In lieu of a steam room, a hot shower.
Tea instead of coffee.
Congested chest cold in place of pranayama breathing.
My thumb instead of an onion.
Cut
-Sylvia Plath
For Susan O'Neill Roe
What a thrill --
My thumb instead of an onion,
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of a hinge
Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.
Little pilgrim,
the Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls
Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz.
A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.
Whose side are they on?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill
I have taken a pill to kill
The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man --
The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence
How you jump --
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.
Uh, ewwww...
ReplyDeleteA healthy outside starts from the inside.
Robert Urich
I have the body of an eighteen year old. I keep it in the fridge.
Spike Milligan
People who don't know how to keep themselves healthy ought to have the decency to get themselves buried, and not waste time about it.
Henrik Ibsen
'Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.
Henry David Thoreau
The fingers must be educated, the thumb is born knowing.
Marc Chagall
I put up my thumb and it blotted out the planet Earth.
Neil Armstrong