Vraith wrote:For some reason I'm re-reading "tommyknockers"...don't know why, I don't really like it.
Luci, I've been meaning to ask forever...I'm 90% sure I recognize that avatar picture, but can't place it...it's almost identical to one of ee cummings, but not a him, of course. [virginia w. and anne sexton keep popping into my head, too].
good job! it's anne. my favorite muse. reading anne taught me how to allow myself to say what i wanted to say, to talk about the things i wanted to talk about, and to find beauty (and poetry) in even the most painful moments of my life.
Diplomystus
I come, everyday, to this garden
where the stones sing ancient biographies
and clinging vines grapple
with desirous flower trees.
I always find, in the pond,
one pale fish, turning endlessly
in the murky water of words.
I always hear the wind of your vowels
poured over straight bourbon
and blown through too many Salems.
The sound of your swimming
back and forth calms me.
You have come before me
and hacked a path through the tangle
and purchased the map by which I am to travel.
I cannot shut windows against the sirens,
cannot recusitate and hold you,
cannot ask you to be more alive
than the recorded message you have left me,
so I count the syllables
and meter the lines of my own demons
and dip my fingers in the water
to touch you.
for Anne Sexton, circa 1993
Notes to Sexton, 2005
I'm older than you now, Anne.
odd to think that I might have something to tell you.
The ciggarettes in the plant were a good gesture;
as a mostly life-long smoker,
I can appreciate the finality of it.
Just so you know,
we all talk to our dead,
KL, Dead Rick, Bob Kaufman, Bob Kaufman, Bob Kaufman.
But my dark girls have all shucked their habits, Anne,
They're all busy trying to change something,
the speed of light, the Ph of the native soil,
the nature of the work, the heart of a child,
their lives.
That's why i like 'em.
That's why i'm hear to tell
whoever will listen, and you, Anne,
that there's more after 45.
There is more.
In fact, it seems to get better, and listen,
just between you and me,
I'm really glad you didn't take
any body with you,
wild woman.
Oh yeah, and thanks for the map.
how's bgb doing? should i wear black? 
The Reader version is just over 1000 pages; I'm on p. 209.