To Sylvia…

My first attempt on Erasure Poem. Feel free to comment and point out any mistakes.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

And arbitrary blackness gallops in:

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I fancied you’d return

I grow old and I forget your name.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

Stasis in

The substanceless blue

Of distances

Something else

Hauls me through air–

And now I

Melts in

The cauldron of morning.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

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The Erasure Poem, in response to dVerse Pub Prompt, was created from two poems Mad Girl’s Love Song and Ariel. Both are written by Sylvia Plath. This is a tribute to her on her birthday which is today–27th October. 

The last line I had taken a little liberty.

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I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

 

Mad Girl’s Love Song (1951)

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Stasis in darkness.

Then the substanceless blue   

Pour of tor and distances.

God’s lioness,   

How one we grow,

Pivot of heels and knees!—The furrow

Splits and passes, sister to   

The brown arc

Of the neck I cannot catch,

Nigger-eye   

Berries cast dark   

Hooks—

Black sweet blood mouthfuls,   

Shadows.

Something else

Hauls me through air—

Thighs, hair;

Flakes from my heels.

White

Godiva, I unpeel—

Dead hands, dead stringencies.

And now I

Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.   

The child’s cry

Melts in the wall.   

And I

Am the arrow,

The dew that flies

Suicidal, at one with the drive   

Into the red

Eye, the cauldron of morning.

Ariel (1962)

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Surreal