#sexton
They say I am like her,
and her,
but that is
blasphemous,
backhanded as
my sorrow must
bleed through.
Cannot make it
pretty,
there is no way
to make it
tender.
Cannot wish it into
a petal, a leaf,
there is no way
to warm the
sun.
They say I am like her,
but she is in
the dirt buried by
her own
hands-
and her hands
too!
She cried straight
into the
crypt.
Diagnosed with
the
disease of
death.
Do they also say
they hope
I end
like her,
or her,
too?
Sep 21, 2024
Sep 21, 2024 at 1:44 PM UTC
These days I’ve been looking to the past, to all the women before me. The revolutionaries whose words helped shape the way I see the world; the way I see nature; the way I see simple, ordinary pleasures of life become extraordinary.
These days I let my pen flow freely across the page. I look to all the women before me for guidance because I find myself afraid to speak my own truth. They teach me with words how to live presently, never looking back because there’s no room for mistakes to reside here.
These days we’re on a first name basis. With wide-eyed clarity, all the women before me allow a short glimpse of them as they once were: bright young things full of hope with a cigarette loosely balanced between faded red lips and hands that move deftly over a typewriter. The room is filled with cigarette smoke and incense. I can almost smell it now but the vision is gone with the wind.
These days I seek out: Zelda; Sylvia; Anne; Emily; Joan; Virginia. To all the women before me, I have found you. They’re no longer a black and white still photograph or a short film reel. In those moments, they stay forever young etched in time from decades ago.
These days I welcome you all in my waking dreams. To all the women before me, you are not lingering ghosts being passed by unseen. You are not remembered for how you left this earth but for how, after all this time, you still remain unchanging.
Oct 24, 2023
Oct 24, 2023 at 10:50 AM UTC
Navigating mercy
An asylum harbor from afar
Here, in the gloaming of your closed
notebooks
A faint-hearted horizon
And the wide beam sea
Two days out from despair
The written word will capsize
you, Anne
God is in your typewriter
and where the boats so often go
Aug 5, 2020
Aug 5, 2020 at 10:10 AM UTC
I want lithium that tastes like
hair intertwined in chain link
on pedestrian bridges.
It'd be spit.
Your spit I swallowed
eyeing the eye of the storm
barefoot on Kombucha glass,
we both felt safe.
The bridge'd be destroyed eventually
but love's a greater monument
than cathedrals built with
taxpayer money and with
lips locked I'd have no
reason to scream
when winds break the trees
or the wind breaks me.
I'd stand my ground
magnetic banded
to the metal behind
what's in front of me
and I'll have the taste
of lavender and humidity
in my mouth instead
of my own blood.
Feb 6, 2019
Feb 6, 2019 at 4:07 PM UTC
wherever you go, there you are
in a world of silver legacy
where all you feel are
living emotions of memories
you thought were dead;
hands on the dash,
passenger seat,
their eyes are too friendly.
glass ***** that act
like warm pillows, i'm
ready to fall asleep.
no melatonin,
no split palms or slit wrists,
no fever dreams of vision loss
where i'm left a
broken nose bruised beauty.
i'll be a beauty, or something like that,
but i won't be nothing
like i've been recently.
Feb 5, 2019
Feb 5, 2019 at 8:42 PM UTC
I thought I saw Ursa Minor in Lampe Park last night,
but the trees blurred my vision to the point
where I couldn't tell whether it was a constellation
or a phallus ******* on a posy of roses.
Stars don't make sense.
If amateur philosophy has taught me anything,
it's that they can't be social constructs
or a figment of your imagination
because they exist.
They're dead,
but they exist.
and they'll be here
until all my jokes about cancer
or death in general
catches up to me.
Jun 2, 2018
Jun 2, 2018 at 1:02 AM UTC
“i’m done with furries”
i.
i can’t dream your dreams,
but you’ve told me about them.
you wear an owl mask
shaped by fists and transgression;
a laceration splits your side
from a skin split
to your rib splits.
your love,
Bill Clinton or Donkey Kong
(whoever populates your thoughts),
crack your bare skin
until makeup
leaks out of your pores.
you dream of emulating art;
O hanging from a ceiling claw,
clicking heels against drywall
until leg muscles give up
and her diaphragm accordions close.
but who is your sculptor?
who is your artist?
ii.
alas, i am only
a paper mache bird.
i flinch when it rains,
i flinch when i move;
my paper skin
could cave in
from lip crack to *** crack.
(i hate
Inside Out.
but, i’ve only watched it once,
and i’ve been told
my eyes would adjust
on the second viewing.)
i dream of emulating art;
Marat in an ice bath,
tragedy and love and death
captured
without conflict.
but who is my muse?
who won’t break my bones?
iii.
you don’t know my dreams either,
but we could dream together.
two reveries in polyphony
of an owl and bird *******
making love
before they
make art.
our love
is ******* weird;
a childhood seesaw
we’re trying to
find the perfect balance
to with our weight.
we dream different things;
**** fantasies and intimate kissing,
but that doesn’t matter.
at this point in two years,
we can see through each other.
i can’t make art without you.
you aren’t done with furries.
May 31, 2018
May 31, 2018 at 11:15 PM UTC
Sigourney was a saltwater princess
born from a flash flood;
a stray cat I found
stuck between the boards
of a wooden fence.
Her cries mimicked
the local 6 o'clock siren
with a backdrop
of toe beans fettering
on a park sidewalk.
I mirrored the way
her left paw traced
the cracks of the cement,
(fast paced, sloppily),
then ushered her out
using a combination of
strength and saliva.
"It's okay,
you won't get wet,"
I whispered
as my left hand struggled
getting out a plastic bag.
Carefully,
with precision,
Sigourney was plopped
backwards into
torn up plastic
marked
Have A Nice Day!
Alone we trudged
through flooded baseball fields
and gazebos
to cross the highway.
"Do you want
to go home?
Do you have
a home?"
I took a shortcut through
the Taco Bell drive-thru,
cars honking,
claws breaking through
malleable material.
cotton, skin, etc.
Sigourney said nothing.
"Good,
because I don't know
if I want to."
Tucked into a bag tucked into a jacket,
we headed westward
as far as we could,
before a cop approached
a teen at midnight
technically committing
a catnapping.
May 31, 2018
May 31, 2018 at 10:14 PM UTC
love is muscular dystrophy.
i can feel the earth cave in
and the mountains touch tips,
a "drunken mistake"
in the church parking lot
they'll never tell their friends.
i get it.
i never told my friends the truth,
i just told them i loved them.
and for a while i have been
attempting to soundtrack
the world's end, my end,
and the realization that
my gastrointestinal system
will collapse before i'm 20
if i don't lift my head up for once.
yet every good poem i've ever written
has been sober and manic,
pessimism with too much hope,
and every metaphor used
never held any actual weight.
i've welcomed writer's block
with half open arms
as i try to write a final track,
or at least a penultimate one,
if the time doesn't feel right.
if i have to promise once more
that i'd try to take care of myself,
stop crying in empty driveways
over broken promises,
stop holding myself over
the diner's staircase
with bulging anticipation.
it felt good being surrounded,
it feels bad being crushed
and knowing there is so much more
out there in the valley or whatever universe
i decide to live in,
yet i can't get out
of my family's trash compactor.
May 31, 2018
May 31, 2018 at 2:28 AM UTC
romantic theory states
you can trace freckles on a skin
to match a constellation,
and the line that connects
the freckle between your toes
and the one on your index finger
is reminiscent of a slide.
a fun one.
May 31, 2018
May 31, 2018 at 1:47 AM UTC
At 27, I catch glimpses
of my reflection, the edges blurred.
What I thought was an identify
is really a funerary pall.
You sought Mercy Street
on Beacon Hill.
I walked the star-lit night
until I stumbled against a street sign
which read: “Dead End.”
May 25, 2016
May 25, 2016 at 2:21 PM UTC
---
there was an equine artist
who cut herself while in art class
she blended the blood
into the paint and
used it to render the horses mane
she was put in an insane asylum
many gifted people
are "insane"
are their minds designed differently
to show us the hell inside
so we could come to terms with
our own hearts and minds
and their deepest dungeons
of angst and emotions?
our own poetic expression
and voice?
our most profound space of fear?
Plath was a diety
Sexton a goddess
Van Gogh an icon
he cut off his own ear
an artist also bleeds
Jul 4, 2015
Jul 4, 2015 at 9:48 AM UTC
**Whatever did Sylvia Plath
and Anne Sexton
have in common?
—two great minds
of the literary canon
who drove themselves
to the proverbial crimson
One gassed herself
like a condemned Jew
the other stayed in her car
letting the breathlessness brew
A melody of the swans that
not even Beethoven
could undo
What could have been
in their poetry
that consumed them in
the deepest misery
—like one of a dark soliloquy
or a dying plea?**
Jun 24, 2015
Jun 24, 2015 at 10:40 AM UTC
There is no courage in questions
We know someone will answer
Answers that take us nowhere
Informational fodder, answers that do not heal
There is no courage in questions
We know will leave our world intact
Answers that take us nowhere
Details that make a case, but do not heal
But what is the question we fear?
Do you love her?
Yes.
Do you still love me?
Yes.
May 21, 2015
May 21, 2015 at 6:54 PM UTC
Portrait of an Old Woman on the College Tavern Wall
BY ANNE SEXTON
Oh down at the tavern
the children are singing
around their round table
and around me still.
Did you hear what it said?
I only said
how there is a pewter urn
pinned to the tavern wall,
as old as old is able
to be and be there still.
I said, the poets are there
I hear them singing and lying
around their round table
and around me still.
Across the room is a wreath
made of a corpse’s hair,
framed in glass on the wall,
as old as old is able
to be and be remembered still.
Did you hear what it said?
I only said
how I want to be there and I
would sing my songs with the liars
and my lies with all the singers.
And I would, and I would but
it’s my hair in the hair wreath,
my cup pinned to the tavern wall,
my dusty face they sing beneath.
Poets are sitting in my kitchen.
Why do these poets lie?
Why do children get children and
Did you hear what it said?
I only said
how I want to be there,
Oh, down at the tavern
where the prophets are singing
around their round table
until they are still.
Apr 13, 2015
Apr 13, 2015 at 8:04 AM UTC