Reading Sylvia Plath

Poems by Mike Garofalo

Bookstore Dilemma

Barnes and Noble
bookstore browsed—
        the smell of new books
    and coffee brewed,
tasty poetry books to peruse.

Poetry books
        on fifteen shelves:
which one? which one?
My wallet wants to force a choice:
    just one! just one!

Louise Gluck or Sylvia Plath
    which one? which one?
Hungry to meet and hear them speak;
        [ignoring my wallet}
I Bought Both!
Books are alive and talk repeatedly.

 

Entering the Cloud

She went outside, all alone,
opening her birthday present,
alive, she thought, by accident

Deep diving into veils of glass
rain on her last supper's plate
splitting her cold dead soul apart

Feeling the kitchen stove cooking
hearing transparencies unraveling
tasting the rusted bronze shield.

She saw clouds of cotton,
invading armies of carbon monoxide;
somehow she did not mind.

Five moths later
they found her dead,
her head in her oven,

Her eyes wide.
Syliva Plath, a suicide,
gave up her life, gladly,
before the age of 35.

Now she hardly knows herself
in her tiger striped sarcophagus
holding closely her copper pot.
She rests quietly in the dark.

Syliva Plath (1932-1963)
A Birthday Present, 1962,
Last Words, 1961

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Memorial Day Sadness

 

Burning Oneself to Death

That was the best moment of the monk's life.
Firm on a pile of firewood
With nothing more to say, hear, see,
Smoke wrapped him, his folded hands blazed.

There was nothing more to do, the end
Of everything.  He remembered, as a cool breeze
Streamed through him, that one is always 
In the same place, and that there is no time.

Suddenly, a whirling mushroom cloud rose
Before his singed eyes, and he was a mass
Of flame. Globes, one after another, rolled out,
The delighted sparrows flew round like fire balls.

-  Sinkichi Takahashi (1901-1987)

Crying On Memorial Day   The Horrors of War

Protesting the Vietnam War
Where Over 1,000,000 people were Killed

Flaming Memories

Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk,
quickly poured the gasoline
over his head till it soaked to his feet.

He sat down calmly on a Saigon street,
straightened his robe, his purpose keen:
to Protest Injustice and the Horrors he'd Seen.

Lighting the match - he Exploded in Flames.

One image from 'Nam was burned in my brain.

- June 11, 1963


I dreamt I died.
Followed by


Cuttings - Short Poems

Poetry by Mike Garofalo