Saturday, March 27, 2010

sylvia's poetry


"i may never be happy, but tonight i am content."

"i love people. everybody. i love them, i think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me. my love's not impersonal yet not wholly subjective either. i would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person. but i am not omniscient. i have to live my life, and it is the only one i'll ever have. and you cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time..."

"this is i, i thought, the american virgin, dressed to seduce."

"i have too much conscience injected in me to break customs without disastrous effects"

"before i give my body, i must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams. and you weren't having any of those.-"

"if only i can find him...the man who will be intelligent, yet physically magnetic and personable. if i can offer that combination, why shouldn't i expect it in a man?-"

"something in me wants more. i can't rest."

"can you understand? someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little?...i love life. but it is hard."

"Gold leaves shiver
In this crack of time;
Yelllow flickers
In the shrill clear sun;
Light pirouettes
In ballet dress,
White blue above
Leaps the sheer sky.

Gold leaves dangle
In the wind.
Gold threads snap.

In giddy whirls
And sweeps of fancy
Sunlit leaves plane down.
Lisping along the street
In dry and deathless dance
The leaves on slipshod feet
Advance.
Breathless,
Restless,
Gold leaves twirl,
Spiral,
Circle,
Curl.

Brief gold glitters
In the gutters;
Flares and flashes,
Husky rushes.
Brisk wind hushes
hushes
hushes

And in that moment,
Silent, cold,
Across the lawn,
Dull pools of gold."

"God, i scream for time to let go, to write, to think."

"such is the resiliency of man that he can become fascinated by ugliness which surrounds him everywhere and wish to transform it by his art into something clinging and haunting in it's lovely desolation."

"but you will never take a walk. you will never be alone. and you hate him because he has deprived you of that: --walks and aloneness. and you hate him because he is a boy."

"we become blunt and callous and blissfully passive as each day adds another drop to the stagnant well of our years."

"aloneness and selfness are too important to betray for company."

"being born a woman is my awful tragedy."

"inescapable femininity"

"i want to talk to everybody i can as deeply as i can. i want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night..."

"you live everyday in the dark cramped prison you have made for yourself."

"i envy the man his physical freedom to lead a double life - his career and his sexual, family life."