Sylvia Plath
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it --
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify? --
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like a cat I have nine times to die.
This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.
What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
Them unwrap me hand and foot --
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies,
These are my hands,
My knees,
I may be skin and bone,
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.
The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
Dying
Is an art, like everything else
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.
It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
Its the theatrical
Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:
"A miracle!"
That knocks me out.
There is a charge
For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart --
It really goes.
And there is a charge, a very large charge,
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood.
Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.
....
how do we think of death? what is dying?
from ted dekker's blink:
"Miriam had once told her mother that a saudi woman dies three times during her span on earth. she dies on the day of her menses, when she is forced to don the black veil and slip into obscurity; she dies on the day of her wedding, when she is given as a possession to a stranger; and, most mercifully, she dies when she finally gives up her ghost. the statement had earned her a slap."
