Sylvia Plath is crazy.

And so am I. I think. Of course I’d like to think I’m sui generis but everyone is sui generis so everyone is in reality more like everyone else. WTF.

Lady Lazarus

  

   I have done it again.

   One year in every ten

   I manage it----

  

   A sort of walking miracle, my skin

   Bright as a Nazi lampshade,

   My right foot

  

   A paperweight,

   My face a featureless, fine

   Jew linen.

  

   Peel off the napkin

   O my enemy.

   Do I terrify?----

  

   The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?

   The sour breath

   Will vanish in a day.

  

   Soon, soon the flesh

   The grave cave ate will be

   At home on me

  

   And I a smiling woman.

   I am only thirty.

   And like the cat I have nine times to die.

  

   This is Number Three.

   What a trash

   To annihilate each decade.

  

   What a million filaments.

   The peanut-crunching crowd

   Shoves in to see

  

   Them unwrap me hand and foot

   The big strip tease.

   Gentlemen, ladies

  

   These are my hands

   My knees.

   I may be skin and bone,

  

   Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.

   The first time it happened I was ten.

   It was an accident.

  

   The second time I meant

   To last it out and not come back at all.

   I rocked shut

  

   As a seashell.

   They had to call and call

   And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

  

   Dying

   Is an art, like everything else,

   I do it exceptionally well.

  

   I do it so it feels like hell.

   I do it so it feels real.

   I guess you could say I've a call.

  

   It's easy enough to do it in a cell.

   It's easy enough to do it and stay put.

   It's the theatrical

  

   Comeback in broad day

   To the same place, the same face, the same brute

   Amused shout:

  

   'A miracle!'

   That knocks me out.

   There is a charge

  

   For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge

   For the hearing of my heart----

   It really goes.

  

   And there is a charge, a very large charge

   For a word or a touch

   Or a bit of blood

  

   Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.

   So, so, Herr Doktor.

   So, Herr Enemy.

  

   I am your opus,

   I am your valuable,

   The pure gold baby

  

   That melts to a shriek.

   I turn and burn.

   Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

  

   Ash, ash ---

   You poke and stir.

   Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

  

   A cake of soap,

   A wedding ring,

   A gold filling.

  

   Herr God, Herr Lucifer

   Beware

   Beware.

  

   Out of the ash

   I rise with my red hair

   And I eat men like air.

(1965, Sylvia Plath, Ariel)

*****

There is a charge for the hearing of my heart.