{ and I spend time not sleeping. }

[delga]

If Shitwood continues on in this vein, I may have to reconsider said title. I really enjoyed the plot, and its execution, and I was interested through and through. So.

--

Not sleeping, apparently. Today I woke, went to the post office and then walked around for an hour. Found a park, traversed it for some time. The weather was warm at midday, so that was nice. When I came back I read more of Annie Proulx' Accordion Crimes which is good, but I am having difficulties with my attention span. I decided not to turn my laptop until this evening. Somewhere today I lost three hours, so. Who knows what else I did today?

--

Wanting to Die
by Anne Sexton

Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the most unnameable lust returns.

Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention
the furniture you have placed under the sun.

But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.

Twice I have so simply declared myself
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.

In this way, heavy and thoughtful,
warmer than oil or water,
I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.

I did not think of my body at needle point.
Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.
Suicides have already betrayed the body.

Still-born, they don't always die,
but dazzled, they can't forget a drug so sweet
that even children would look on and smile.

To thrust all that life under your tongue! --
that, all by itself, becomes a passion.
Death's a sad bone; bruised, you'd say,

and yet she waits for me, year and year,
to so delicately undo an old would,
to empty my breath from its bad prison.

Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,
leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,

leaving the page of a book carelessly open,
something unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the look, whatever it was, an infection.

Disclaimer: choice of poem was mostly arbitrary; please to not be freaking out. I happen to like the Confessionals, okay? This poem was one of the few that Sexton wrote in response to Sylvia Plath's death.

Comments

[emer-the-lemur.livejournal.com]

I love Anne Sexton.