In a Plath mood now......

[terabithiabeth.livejournal.com]

The Applicant

First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,

Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand

To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed

To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit----

Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they'll bury you in it.

Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that ?
Naked as paper to start

But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk , talk.

It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it's a poultice.
You have an eye, it's an image.
My boy, it's your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.

~~ Sylvia Plath, Ariel

Romance - arthur rimbaud

[castling.livejournal.com]

I
Nobody's serious when they're seventeen.
On a nice night, the hell with beer and lemonade
And the café and the noisy atmosphere!
You walk beneath the linden trees on the promenade.

The lindens smell so lovely on a night in June!
The air is so sweet that your eyelids close.
The breeze is full of sounds-- they come from the town--
And the scent of beer, and the vine, and the rose...

II
You look up and see a little scrap of sky,
Dark blue and far off in the night,
Struck with a lopsideded star that drifts by
With little shivers, very small and white...

A night in June! Seventeen! Getting drunk is fun.
Sap like champagne knocks your head awry...
Your mind drifts; a kiss rises to your lips
And flutters like a little butterfly...

III
Your heart Crusoes madly through novels, anywhere,
When through the pale pool beneath a street light,
A girl goes by with the most charming air,
In the grim shadows of her father's dark coat.

And since she finds you marvelously naïve,
While her little heels keep tapping along
She turns, with a quick bright look...
And on your lips, despairing, dies your song.

IV
You are in love. Rented out till fall.
You are in love. Poetic fires ignite you.
Your friends laugh; they won't talk to you at all.
Then one night, the goddess deigns to write you!
That night...you go back to the café, to the noisy
atmosphere;
You sit and order beer, or lemonade...
Nobody's serious when they're seventeen,
And there are linden trees on the promenade.

Lines Inscribed Upon a Cup Formed From A Skull

[cluegirl.livejournal.com]

Start not -- nor deem my spirit fled:
In me behold the only skull,
From which, unlike a living head,
Whatever flows is never dull.

I liv'd, I lov'd, I quaff'd like thee:
I died: let earth my bones resign;
Fill up -- thou can's not injure me;
The worm hath fouler lips than thine.

Better to hold the sparkling grape,
Than nurse the earth-worm's slimy brood;
And circle in the goblet's shape
The drink of Gods, than reptiles' food.

Where once my wit, perchance, hath shone,
In aid of others' let me shine;
And when, alas! our brains are gone,
What nobler substitute than wine?

Quaff while thou canst: another race,
When thou and thine, like me, are sped,
May rescue thee from Earth's embrace,
And rhyme and revel with the dead.

Why not? since through life's little day
Our heads such sad effects produce;
Redeem'd from worms and wasting clay,
This chance is theirs to be of use.

Lord Byron

The funniest thing about this one is that he wrote it as an inscription for the actual cup, made from an actual skull which he dug up from the grounds at Newstead Abbey.