__________________
Bitch Goddess
Stella Vine
Cockroach
Mytholmroyd Muse
The Ratty Sisters
Faber & Faber
Ouija
Ted Hughes’ Wife
Oven I
Oven II
___________________
Bitch Goddess
“The pattern is a
simple progression
from victim through
accuser to an ultimate
agent of vengeance—
the bitch goddess.”
—Edward Butscher
Sylvia Plath: Method
and Madness
________________
Duchess of Nothing—
Queen of Slugs and Snails
Princess of Mollusk Slime
Married to a Yorkshire Jerk
I couldn’t get rid of him—
All Mumblepaws and
Mytholmroyd Hogwallow’s
Me his Hairtusk’s Bride
Cambridge Dunce-capped—
His sister just as stupid
The Faber Queens loved him
Poet laureate he became
Stella Vine
This old dark house is—
Haunted by Stella Vine
She made it herself
One ghost at a time
It has many attics—
With lots of Dorian Grey
Kitschy sublime portraits
Such eelish delvings
________________
She litters sick puppies—
Personages both famous
And gone moldy dead
Her paintings breathe
I hear Buzzings—
Little bumblebees
Gathering in their mother’s
Comfy cuddly Hive
Cockroach
Once I was Ordinary—
Nobody much loved me
I was too big & awkward
Such a Denny Dimwit
Like Kafka though—
I woke p on morning
I had become Another
An exquisite Thing
_________________
A Cockroach Boy—
Shut-up in a closet
An Insectoid Kid
Endlessly glittering
I’m sleep drunk now—
My antennae & all my legs
I come out at night and
Lick the kitchen floor
Mytholmroyd Muse
The Mytholmroyd Muse mutters—
The Moors have eaten me up
Everything’s been used up and
I’m rotten down to the core
Mummies all around me—
The Yorkshire Living Dead are
Zombie zinnias in flowerpots
My brain is a dead geranium
_________________
The hydrangea bushes—
Are blooming upside down
Moldering pink and blues
Nail me to the rafters below
We inmates don’t hibernate—
We have that Uncanny Eye
Our veins pale as pork-fat
Our perked mule ears listen
_________________
O beauty of misusage—
Dyke pumpkins smile at me
I’m the Bitch Queen of Nothing
The Str8ts can have it all
Wastebaskets full of rubbers—
Blackberry pubes with spikes
For weeks afterward my lips
Bruised and bloody they hurt
The Ratty Sisters
Two ratty Sisters—
Lives with me in this house
One does the other in
A shameless duet of Sin
Behind the wainscoting—
They do tricks all the time
Young men from town who
Are never seen again
_________________
I calculate dozens—
What a shabby enterprise
Rat-shrewd their squinty eyes
They love root-pale virgins
Farmboys bronzed on earth—
I hear them behind the walls
Lulled into illicit dreamtime
With the help of poppies
_________________
See how silky semen—
Oozes thru the cracks
And under the doors
From a forbidden room
They don’t last long—
The two ratty sisters
Such sullen vampire brides
Honeymoons go by quickly
_________________
They like the young stuff—
Down to the very last drop
Why let the old graveyard
Get it before they do?
Faber & Faber
I’m a murderer with nine inches—
A ponderous poet laureate
A Yorkshire killer on a dark night
I’m a rabbit catcher & I stalk
I’m a sex fiend who can’t get enough
Sylvia’s royalties made me rich
I’ve been a fox, a pike & a crow
Miss Eliot and Auden they know
The chic Farber & Farber down-low
Ouija
I’m a bitchy goddess—
The goddess of shades & shadows
Rising from penultimate darkness
Pirouetting with my Planchette
I’m a window into the future—
Where those unborn still await
Those already undone flutter
Like moths around a flame
_________________
Imagine how many losers—
Would like the chance again
To take out their blood lust
On the dumb suckers above
The planchette skates around—
The board like an ice skater
Slicing like Nijinski under the moon
Skating above on this ice
_________________
That’s how close they are—
The dead in their tarnished mode
Meandering below the thin ice
Chronicling our every deed
They wait in the icy depths below—
Knowing with a cool aloof hauteur
That the thin ice is but a navel
Thru which they’ll regain the mire
_________________
I’m a rotten Bitch Goddess—
Who considers all those above
To be merely salty aphrodisiacs
For their bawdy naughty blowjobs
I see them down thru the thin ice—
Floundering full of amorous nostalgia
Ready to plough all the virgins above
As well as the boyish couriers too
Ted Hughes’ Wife
I used to stay awake all night—
Cold as an eel without eyelids
Out on the dark moors
In our little Yorkshire shack
My ugly husband was brainless—
Everything was heads or tails with him
His ugly sister lived with us
Her jealous eyes decomposing me
_________________
Her spidery jaws were bony—
Always bared back her ugly lips
Her big gut wheezed & wiggled
Old farts jousting deep inside
My fat porky husband—
And his lovely ugly sister
Some things in this old world
Are simply the most detestable
_________________
He loved me like a wolf—
His hook nose hanging down
Obscenely bald as Porky Pig
An armadillo asshole in bed
Out of sheer boredom—
I counted angels on the heads
Of pins, he smelled like all the
Bloodied, quartered rabbits
_________________
My husbands best friend—
A young cute neighbor boy
I pretended it was Sodom and
Gomorrah come back again
But even worse was his sister—
Who wore a wig to town on weekends
She was in love with a cute barmaid
Who had eight-fingers on each hand
_________________
I can’t get it out of my poor mind—
Such a lesbian courtship she had
Dirty as the kitchen sink and
Bog-smelly when she made love
My sister in law was just awful—
When she blew her dyke kisses
They came out snails & slime
She stunk so bad I almost puked
Oven
I don’t want a smelly sarcophagus—
I want a nice new shiny Oven
With dials and a pretty little clock
As round as the moon above
I wasn’t to be able to pick—
My nose in private & live inside
My pretty white-enameled stove
And stare out at all the creeps
_________________
All the pale in-law freaks—
They mean nothing to me anymore
Since I’m sick of him & his sister
Who live with me in my shack
I try to be sweet and sugary—
But my face just clouds over
The mirrors have all broken
Nothingness is all one can see
_________________
I don’t believe in love anymore—
It escapes like smelly farts into
The stinky air, leaking quietly
Or with a forceful giant Fart
But here I am in my Oven—
The soles of my feet don’t get cold
I have my copper cooking pots
What else could a queen want?
Oven II
I’m a white-enameled & exact—
I have no other preoccupations
Whatever I produce, people
Will eat it & then dinner’s gone
I’m not misled by love anymore—
Although people sometimes
Dislike what I have cooked up
But that’s their fault, my dears
_________________
I’m not cruel, only truthful—
My clock, my dials, my oven
Most of the time I meditate
Here inside it in the kitchen
Who’s this inside me?—
She’s pretty, she’s pink,
She’s poetess and she
Seems to get along fine
_________________
She’s no longer got—
Any tears or obligations
She’s no longer important in
The great scheme of things
Her face replaces darkness—
She’s dreaming in the gas
How she’s truly Bitch Goddess
They’re all gossiping about her
No comments:
Post a Comment