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ChibiDeathscythe
Member
since 2000-06-09
Posts 128


0 posted 2000-07-04 12:05 PM


Let me start off by saying I DID NOT write this poem; is it my favourite poem by Anne Sexton, and I just thought I'd share it

Wanting to Die

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



[This message has been edited by ChibiDeathscythe (edited 07-04-2000).]

© Copyright 2000 Mary K. - All Rights Reserved
Hardrock
Senior Member
since 2000-02-14
Posts 948
New Hampshire, USA
1 posted 2000-07-04 05:43 PM


Thanks for sharing, Chibi.  But I like your stuff better...Hardrock  
Isis
Member Ascendant
since 1999-09-06
Posts 6296
Sunny Queensland
2 posted 2000-07-04 08:25 PM


Honey I can see why this poem appeals.  But we don't like to condone suicide here in passions.  So I'm gonna close the thread ok?
Nothing against you, we simply won't condone it or glorify it in any way.
Isis

I'll tell you this...... No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn.....
~Isis~
(Goddess - Sovereign of the Spirit)


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