Acceptance

Source: Facebook/Favim

No more knuckling under, groaning, moaning: one gets used to pain. This hurts. Not being perfect hurts. Having to bother about work in order to eat and have a house hurts. So what. It’s about time. This is the month which ends a quarter of a century for me, lived under the shadow of fear: fear that I would fall short of some abstract perfection: I have often fought, fought and won, not perfection, but an acceptance of myself as having a right to live on my own human, fallible terms.

~ Sylvia Plath

Acceptance

Source: Facebook/Favim

No more knuckling under, groaning, moaning: one gets used to pain. This hurts. Not being perfect hurts. Having to bother about work in order to eat and have a house hurts. So what. It’s about time. This is the month which ends a quarter of a century for me, lived under the shadow of fear: fear that I would fall short of some abstract perfection: I have often fought, fought and won, not perfection, but an acceptance of myself as having a right to live on my own human, fallible terms.

~ Sylvia Plath

Love Letter

Photo credit: mettem from morguefile.com

Not easy to state the change you made.

If I'm alive now, then I was dead,

Though, like a stone, unbothered by it,

Staying put according to habit.

You didn't just tow me an inch, no--

Nor leave me to set my small bald eye

Skyward again, without hope, of course,

Of apprehending blueness, or stars.

That wasn't it. I slept, say: a snake

Masked among black rocks as a black rock

In the white hiatus of winter--

Like my neighbors, taking no pleasure

In the million perfectly-chisled

Cheeks alighting each moment to melt

My cheeks of basalt. They turned to tears,

Angels weeping over dull natures,

But didn't convince me. Those tears froze.

Each dead head had a visor of ice.

And I slept on like a bent finger.

The first thing I was was sheer air

And the locked drops rising in dew

Limpid as spirits. Many stones lay

Dense and expressionless round about.

I didn't know what to make of it.

I shone, mice-scaled, and unfolded

To pour myself out like a fluid

Among bird feet and the stems of plants.

I wasn't fooled. I knew you at once.

Tree and stone glittered, without shadows.

My finger-length grew lucent as glass.

I started to bud like a March twig:

An arm and a leg, and arm, a leg.

From stone to cloud, so I ascended.

Now I resemble a sort of god

Floating through the air in my soul-shift

Pure as a pane of ice. It's a gift.

~ Sylvia Plath

Love Letter

Photo credit: mettem from morguefile.com

Not easy to state the change you made.

If I'm alive now, then I was dead,

Though, like a stone, unbothered by it,

Staying put according to habit.

You didn't just tow me an inch, no--

Nor leave me to set my small bald eye

Skyward again, without hope, of course,

Of apprehending blueness, or stars.

That wasn't it. I slept, say: a snake

Masked among black rocks as a black rock

In the white hiatus of winter--

Like my neighbors, taking no pleasure

In the million perfectly-chisled

Cheeks alighting each moment to melt

My cheeks of basalt. They turned to tears,

Angels weeping over dull natures,

But didn't convince me. Those tears froze.

Each dead head had a visor of ice.

And I slept on like a bent finger.

The first thing I was was sheer air

And the locked drops rising in dew

Limpid as spirits. Many stones lay

Dense and expressionless round about.

I didn't know what to make of it.

I shone, mice-scaled, and unfolded

To pour myself out like a fluid

Among bird feet and the stems of plants.

I wasn't fooled. I knew you at once.

Tree and stone glittered, without shadows.

My finger-length grew lucent as glass.

I started to bud like a March twig:

An arm and a leg, and arm, a leg.

From stone to cloud, so I ascended.

Now I resemble a sort of god

Floating through the air in my soul-shift

Pure as a pane of ice. It's a gift.

~ Sylvia Plath

Lady Lazarus

Phoenix by Santiago Iborra (c) 2005

I have done it again.

One year in every ten

I manage it----

A sort of walking miracle, my skin

Bright as a Nazi lampshade,

My right foot

A paperweight,

My face a featureless, fine

Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin

0 my enemy.

Do I terrify?----

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?

The sour breath

Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh

The grave cave ate will be

At home on me

And I a smiling woman.

I am only thirty.

And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.

What a trash

To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.

The peanut-crunching crowd

Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot

The big strip tease.

Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands

My knees.

I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.

The first time it happened I was ten.

It was an accident.

The second time I meant

To last it out and not come back at all.

I rocked shut

As a seashell.

They had to call and call

And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying

Is an art, like everything else,

I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.

It's easy enough to do it and stay put.

It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day

To the same place, the same face, the same brute

Amused shout:

'A miracle!'

That knocks me out.

There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge

For the hearing of my heart----

It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge

For a word or a touch

Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.

So, so, Herr Doktor.

So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,

I am your valuable,

The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.

I turn and burn.

Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash ---

You poke and stir.

Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

A cake of soap,

A wedding ring,

A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer

Beware

Beware.

Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air.

~ Sylvia Plath

______________________________

The phoenix hope, can wing her way through the desert skies, and still defying fortune's spite; revive from ashes and rise.

~ Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Lady Lazarus

Phoenix by Santiago Iborra (c) 2005

I have done it again.

One year in every ten

I manage it----

A sort of walking miracle, my skin

Bright as a Nazi lampshade,

My right foot

A paperweight,

My face a featureless, fine

Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin

0 my enemy.

Do I terrify?----

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?

The sour breath

Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh

The grave cave ate will be

At home on me

And I a smiling woman.

I am only thirty.

And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.

What a trash

To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.

The peanut-crunching crowd

Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot

The big strip tease.

Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands

My knees.

I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.

The first time it happened I was ten.

It was an accident.

The second time I meant

To last it out and not come back at all.

I rocked shut

As a seashell.

They had to call and call

And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying

Is an art, like everything else,

I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.

It's easy enough to do it and stay put.

It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day

To the same place, the same face, the same brute

Amused shout:

'A miracle!'

That knocks me out.

There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge

For the hearing of my heart----

It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge

For a word or a touch

Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.

So, so, Herr Doktor.

So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,

I am your valuable,

The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.

I turn and burn.

Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash ---

You poke and stir.

Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

A cake of soap,

A wedding ring,

A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer

Beware

Beware.

Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air.

~ Sylvia Plath

______________________________

The phoenix hope, can wing her way through the desert skies, and still defying fortune's spite; revive from ashes and rise.

~ Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra