The Bell Jar

THE BELL JAR — A MOVIE


“It was a queer, 
sultry summer,
the summer they 
electrocuted the 
Rosenbergs.”
—Sylvia Plath,
The Bell Jar


The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick—
The Rosenbergs strapped into a crude, shitty
Rather unstylish electric chair…


No class at all, just a mirrored-window there—
With ogling voyeurs staring at you, waiting
Expectantly for you to get yourself fuckin fried 


Zapped until your blood boils, feeling it bad—
Your brains turned to mush beneath the metal
Skullcap strapped down over your shaved head
_____________________


Tres unfashionable if you ask me, my dears—
But then, getting hung with your tongue
Sticking out or getting gassed isn’t much better


Guillotine slicing seems faster & more humane—
But then just ask Marie Antoinette back during
The French Revolution about what she thought


Her aristocratic rather shocked head plopping—
Down thru the hole in the platform, slice & diced
Nice & quick, ka-plopping down into a basket
_______________________


Tell us, Marie Antoinette, are you still saying—
“Let them eat cake?” down there in the bloody
Basket looking bug-eyed at the whole scene?


Your lovely French body up there on the stage—
Flopping around like a chicken with its head cut-off
Amidst the roaring mob of vengeful revolutionaries?


Court Green in Devon is bad enough—
The old cemetery with its crumbling tombstones
Old elms and yew trees gaunt in the moonlight
_________________________


At midnight in the moonlight a year later—
There’s a fake, country-wet freshness in the air
Somehow seeping into the tail end of a bad dream


The past has evaporated over all those long gone—
Days and nights since Ted and Assia have strangely 
Disappeared, leaving me a distraught, lonely window


The sun wavers in the small town empty streets—
The crummy Mytholmroyd relatives have come, gone
Although Olwyn has refused to come visit me
__________________________


We hate each other & perhaps she senses it—
With that Heathcliff-esque intuition she shares with
Ted of the moody moors about what really happened


How could there be a funeral in the cemetery—
When, after all, both Ted & Assia have supposedly
Flown the coop, run away & left me husbandless?


I’m not really a widow although I knew I am—
Now I’m’ just simply a strange, lonely, weird kind
Of American divorcee struggling on my own
__________________________


Bell Jar and Colossus are both published now—
Miss Faber has taken me under its wing publishing
Some of my other books like my Ariel as well


Somebody has to collect Ted’s royalties—
So they send the check to me and that helps out
Plus a job at the BBC & teaching at Cambridge


Gradually, I’ve wormed my way into British Lit—
Even though I keep everything pretty much hidden
In plain sight playing innocent about any foul play
__________________________


I simply despise dirty, cheap, crummy London—
The cars seem smaller and blacker and more dingier 
Than ever, sizzling through black wet streets


The clothes on the people seemed even grubbier—
And I remember when I was going to Cambridge
And then W.B. Yeats’ flat on Fitzroy so very drab


That winter there was a horrible cold snowstorm—
I decided to stay at Court Green in New Tawton 
Giving up any possible séances with Miss Yeats
____________________________


I stay in bed most of the time on weekends—
In a basement room in a scruffy hotel in Victoria
Reading A.E. Ellis’ The Rack, racking my brains


I’ve reached the nadir of my so-called Life now—
Totally preoccupied by my memories of Hughes
In bed with Assia Weevil & feeling very depressed


Am I drawing solely from memory now—
Dreaming of my husband, as well as undoubtedly 
Assia pregnant by now with Ted’s new offspring?
_____________________________


The more I read The Rack, the more I like it—
To see them both on the Rack, stretched out and
Screaming bloody murder down in some dungeon


I lie here listening to the hiss of dark cars—
Going by on black wet streets, the drabness of 
English clothes, being stuck in awful England


Emotionally, I feel I’ve reached a new low—
But then what else is new, I’ve been depressed
Most of my life at least since I was nine years old
_________________________


After Daddy died, joy left my life for some reason—
I ended up stuck with cloying, possessive Aurelia
Who dominated, guilted and drove me crazy


I’ve started paraphrasing all of my journal entries—
“The basement room in a scruffy hotel near Victoria" 
Into "a cold, cheerless dead-end cemetery.”


I’ve slowly realized that I’m undergoing something—
A strange weird “Doubletake” of film noir horror
Like in some tacky cheap Hammer Film movie
______________________


Philip Larkin is right about me when he says—
“I see her as a kind of Hammer Films poet” 
In his letter to Judy Egerton on June 10, 1960


This is before I shot Hughes making love—
To Assia Weevil in the Court Green cemetery
And buried them down deep in the moist earth


I’ve repressed it all, not wanting to think anymore—
After hearing them talk on the phone one night
Discussing how they were going to murder me
_______________________


Ted would knock me out with a big glass ashtray—
And then Assia and him would stuff me headfirst
Into the oven and turn on the gas all the way


They’d hide out back in London for awhile—
In one of Ted’s former girlfriend’s dump, then wait 
For the inevitable Black Telephone call at night


After all, I’ve tried it twice already back home—
Gone thru electroshock treatment and years of
Hospitalization and psychiatric intensive treatments
_____________________________


After all, Anne Sexton & I would joke about it—
Sipping cocktails after Looney Tune Lowell would 
Give his crazy poetry confessional lectures back then


After all, I’d left a wonderful teaching job at Smith—
Against Aurelia and Prouty’s advice, only to marry
And get totally enamored with a mean British thug


He’s a Thug, just the type I’ve always wanted—
A Big Bad Daddy type so moody, so malcontent,
So tall, dark and handsome with a nice big dick
______________________


I fall in love with him the minute I meet him—
At a party in Cambridge for a crummy little literary
Magazine his gang have put together with their band


Saint Botolph's Review has a poem or two—
By this campus Lady’s Man who has a reputation
For being a hot Yorkshire hustler with the women


At a dance to celebrate one of the rag’s racy issues—
Hughes and I dance with each other and I fall for
Him head over heels but he just smirks at me
_________________________


I’m just another one of those Fulbright chicks—
A Doris Day type from New England from a fancy
Ivy League college called Smith, a little know-it-all


Like any Wolf he knows that I really want it—
And he plays hard to get, ripping off one of my
Earrings outta my earlobe & making it bleed


He’s a goodlooking mean Mytholmroyd S/M type—
Used to getting his way and then dumping them
After he’s gets what he wants outta them
______________________


A sordid Rabbit-Hunter type from the Moors—
Used to hunting and fishing and fucking whatever
He wants to because he’s the Heathcliff type


Wuthering Heights is the Story of his Life—
He goes thru women like harvesting wheat and
He’s got the drop-dead looks of a Jack Palance


My bloody earlobe gets erect & turns me on—
I’ve had too much to drink and I’ve never ever
Had a real man in bed before back there at Smith
____________________________


But here’s Big Daddy both cruel & cunning—
Who knows what I want and I’m willing to
Beg, crawl, steal and bleed for it


I stand on her toes as if to kiss him—
While the party and band get louder & louder
But then I bite him on the cheek real hard


Hughes the Rabbit Hunter jumps back—
He’s bleeding like a pig and then I reach down
And grab his big Mytholmroyd piece of meat
__________________________


Hughes does a Doubletake and just stands there—
I’ve got my tight little fist around it, undoing his
Zipper and squeezing it like a big fat Snake


Hughes gets me in an empty bedroom upstairs and—
That’s when he does another Doubletake finding
Out that my innocent lips are tight like a Vise


“Don’t bite me,” he tells me, as I go down on him—
All those Smith College pent-up Mademoiselle hot
Passions & rabid hungry New Yorker yearnings
_______________________


This new Heathcliff of mine is quite the hunk—
Talk about a Trans-Atlantic blowjob with a chick
He’d thought was just cool as iceberg or cucumber


I succulently deep-throat Ted’s think tense Tool—
His uncut touchy Titanic sliding fast down my nice
Little pert polite pretty pouty greedy Throat


Another Doubletake comes up for Ted Hughes—
When I get all twelve inches of his manly moody
Moors meat up my pussy for sloppy seconds
_______________________


I’m simply unforgivably, insatiably Slutty—
Nothing but a little Stella Dallas whore right outta
Some new trashy Olive Higgins Prouty porno novel 


A pent-up Hollywood starlette waiting to happen—
Hot off a slippery, Vaseline-greased King Vidor
Director’s couch starring Barbara Stanwyck


Or was it Barbara Standyck doing the dirty—
Me making up for lost time for an all too hot,
Long too-long repressed cocky Oedipal Complex
__________________________


Definitely a true Mating of the Gods—
As Miss Peter Ustinov exclaims demurely during
A nude gladiatorial fight in a Spartacus skin-flick


Such Divine Conjoinings of Cock and Cunt—
Such Mt. Olympus Conjugations of Male and Female
Such Marriages of Shocking Poetic Genius!!!


Surely such Rendezvous Encounters can’t last—
Like Oil and Water they surely can’t mix for long
Surely English Literature will never be the same!!!
________________________


So that the very next issue of the little rag—
Saint Botolph's Review gets devoted completely
To our “Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath” seminal tryst


Our Succulent shocking Quickie London Marriage—
Followed by being invited to T.S. Eliot’s Faber
Cocktail party celebrating our new book


The Times and London Book Review—
As well as The New York Times and New Yorker
Give Ted and me simply wonderful rave reviews
______________________


We’re the new lovely couple on the BBC—
Celebrities of CBS, NBC and ABC in America
Giving exquisite readings at the Guggenheim


The Queen & British Royalty simply adore us—
She bestows both the Order of Merit and even
Declares us the first Joint Poet Laureate Couple


We become Stars of Stage, Screen, and TV—
Hollywood woos us, lavishes us with Oscars,
All because of our stunning Bell Jar Movie
_____________________


And what is this stunning Motion Picture?—
This exquisite Hollywood Romantic Jewel
That turns Norma Desmond green with Envy?


It’s just a minor little screen gem—
Based on my cheap pulp fiction paperback novel
A fictional little piece of kitschy schlock


It’s hardly a True Confession Classic—
Hardly an American Masturbation Masterpiece
It’s owes a lot to Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton
_______________________


It points poignantly to Tennessee Williams—
His play/movie Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and
Especially Burl Ives as Big Daddy


It draws inspiration from Hollywood—
Jane Mansfield and Marilyn Monroe
Especially their Big Cadillac Tits


It alludes to the Great American Dream—
As well, of course, to the Great American Novel
And New York’s great Skyscraper Skyline  
______________________


But it isn’t all just Americana schlock—
Even though my Sylvia Plath puss gives it
Perhaps just the Right Touch down there


Way down there between Ted’s legs—
Down there inside his moody insolent
Anglo-Saxon Lounge-Lizard Loins


It’s Ted’s Big Bad Daddy Dick—
His sullen Wuthering Heights Wiener
His Sultry Withering No-Good Smirk


I always seem to fall for it—
Getting stuffed inside this bleak Bell Jar
And then Ted turns up the Electricity

Killing Ted

“Plath asks a simple but

profound question that is

the key to understanding

her mission as a writer:

“How to express anger

creatively?”—David Trinidad

Hidden in Plain Sight: On

Sylvia Plath's Missing Journals

How should I do it?—

Shoot him in bed after

One last fuck?

Run him over with—

The car over by the

Ocean this weekend?

Push him off the—

Cliff where he tried

To strangle me to death?

Do him in back in—

Mytholmryod out there

Some night in the moors?

What about Assia?—

How to off her too?

Get rid of them both?

Sylvia Plath

POET LAUREATESS

“I see her as a kind
of Hammer Films poet”
—Philip Larkin
Letter to Judy Egerton
10 June 1960

__________________

It wasn’t pretty—

It was tres messy

And rather bloody….

But it had—

To be done and

That’s what I did…

I killed Big Daddy—

Fucking there in the

Old cold graveyard

___________________

I waited behind—

A tilting old gravestone

As he fucked away

I even invited—

Assia to come and

Visit that weekend

The Yorkshire prick—

Couldn’t wait to sink

His Pike inside her

_____________________

That’s when I—

Heard my tall

Handsome husband

Moan & groan—

The way he did

When he lost it

That’s when—

I snuck up &

Shot them dead

____________________

I used his own—

Rabbit-hunting

Stinking killer rifle…

I buried them—

Both down deep in

Court Green Cemetery

And reported—

Them gone and

Poor me all alone

_______________

An abused abandoned—

Wife of an adulterous

Gigolo husband

Everybody nodded—

Knowingly, he’d always

Been a Lady’s Man

Ever since his—

Randy Cambridge days

People shook their heads

_______________

I played the sad—

Distraught abandoned

Widow game rather…

Cool & nicely—

I thought & stayed

There at Court Green

I played it well—

The grieving widow poet’s

Sad bitter Violin

___________________

Faber felt sorry—

Miss Eliot took me

Under her wing

After all, my dears—

His marriage wasn’t

The happiest thing either

And so I published—

While the Fox, Hawk

Whore rotted slowly

_____________________

Down there beneath—

The Yew tree in my own

Backyard cemetery

I skipped London—

Yeats’ flat and all

That cold winter angst

Mommy Dearest—

Wanted me to come back

To America, of course

____________________

Why teach there—

At Smith though with

Prouty & the dykes?

I was British now—

With a stiff upper lip

And poetry to write

Big Daddy Lit—

It grew & grew

I became famous

_________________

Women’s Lib—

Was just beginning

The BBC loved me

I sneered at men—

Especially Mytholmroyd

Male putrid Pricks

My oeuvre grew—

I became famous

And infamous too

_________________

When Larkin turned—

The poet laureateship

Down, it was mine

Rather than—

Carol Ann Duffy

Or my tacky husband

From then on—

Butchy Britannia did

The Big Turnaround

___________________

I relished it—

The very first Lady

Poet Laureate

Lesbos reborn—

Founder of British

Sapphic Modernism

My pen sang—

While Ted & Assia

Rotted down below

___________________

So much for—

Big Daddy finally

Gone at last

And me, my dears?—

I didn’t even bother

To say Achoo!!!              

Instead I became—

Who I’d always been

Ariel the Goddess at last!!!

Call Me Miss Perverse

At a Wilde Boys reading

Fashion & Style: New York Times

November 2, 2011

 

Call Me Miss Perverse

“how gay culture continues
to perform a sly and profound
critique of what passes for normal”
—David M. Halperin, “Normal as Folk,”
The New York Times 6/21/2012


Call me Miss Perverse—but it’s the gossip queens and the bitch queens with their cat-fights over Miss Dimitrov & the Wilde Boyz that totally fascinates me.

It’s one thing to read Miss Halperin the Queer Theory queen with her astute Gay Pride remarks in today's New York Times about gay style—and another totally nitty-gritty thing like seeing gay bitch style in action like with the “Beauty” commentary thread about Miss Dimitrov in the Lambda Book Review.

Have I been slumming with National Enquirer too long—have I been browsing The Stranger & Miss Savage too much? Am I just a bored dilettante enamored with jealous poetry queens at each other’s throats?

Who wouldn’t want to get a write-up & promo in the Style and Fashion Section of the New York Times?

Who wouldn’t want some stylish gossip here & there about doing a gay moderné salon full of a coterie of cute young gay Wilde boyz doing their Lady Windermere Thing?

Who wouldn’t want to be tres chic & intellectual attending a reading with the latest new avant garde Poet—and do a little tricking on the side?

Honey, sex sells—just ask Miss Rimbaud & poor slobbering suffering sugar daddy Miss Verlaine.

Just ask poor Miss Oscar Wilde—getting the water-board treatment for being outta the closet a tinse too early there in Miss Britannia.

For heaven’s sake—now in this enlightened twenty-first century just take a jaundiced ogling eyeball look at how far we’ve come.

A dyke Poet Laureate in America and Jolly Old England—and god knows how many raving queer poets outta the closet since Miss Ginsberg fell in love with butchy Neil Cassidy & started her “Howl” rant that never did stop, my dears.

Of course, we’re much more sophisticated now with this Gay Pride Month of June 2012 swishing right along. We’ve got lots more Queer Theory White Trash intellectuals to help us gird our loins.

We’ve done got rid of DADT—now we can join the Roman Legion for its latest Asiatic Adventures & die proud & gay for the advancement of the New Twot Order. We can shower with cute Marines!!!

What else? The List goes on & on. We can be just like the Str8t Crowd—kids, divorces, alimony, child support, benefits, boondoggles, baby-buggies. Gee Whiz—aint Acculturation neat?

Well, just look at me. I fit right into the bitch queen cat fight mob out there in the back alley of American Poetry. I’m just an ole Tom Cat for Love I guess…

Portrait in the Attic

The Portrait in the Attic

“Louis Latourette met Wilde coming

out of the bar Calisaya… Wilde said,

“I want to show you Dorian Gray’s

photograph,” and he took out a

photograph of a young Englishman

he had met in Rome. “That’s the way

I imagine Dorian. I didn’t find or see

him until after I described him in the

book. You see, my idea is right, that

art inspires and directs nature. This

young man would never have existed

if I hadn’t described Dorian.”

—Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde

It started with just a single portrait up there—up there in my rather closeted, locked Attic. First, the portrait of my better half—then slowly, gradually, decadently, rotting away, decaying up there, framed within the disgusting portraiture of what I’d become, who I really was, who I didn’t ever want to gaze upon again…

And yet, of course, eventually Vanity is overcome with its guilty pleasures and worries about having gone too far, doing what I was best at doing at, regretting it afterwards—yet unable to stop denigrating myself in ways that made me want to hide it up there in the Attic.

Hiding what I was becoming—knowing all too well that up there in the Attic the real rotting me was stinking & mildewing away, hidden behind a red velvet curtain where not even the rats could see me … my disgusting physical decadent denouement.

Despite all that, though, out of a sick curiosity almost as sick as my sickening nightly addictions down by the sailor docks & opium dens, finding myself creeping up the stairs once again afterwards, guided by a dim candelabra with its flickering, snickering evil glow…

Sneaking up the creaking staircase—me & my slovenly hangover & bloodshot eyes, sliding upstairs, undoing the huge padlock, opening up the groaning attic doorway, pushing it open just enough to let the stuffy air ooze out—the putrid smell of my own hidden personal mausoleum of shame and niggardly regrets, hesitating, then finally entering the upstairs attic Tomb of my own Death…

But, of course, being the bored snotty daddy that I was—I grew bored with such a hide & seek game after a few years, since it was so tiring to see the same old rotting Face again & again, knowing only too well what to expect, what to know was up there, not wanting to know but not being able to help myself…

Sliding back the dusty, mildewed, spider-webbed, rotting filthy curtain and finally looking at myself once again as I really was—what I had become after nights down in the sullen barrooms and shameless sailor opium dens, disgusted with myself after those long Lost Weekends, full of what I detested the most in myself … my shameless addiction to sultry, sullen, young sailors and rough trade who used & abused me until I was nothing but a damp filthy rag…

But it grew tiring, so very tiring, my dears—the same old thing year after year. The Portrait of Dorian Gray had grown simply much too grotesque, so boringly awful and quite the Miss Quite as far as decadence was concerned. No, I needed a change. Something new to entertain my sick satisfaction with my own rotting decaying Demise. Another portrait perhaps? Something new to record my ongoing decadent downfall—while there was still some time left for fun and games.

Thus, I slowly began adding another portrait—and yet another portrait to my collection up there in the creepy Attic. I couldn’t help myself—I became totally deranged and consumed with filling the Attic with more & more, more & more even more decadent Portraits of myself. The Collection grew & grew—after awhile it became truly a magnificent Gallery of Horror up there.

I called it Dorian’s Closet Gallery—with each portrait portraying a different infernal Face Lift of the best & worst of me. The best of me which all too soon began its all too familiar Worst of me—recording my all too familiar dirty decline and slide down the Slippery Slope of Despicably Disgusting Exquisite Debauchery.

I would commission the most clever decadent young Artists to do my portrait over & over again—then with each finished masterpiece I would hold a lovely private Exhibition for all my dear lovely parasitic friends to behold my once again newly beautiful Incarnation of Infernal Divinity. How envious all the queens were—not knowing, not suspecting the true secret of my seemingly eternal youth, fair complexion, puffy Botox lips & secret evil Smile…

Only to strangle to death the young talented Artist up there in the Attic afterwards—with a golden cord that pulled open & closed the lovely red velvet curtain revealing & concealing this latest lovely work of Dorian-esque portraiture. Such exquisitely divine yet secretly sacrificial Artwork … murderously imbuing each new Portrait with a life of its own.

Yes, my dears, Dorian’s Closet Gallery. It grew & grew up there in my creepy mansion Attic. There was no shame up there—where the young ghosts came & went talking of Michelangelo…

There was only me—and my various Disguises and Innuendos gloriously blooming like strange homicidal bouquets of Red Delirious Deadly Roses, wilting Green Carnations of Cumly Solitude, rotting Pale Orchids of Young Artistic Genius.

All of it fading like me—but then, of course, I had plenty of company!!! A whole Gallery to enliven my Aschenbach moments of Venetian doom and despondency. A whole Gallery of Pale Putrescent Portraits—plus some lovely coffins with delicate artistic corpses pushed off off to the side.

Yes, my lovely Gallery of Dorian Portraits up in there the Attic—would you like to see some of my lovely Etchings, my dear?

Speak, Pnin

“Like lucid Pnin, whoever searches

for the key and the solution is

engaged in a hard struggle against

a world ruled by an evil designer.

There is light in the word lucid.

And “evil designer”—that’s the key

term of a Gnostic worldview.”

—Michael Maar, Speak, Nabokov

It was winter at Rozhdestveno…

I forgot why I left the party at the mansion, passing alone thru the front door between the two twin pillars, the lines of which formed a perfect ex libris from a Nabokovian novel…

And wandered out along the Oredezh River into the dark stillness, peopled only by firs, dark and gaunt, walking under the sullen red glow of the sky, scudding with low-hanging clouds on the verge of arson, along a path surely Vlad had walked as a boy.

I could feel the Russian chill of 1917, the crunch of snow beneath my feet, Uncle Ruka giving me the estate, the Revolution taking it away from me, later in a dream telling me he would come back to me as a clown, Stanley Kubrik, restoring everything I lost and asserting his love for me once again.

Here I am now, a guest at the Montreaux Palace Hotel, sitting on a bench out front of my Switzerland home, thumbing thru my card catalog, my index card universe for Ada.

And like Pnin, swooping away from Seattle to Wordsmith College, New Wye, Appalachia, USA—finding myself in Pale Fire, this strange novel within a novel. Chairman of the Slavics Dept—a colleague of both Professor Shade and Kinbote.

A Zembla queen. Like them. Lucky me.

Coffee and Cigarettes

Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)

 “Champagne”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FYLkBcJBys

“Are you all right, Taylor?

“Uh. Not really.”

“What’s up?”

“I dunno. I feel so divorced from the world. I’ve lost touch with the world. Do you know that song by Mahler? “I’ve Lost Track of the World?”

“No.”

“It’s one of the most beautiful, saddest songs ever written.”

“I can almost hear it now.”

“Can you hear it?”

“I think so.”

___________________

This last scene of “Coffee and Cigarettes” with Bill Rice and Taylor Mead by Jeim Jamusch. A haunting scene centered around an ethereal piece of Mahler drifting thru the air.

The Mahler piece extended here is “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” by Magdalena Kozená with orchestra directed by Claudio Abbado.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11mfvRIKgUA

A related rendition with the lyrics from the song-poem by Friedrich Ruckert sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone) is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTqbTP5qy7k&feature=related