Sometimes...

Sometimes 'doing nothing' is the answer.

'Frigga Spinning the Clouds' J.C. Dollman

“‘What flies up there, so quickly driving past?’

Her answer from the clouds, as rushing by:

‘I fly not, nor do drive, but hurry fast,

Hoof-flinger swift through cloud and mist and sky.’”

Asgard and the Gods (Wagner-Macdowall)

Final Countdown

My days in Portland are limited now.

When an imminent departure is less than a month away it becomes palpable. Reality has started to become part of the equation now. This always happens when I am about to travel, but it is different this time. Do I need to pack multiple tubes of toothpaste? How long will it take me to set up a bank account? How many fuses will my electrical converter blow?

What will my life be like there?

I dont know and I suppose Ive always thrived on a changing life with no predictable future.

So, here I go.

Lady Lazarus

picture: valie export


Never not a day for Sylvia Plath.

Out of the ash, I rise.

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

O 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.

Gentleman, 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 so 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 hair on 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 ash

I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air.

Lead (II) Acetate: white, crystalline substance. Sweet taste, highly toxic.

time was spent in silence
when i pushed myself out
without a hint of a tether
without a hint of apprehension
open, floating, free in this vastness

Conversation Among the Ruins

Through portico of my elegant house you stalk
With your wild furies, disturbing garlands of fruit
And the fabulous lutes and peacocks, rending the net
Of all decorum which holds the whirlwind back.
Now, rich order of walls is fallen; rooks croak
Above the appalling ruin; in bleak light
Of your stormy eye, magic takes flight
Like a daunted witch, quitting castle when real days break.

Fractured pillars frame prospects of rock;
While you stand heroic in coat and tie, I sit
Composed in Grecian tunic and psyche-knot,
Rooted to your black look, the play turned tragic:
Which such blight wrought on our bankrupt estate,
What ceremony of words can patch the havoc?

-Sylvia Plath