Hot, Hot, Hot

3:41 a.m. and I am wide awake after drinking a mug of Theraflu around 10:00. Congestion is at bay but boy is the fever not. Computer room feels like a sauna. I have to go to work tomorrow (I was out today) and I should go back inside and lay down. Legal arguments written in near delirium should be very interesting. And how are all of you? Christmas good? Wife and kids fine? Today I read about Oaxaca, Mexico. There is a revolution going on there run by school teachers. May the saint's preserve them. I feel like I am staring at this computer screen from a million miles away. Back to bed.

Fever 103°

Pure? What does it mean?
The tongues of hell
Are dull, dull as the triple

Tongues of dull, fat Cerebus
Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable
Of licking clean

The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin.
The tinder cries.
The indelible smell

Of a snuffed candle!
Love, love, the low smokes roll
From me like Isadora's scarves, I'm in a fright

One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel.
Such yellow sullen smokes
Make their own element. They will not rise,

But trundle round the globe
Choking the aged and the meek,
The weak

Hothouse baby in its crib,
The ghastly orchid
Hanging its hanging garden in the air,

Devilish leopard!
Radiation turned it white
And killed it in an hour.

Greasing the bodies of adulterers
Like Hiroshima ash and eating in.
The sin. The sin.

Darling, all night
I have been flickering, off, on, off, on.
The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss.

Three days. Three nights.
Lemon water, chicken
Water, water make me retch.

I am too pure for you or anyone.
Your body
Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern ----

My head a moon
Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin
Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.

Does not my heat astound you. And my light.
All by myself I am a huge camellia
Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush.

I think I am going up,
I think I may rise ----
The beads of hot metal fly, and I, love, I

Am a pure acetylene
Virgin
Attended by roses,

By kisses, by cherubim,
By whatever these pink things mean.
Not you, nor him.

Not him, nor him
(My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats) ----
To Paradise.

Sylvia Plath

Noel, Noel!

Christmas Eve at 5:00 a.m. Drinking coffee, have walked dog and am about to wrap last lot of kid presents locked in the computer room. Jr. is asleep in the other room, kids sleeping and I STILL have to go out and get two more presents for grown-ups. Jr. is making brisquet for dinner and the Willnauers and other friends will be coming over. Feeling very thankful for all the people in my life that I love and love me. Oh how this Christmas beats last year's in my brother's basement. What do I want for Christmas? For everyone around me to stay safe and well. And a maid.

Ho! Ho! Ho! (Who'd Be A Turkey At Christmas)

by Bernie Taupin

Sitting here on Christmas Eve with a brandy in my hand
Oh I've had a few too many and it's getting hard to stand
I keep hearing noises from my fireplace
I must be going crazy or the brandy's won the race

And I keep hearing ho ho ho, guess who's here
Your fat and jolly friend draws near
Ho ho ho, surprise, surprise
The bearded weirdy's just arrived

Ho ho ho, guess who's here
Your fat and jolly friend draws near
Ho ho ho, surprise surprise
The bearded wierdy's just arrived

On my roof there's snorting sounds, and bells inside my head
My vision's blurred with colour, and all he sees is red
There's a pair of large sized wellies coming down my flue
And the smell of burning rubber, oh is filling up the room

Winter Trees


The wet dawn inks are doing their blue dissolve.
On their blotter of fog the trees
Seem a botanical drawing.
Memories growing, ring on ring,
A series of weddings.

Knowing neither abortions nor bitchery,
Truer than women,
They seed so effortlessly!
Tasting the winds, that are footless,
Waist-deep in history.

Full of wings, otherworldliness.
In this, they are Ledas.
O mother of leaves and sweetness
Who are these pietas?
The shadows of ringdoves chanting, but chasing nothing.

Sylvia Plath

Touching Base

I haven't had the heart to add much here lately; too much going on and most of it sucks. But it is coming on Christmas so here's a Christmas poem:

Springfield Magical


In this, the City of my Discontent,
Sometimes there comes a whisper from the grass,
"Romance, Romance — is here. No Hindu town
Is quite so strange. No Citadel of Brass
By Sinbad found, held half such love and hate;
No picture-palace in a picture-book
Such webs of Friendship, Beauty, Greed and Fate!"

In this, the City of my Discontent,
Down from the sky, up from the smoking deep
Wild legends new and old burn round my bed
While trees and grass and men are wrapped in sleep.
Angels come down, with Christmas in their hearts,
Gentle, whimsical, laughing, heaven-sent;
And, for a day, fair Peace have given me
In this, the City of my Discontent!

Vachel Lindsay

Her Kind

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

by Ann Sexton