Please let me preface with a confession – I am not familiar with your work. It is not oversight on my part, rather a deliberate avoidance – you see, I too have faced the brand of madness that drove you to your death, have feared that any intimacy we might share would stir my own apprehensions.
Indeed, I understand all too well the presence of walls, have believed in the power of the sky, the promise of green, found faith in angels – nature my solace – realized too young that the sun’s brilliance, that my brilliance cannot be sustained by the innocence of white – bleeds at the fate of indifferent stars.
I understand how gray seeps in, tears away at the illusions, entraps us – how the past stalks, spirals, threatens to suck us in, and how, having lost my own connection to birds and trees, wonderment sours.
It is the fate of women born into patriarchal times, that the blood of our menses should colour our fists – our fury as potent as a paper bag – how can we not feel terror when we worship a God whose religion disparages our gender?
I have faced the inevitability of black – what once brought solace having lost its definition, unidentifiable – have faced mortality, the cold blank stares of death still haunting – I am the one who passed you by – afraid to linger too long in your words, have woefully overlooked the merit of a sympathetic read.
(This poem was first written in April of 2018. The prompt was to write a response to a poem by Sylvia Plath. It’s an interesting exercise. Image my own. )
Apprehensions by Sylvia Plath
There is this white wall, above which the sky creates itself- Infinite, green, utterly untouchable. Angels swim in it, and the stars, in indifference also. They are my medium. The sun dissolves on this wall, bleeding its lights.
A grey wall now, clawed and bloody. Is there no way out of the mind? Steps at my back spiral into a well. There are no trees or birds in this world, There is only sourness.
This red wall winces continually: A red fist, opening and closing, Two grey, papery bags- This is what i am made of, this, and a terror Of being wheeled off under crosses and rain of pietas.
On a black wall, unidentifiable birds Swivel their heads and cry. There is no talk of immorality among these! Cold blanks approach us: They move in a hurry.
Nose under throw rugs, looking for what’s been swept aside; or rustling about in back closets, turning over the unused and out-of-date; or straddling boards in the attic, straining to ascertain new, if not precarious, angles – the writer’s home of choice is seclusion.
60s were a catalyst for change opulence of psychedelics Twiggy and Mary Quant Beatles and Rolling Stones make love not war – sit-ins and flower power… Who remembers when?
(Tuesdays, I borrow from Twitter @Vjknutson. Image my own. RIP Mary Quant.)
You may believe, Dear Reader, that the words are mine to command that I carefully contrive the message form and structure succumbing to my direction, syntax following suit
It has not been my intention to deceive but, you see, I am mere slave to the whim words hold the power, strangle my thoughts, demand expression – they are haunting things, rooted in urgency, and unwilling to bend
I would love to accept praise, pretend a wisdom that is not mine, but words… …well, they are born of some alien seed growing within, nurtured I know not how, and I am merely the vessel through which their staccato voyage unravels
Stubborn as they are, silly things, really – although I dare not say, for they can be vengeful and vile, and I prefer the fluid passage of expression than the painful, tearing, slashing of words – monstrous as they can be I am rendered servant by their insistence
One Woman's Quest 