so they do.
The gentle ice face of the mother moon keeps penetrating my brain.
That kept me waiting, waiting here for you.

This is the stage set for the heavenly wars Ares loves to brew,
The battle fought over our love so strong that left it slain.
The chains, the chains garlanded in lilac and rue,

The chains, the chains made of silver came askew,
Like your hands in mine and whatever feelings may still remain,
That kept me waiting, waiting here for you.

My madness has awoken the moon-bird blue,
Soon it will fly down and cut through the silvery veins.
The chains, the chains garlanded in lilac and rue,
That kept me waiting, waiting here for you.

Sylvia and Vincent
Won't you come visit
me in the night
He'll paint and she'll write

Tulips and sunflowers
I am counting down the hours
Till I meet you
But you are hard to get to.

She put her head in the oven,
he put his in his hands
but you're not so different,
Sylvia and Vincent.

Her pen races, his brushstroke
how did they know
what to say, what to paint
Did it come from their pain?

And you may never see the reward,
the effect on the world
of your gripping emotion
and how it made time frozen

But this comparison is nonsense
only two creatives plagued by madness
and so, like them, I hope for acceptance
from a world that barely notices.