Best Sylvia Poems
I emerged / born with a silver pen in hand
…and a tempest raging within.
Words writhe, a serpent's coil
…tightening their grip
A soul adrift in a sea of
…self-made iniquity.
I buried my daddy
…in the black shoe
…by the Yew tree
Yes, I, the beekeeper’s daughter
…bearing the weight of hexagonal cells
A hive of memories
…buzzing with secrets.
The bell jar shattered
….a fractured hive.
Its glass walls no longer a prison
…but a shattered cocoon
……a metamorphous!
Pain and disdain drip like honey
…a bittersweet nectar of survival.
He, a poet
…crowned in the harsh light of fame
Bound in chains of duty and shame
His words
…a romance of lure and alarm.
Echoing the sirens' song
…enticing and harmful.
Yet, his tongue
…a viper’s forked lie.
Whispers truths and half-truths
…conjuring illusions to die.
Wandering the maze of being
A little fugue of
…fractured fairytales.
Each note a fleeting glimpse of clarity
Lost in the discordant
…cacophony of life's emptiness.
Like my "Little Fugue" a dance of shadows
A journey through the corridors of the mind
Seeking answers in the interplay of light and dark
Striving for harmony amidst the chaos
Parchment of blood and ink I leave
A riddle of life and death's plea
Maniacal madness with visions slight
A macabre dance upon the night.
Ariel, brings lightning and fire!
With heavy heart
…I sealed my children's room.
Softly kissed them farewell
……Extinguishing the final flame within.
Enveloped in oblivion's velvet veil
………Yielding to the oven’s cold caress.
…………No, more morning songs...
Inscribed a cryptic goodbye
Breathed in the silent slayer.
For, I Lady Lazarus
…Dying is an art
……Faded into the ether…
Her blacks crackle and drag, a fire of new birth
Flames licking at the borders of life
Consumed by oblivion's greedy blaze
Lost in the vast cosmic ray.
The embers die
…a fleeting spark gone
No masterpiece
…….just dust reclaimed
A silent echo in the void unstained.
A mystery lost
………never quite explained.
Yet, God's Lioness
...Fierce and Untamed
Roaring her defiance
…Covered in darkness…
----
Underneath the star-strewn skies
A fleeting passing note.
Lost in the vast expanse
Living on the edge
For, I am but a speck of dust.
In ode to all who succumb
through wayward passages
lined of scribble notes
dripping ink’s savagery,
staining cursive patterns
in Sylvia-like depressions
Jarred bells ring
down lost tunnels
around each dark corner…clang
from steeples we chase
and beds we lie
draped in sadness
and shapes of
poetic happenstance
Tear drop vinaigrette
spiced of leftover lifetimes
drizzled on leafy desperation
bids a tired farewell
before time collects
the deserved rewards
There's a cold dark place
Sylvia Plath has been inside
A kind of sacrificial lamb
An experiment of sorts
Misogyny for the masses
A Hitler for wives
Dust that, rub this,
Lunch is cold, you shall pay!
Only one way out
Put the lunch in the gas oven
Warm it up real nice and slow
Then turn it up
"Is that better, Heil Hughes"
Misogyny
Footnote
There is speculation whether Ted Hughes drove his former wife Sylvia Plath to suicide
SYLVIA WAS AN ‘A’ STUDENT
and Alpha woman
The Abyss was bared, and malevolently yawning,
The deep black pit of endless loss to rile
You, and you didn’t know the world was turning;
And you saw the winter trees in mourning
You weren’t short-changed on their willing lack of guile
In the Apollonian myth - your soul was burning.
Telling time too true, that spring was coming,
But you let the yellow sorrow of your bile
Flood the Arcadian dark your soul was scorning-
So, you died, without ever learning
That your Attic grace would give time its shining dial,
You did not know it then, but the world was turning,
The aureole of dawn crept in, to us a warning
We only have our children for a while
The Austrian angst in which your soul was burning,
The sense of happiness missing you by a mile –
In our Aphasian gloom, your words are burning
Up rivers, mountains, roads, with a killing style –
You didn’t know it then, but the world was yearning.
FROM IN MEMORY OF HER 2004, 2008
Sylvia I was christened
And for sixteen years it suited fine.
It was then I started working
Where another had this name of mine.
"To avoid confusion"some bright spark said
"Why not call the original(fifty year old)Sylvia by her name
And the new one junior instead"
Well I was most indignant,teenage ego crushed.
I wasn't going to have this at all.
So I reached a compromise shortened it toJune
And only responded to this call.
From then on to everyone even future spouse
I introduced myself by this name.
Sylvia in personal life slipped away.
But for officialdom it remained the same....
I penned this to avoid a build up of confusion
And to protect this poet's sanity.
Please super Soup friends call me June.
When you write Sylvia my mind asks 'who is she'?
Sylvia Plath left
Her poetry immortal
Why—we never know
What she might have been was hidden
Beneath self-destruction and depression
Despair so black it silenced light, war-ridden
Life without purpose, true love forbidden
Leaving darkest doubt lost in the impression
What she might have been was hidden
Her emotions, joy and hope, bedridden
A hole in her soul reflects every transgression
Despair so black it silenced light, war-ridden
Wonders in tears, promise of love, backslidden
Suicide whispering like a taunting obsession
What she might have been was hidden
Love cried out to her but she simply didn’t
Hear its voice – its feeling a wonderous confession
Despair so black it silenced the light, war-ridden
The music of prayers erasing suspicions, unbidden
Warring inside her, awful confusion and aggression
What she might have been was hidden
Despair so black it silenced the light, war-ridden
Psychotic pain rips her flesh from bone
Leaving her ragged skeletal shadow brutally
Assaulted by maniacal horror imperceptible to the mentally normal
Temptation conquers her and she welcomes serene death with poisonous applause, gas her invisible
Hangman’s noose-forever silencing her
Why, in a gas oven, dear Sylvia,
did you stick your pretty, middle-class head?
Was the life of upper suburbia
too much for you that you'd rather be dead?
If, like you, we gassed ourselves to death at thirty,
we'd never forgive ourselves for leaving
behind our children. We'd feel unworthy,
and selfish for causing them much grieving.
But, at eight, you witnessed your father's demise;
and bore for life an emotional scar
(which you never were able to exorcise),
a grief which you relived in “The Bell Jar.”
You should not be condemned, dear Sylvia,
for we knew not your melancholia—.
She knew how to write
felt every change in the wind
died on the sabbath
Sylvia stays sedentary still seeking superiority
Sometimes summarizing situations so subtilely*,
Suddenly somnambulistic, she slips silently
Sensing some sarcastic silliness, soon senility.
*alternate, archaic spelling for “subtly.”
SECOND PLACE WINNER
Written June 28, 2022
For "Begin With a Letter" poetry contest
sponsored by Angela Tune
You are a lost, lonely little girl
Have another dose of medicine to ease the pain
Your Daddy has gone off to war; you will never again see his face
Love and Acceptance - the bitter pill that you cannot swallow.
Oh, how I wish I could comfort and protect you from the woman in the mirror
It’s as if I made YOU up in MY head
The men in white torture you with a few more volts to ease the madness
Monday’s seem to drag on, but for you Monday was cut short
The sun provided no rays of light, no hope for a brighter tomorrow.
You are now set free from the war that rages inside of you, that has plagued
your being
Set free from the Holocaust which robbed you of yourself
Tortured painter of words, how you festoon your words with color
As dark as the words appear on the page, your words are red
Daffodils sprout out of the Earth where you lay your head
Tomorrows do not exist for you, nor do todays or yesterdays
I hear the laughter of angels, perhaps you are there among them
No more tears, no more sorrows, or pain, you are free
Dancing on a cloud with God, or perhaps playing your golden harp
It really does not matter because you now rest in peace - away from your troubles
You shut your eyes and the world, dropped dead, but I shut mine and I see a
world of possibilities.
How different we are and yet so much the same
You were a lost, lonely little girl who is now home with her Daddy
I am a man, whose father is alive and well, and yet we seem so distant
Do you see the glass over there? Is it half-full or is it half-empty?
It’s no matter for you are dead and gone
I am alive; I will always be alive in one way.
I sing the happy gospel melody of a choir, while you sing the blues
Sylvia Plath,
walked on dangerous path,
she and herself always in a rift,
and she gave death her precious gift.
Sylvia Plath was one poet I was particularly obsessed with as a young girl because I found out that I wrote some of my early poems(the ones I wrote whenever I was depressed) just like hers. I still admired her talent greatly but really scared to make her my mentor, now that I have conquered my depression long time ago. (Hmmmm personal confession)
SYLVIA PLATH IS A DANGEROUS WOMAN
here she is: the true resurrection,
the big reveal of the woman,
the poet who charges
for a word, a touch,
a speck of blood.
after all, she has come back
three times to his
one.
unlike the christ man
she charges yet again
for the seeing of her scars,
the hearing of her
heart. she says it really goes
and who are we to doubt
the poet who rises up
in broad daylight like a miracle.
every decade she does it again,
the big strip tease, claiming
always to be the same identical woman.
i listen to her shriek and weep,
as she wiggles into death
as though it truly is an art.
she truly is a dangerous woman,
unwrapped hand and foot,
flesh and bone, she turns and burns
and eats men like air.
(Poem based on Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath)
Copyrighted
Jim Brewer
April 11, 2011
Sullen Sylvia sadly
Departed deeply devestated by
Her husband's heartless
Departure for a deadly damsel