Poems by Anne SextonIn my dream,
drilling into the marrow
of my entire bone,
my real dream,
I'm walking up and down Beacon Hill
Oh, love, why do we argue like this?
I am tired of all your pious talk.
Also, I am tired of all the dead.
Until tonight they were separate specialties,
different stories, the best of their own worst.
Watch out for power,
for its avalanche can bury you,
snow, snow, snow, smothering your mountain.
Watch out for hate,
Anger,
as black as a hook,
overtakes me.
Each day,
each Nazi
took, at 8: 00 A.M., a baby
and sauteed him for breakfast
You said the anger would come back
just as the love did.
I have a black look I do not
like. It is a mask I try on.
Busy, with an idea for a code, I write
signals hurrying from left to right,
or right to left, by obscure routes,
A born salesman,
my father made all his dough
by selling wool to Fieldcrest, Woolrich and Faribo.
A born talker,
'Angels of the love affair, do you know that other,
the dark one, that other me? '
1. ANGEL OF FIRE AND GENITALS
Anna who was mad,
I have a knife in my armpit.
When I stand on tiptoe I tap out messages.
Am I some sort of infection?
Good for visiting hospitals or charitable work. Take some time to attend to your health.
Surely I will be disquieted
It's in the heart of the grape
where that smile lies.
It's in the good-bye-bow in the hair
where that smile lies.
Loving me with my shows off
means loving my long brown legs,
sweet dears, as good as spoons;
and my feet, those two children
His awful skin
stretched out by some tradesman
is like my skin, here between my fingers,
a kind of webbing, a kind of frog.
Consider
a girl who keeps slipping off,
arms limp as old carrots,
into the hypnotist's trance,
into a spirit world
You are the roast beef I have purchased
and I stuff you with my very own onion.
You are a boat I have rented by the hour
Oh sharp diamond, my mother!
I could not count the cost
of all your faces, your moods-
that present that I lost.
(from a song)
Perhaps I was born kneeling,
born coughing on the long winter,
born expecting the kiss of mercy,
You always read about it:
the plumber with the twelve children
who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.
From toilets to riches.
Put on a clean shirt
before you die, some Russian said.
Nothing with drool, please,
no egg spots, no blood,
no sweat, no sperm.
Roach, foulest of creatures,
who attacks with yellow teeth
and an army of cousins big as shoes,
I was tired of being a woman,
tired of the spoons and the post,
tired of my mouth and my breasts,
It is in the small things we see it.
The child's first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
My doctor, the comedian
I called you every time
and made you laugh yourself
when I wrote this silly rhyme...
We sail out of season into on oyster-gray wind,
over a terrible hardness.
Where Dickens crossed with mal de mer
What's missing is the eyeballs
in each of us, but it doesn't matter
because you've got the bucks, the bucks, the bucks.
A young man is afraid of his demon and puts his hand
over the demon's mouth sometimes...- D. H. Lawrence
Who is he?
A railroad track toward hell?
Breaking like a stick of furniture?
The hope that suddenly overflows the cesspool?
have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
Wait Mister. Which way is home?
They turned the light out
and the dark is moving in the corner.
No matter what life you lead
the virgin is a lovely number:
cheeks as fragile as cigarette paper,
A woman who writes feels too much,
those trances and portents!
As if cycles and children and islands
My mouth blooms like a cut.
I've been wronged all year, tedious
nights, nothing but rough elbows in them
Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
