Ode to the female poet

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/plath/exhibit/honeymoon.jpg

Staring at a Photo of Sylvia Plath on Her Paris Honeymoon, 1956

I am looking down on you, my love,
and quite sad among the quiet.
I see God in your eyes,
God is the light around you,

the halo that is your shoulders,
rib-cage, soft pockmark of your belly
in a lush tweed wave crowning
the midnight beach.

It has grown cold outside, too cold,
for the fingers weep and freeze
in place. I would wish to sit
and smoke, efface my eyes in such
a vapor, so I might never see again.

But there is a chill that bites,
gnaws at the bone the way
your own eyes do in their
glory cloak of sepia-bled feathers.
They flash and burn at me,

flames-of-eye hands probing me quick,
robbing me of the splendor of my quiet.
My peace has grown sad,
now it is empty.

I can feel the fall, soft ball resting
at my elbow, furry as the cat.
It warms over me slowly, a gradual
thickening kiss. It tastes nostalgic
and bitter, it makes me cringe.

The patches are falling off me,
serenade of dead lead flakes.
I would laugh at my ordeal, if laughing
would not stir the unbreakable waters,

infinitely fragile, infinitesimal,
a string of fingers held up by your
stars, delicate as ice crystals come
to shatter my breast.

I would have touched you in silence.
But then we must kiss in silence,
lie still like walls in this abeyance,
grow even more still, fluttering
wide-eyed at marble flower feet.

We only wish to converse with gods,
they're no less substantial entities
than fire and ice, our hybrid elements.
Passing on the street, I would have
watched you, pacing flaring willow-tree,

your restraint no less incandescent,
catching sparks on fringed lashes.
Then the currents of our soul's mesmeric
trances would have fallen into step,
whispering, breath to breath, a decayed
alleyway of distance. The vast avenue
of shopping lists and hollow filmy tears,
straining its hands like a leaf-strewn
cradle, the abysmal chiasmic embrace.

In these, the Disintegration of Memory,
dehumanization of humans, photography
of light and gestures, we are one.

If you would only let me in, I would claw
at the ground to rest beside you, for
your dust to warm mine, oven to earth oven,
a memory kiss of clay fire, hands closing
over vine of petal worms, secret nudgings.

I have never loved a woman, but then you
knew you were never one to begin with.
You are not me, though you might have been,
but I was never you. There can exist summer
or spring, autumn or fall, but there is only
one winter. I love in you all that is listless,
all that creeps to be but dies upon the echo
of force. I love your lips and hands,

your grace, glazed-water happiness. You, most
magical of Illusion Girls, I walk drunk
on the hallucination that was you, dead
and passed, still cloying about these mechanical
hothouse walls. Still and grieving,
a shivering elixir rotting me into two pieces
of stagnancy, a most topsy-turvy stasis.


link to Plath's "Lady Lazarus":

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178961

http://deepundergroundpoetry.com/images/uploads/poemimages/201252.jpg

My biggest poetic influence is Kristy Bowen, a master of surrealist and urban-gothic poetry. If anyone has read a lot of my work the influence is obvious. Here are two links to her poems:

http://www.kettlebluereview.com/#!kristy-bowen/c1857

http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/house-strays

I would like to offer a poem attempted in the style of her own.

high school days

I’ll tell you how it really was. All pipe organs
and rotting door knobs. We planted all the tulips
then dismembered them while chimney sweep girls
clamored on the roof. Dead roses robbed us of
speech. Even your cologne haunted the ashes.
That beautiful pink lace where my wrists burn
from the leaden cuffs. I'll give classification
to the hunger inside me while yearning drips
from the red faucet of my mouth. I was only in it
for the money when the car tires became top hats.
The claw foot tub kissed with grime and lipstick,
the house writhing with dust. My ache fell from
a sky of umbrellas while white finches danced
beneath my hemline. I knew death was gilded and
seductive when I licked the track marks on your
arms. The way they tasted so gray, so gray. Like
bell towers, or your shirt buttons twisting
beneath my teeth. You reach hard for my breasts
but I tuck them back in, back in, the way I tuck
back words in my mouth. How the cemetery swells
upon the hill. We’ll go climbing the railing
and scuffing our shoes on headstones. Your logic
simple. No kiss on my mouth, no cum in my hand,
no crime.

That beautiful pink lace where my wrists burn
from the leaden cuffs. I'll give classification
to the hunger inside me while yearning drips
from the red faucet of my mouth. I was only in it
for the money when the car tires became top hats.

... These were ultimately the lines that won me over.

All of the writes were stellar thus it took me forever to judge this, and I just plain had fun reading this thread over and over.  

Thank you all beyond words.

Wow, LSP. I was truly, truly not expecting this and am overwhelmed. Thank you so much. Congratulations to Rina and professoryackle for their outstanding work, and to everyone else for their excellent ink as well. It was a fun competition, and I appreciate your faith in me.

Awesome job everyone and congrats to all!

Thanks LSP for hosting a great comp and for the nod.
Congratulations to Toni and Professoryackle, cheers to everyone who took part in this comp :)