Or something like that.
At eight months she decided to speak.
“Bye-bye”’ said her words, urging to please.
They say a babbled prophecy haunts with grief.
Jinxed her destiny. Too smart to be a herd-follower.
With birds, she flew. The mind, unique.
Over high hills, looking for awe. Expertise.
Peering down every now and then. Just briefly.
Is there joy riding the vulture of a perfect daughter?
At age two she understood how to feel.
Curious and creative, she urged to perceive.
Grasping the lame reality with idyllic fantasies.
Thirsty for knowledge. Drowning in parental sorrow.
Her bird-of-prey soul wanted to be free.
Longing for belonging, she behaved as a bee.
Writing glories. Verses. Hoping they were wings.
Eagle-spirited. A parrot-feeling was her own paradox.
Aged five she met the seagull within.
Fell in love with the sea. Perceiving her reef.
Anxious for the ocean. Oh! And how did she swim!
Imagining a future continued. Present intense. Past? Rotten.
At eight, she tasted the sour mourn.
Denial tides dissolved his bones in sweetness.
Bitter black shoes of Cinderella aching in fear. Sour.
No burial was needed. She kept the bag with daddy’s body.
Her Führer had died. In fact, so did she.
Furious numb within. Words came in a spree.
Ignorance bliss has gone with the child just deceased.
Songs and furry fantasies to conceal gruesome horror.
Out of the blue: a mermaid. Poetry.
Wave. Wars engraved. Craving Herr's grave.
Frau Lazarus is alive again. Piece by piece. Kein Frieden.
People, pleased. The pain cuts deep, relieved. Why only tomorrow?
Deathful thoughts. Strange injuries.
Exiled. Grammar and beauty as friends.
She resented domesticity. Fake knights. No armor.
Inviting winds whispered: “step out to fly like a sparrow”.
But she stepped in. No soda for this bakery.
Sharp knives. Smiling wives. Abused and beaten.
Isn’t it lovely? Where does such a foolish idea begin?
Scars concealed by scarves. Crushed hopes in knots too narrow.
At 21 she sought out truth-seek.
How to face the sink without sinking in?
Arbeit macht frei. On pills she reached for relief.
Wish unfulfilled. Mentally ill. Nine-lives cat. More bottles.
She felt anchored. For being a she.
A deserving human being. Struggling
for air in the shameful sea of sharks and wits.
Egos that smash daring fish. This is hard to swallow.
Later compared to true grit,
of a wild Stallion battling uneased.
This world lacks a true gift. How raw can one be?
Without the mad label? Run before dawn. At full throttle.
Her paper craved meaning. Honesty.
Demonized by flirting with dread demise.
That Jew. You knew him? “Keine liebe zu Auschwitz”.
Bullied posthumously. For the red flags: we are deadly hollow.
She strived to be in the hive.
But never left the bell jar. All past.
Passing. Soon forgotten. Another bee-queen.
Crushed by hate speech. By shocks. Stigma. Slaughter.
Her abusive husband destroyed her last diary.
Can fire conceal humiliations and blood splatter?
Another girl was labeled as a freak. For daring to speak.
She truly described the (non) existence. Exceptional author.
Another victim of human toxicity.
We pay the costly price; the eagle is set free.
Every day a piece of our liver and free will are eaten.
We did not steal fire. We are reminders they are no Olympian Gods.
And for that, we are guilty, indeed.
Living at the edge of legal rights and insanity.
We outlive our own brutality and lack of self-sympathy.
Entrapped in stereotypes. Upside-down. Kept at the bottom.
We learn early we are no good
unless well-behaved enslaved sanctities.
Fake fragile mademoiselle in need. Or a freak.
Harlequins and Sad clowns. Willkommen im Zirkus.
How to act normal when perceiving
that we are stuck in this unfair mockery?
Killing for money or honey? We are wasps, not bees.
If we are that empty, what other than drink hemlock poison?
With fear, doubts spread with the wind.
How to react when facing treacherous men,
that judge people by gender, paycheck, or skin color?
One cannot be blamed for inhaling gas or breathing water.
How long shall we fake?
Pretending to be loving and caring?
How disturbing to realize we are so shallow.
How can her pain be a joke? Why do we pretend to be —
better than this? Better than those we hang on the gallows?
We are probably the next ones to be outcasts as part of a coven.
Leaving life behind. Burning out. Sick and tired of scornful sexists.
Isn’t it obvious? We are the joke. Acting as free beings —
Blind in belief. Disturbed by our own shadows.
Empty hatred within. Thirsty for power.
We will also be laughed at as gags.
When we can also no longer
Stand being gagged.
Downplayed.
Despised.
By our
sex.
Ich
or
I?
?
If we are bound for life to the kitchen, don't we all die gaslighted?
But with poetry, society is imitated by the limiting oven.
“What is my life for and what am I going to do with it?
I don’t know and I’m afraid. I can never read all the books I want;
I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want.
I can never train myself in all the skills I want.
And why do I want?
I want to live and feel all the shades, tones, and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.
Yet I am not a cretin: lame, blind and stupid.
I am not a veteran, passing my legless, armless days in a wheelchair.
I am not that mongoloidish old man shuffling out of the gates of the mental hospital.
I have much to live for, yet unaccountably I am sick and sad.
Perhaps you could trace my feeling back to my distaste at having to choose between alternatives.
Perhaps that’s why I want to be everyone — so no one can blame me for being I.
So I won’t have to take the responsibility for my own character development and philosophy.
People are happy — — — if that means being content with your lot: feeling comfortable as the complacent round peg struggling in a round hole, with no awkward or painful edges — no space to wonder or question in.
I am not content, because my lot is limiting, as are all others.
People specialize; people become devoted to an idea; people “find themselves.”
But the very content that comes from finding yourself is overshadowed by the knowledge that by doing so you are admitting you are not only a grotesque, but a special kind of grotesque.”
Sylvia Plath
