I've been working on my chapbook for the Poetry Exchange. Oh, and watching the Olympics as well. And as a sidenote: so many of our talented US Olympians are letting golden opportunities slide by, be it because of mental errors, injury, or just bad luck. And who knew Hedrick and Davis would embarass the US with their highly immature exchanges.
One of the poems I'm placing in my chapbook was inspired by the suicide poem (letter) that Virginia Woolf wrote to her husband. My intent was to mimic her thoughtful, and impressively lucid approach to suicide. If you have seen the exceptional film The Hours, you will know of the this onset of madness I write of; you will also know well the scene in which she escapes the care of her maids, walks to river, fills her pockets with stones, walks into the river, and gets swept away.
The Letting Go
On the Suicide of Virginia Woolf
Madness materializes like night,
strikes land like a flood-tide.
I can’t outrun its reach.
Sunlight forsakes or is taken, captive.
Dense fog leaves shadows so deep I lose
grounding, slide in. I'm lost.
Voices haunt my sagacity, destroy
ability-- reason's raped; peace is war-
torn. I am all undone.
Hold to the end of the unraveling. I can't.
Faster comes illusion, deeper cuts its pain.
I entertain rest, the letting go.
Beyond the harvest-ready fields winds a river,
wild as the wind-tossed sea, strong as its tide.
Walk to its shore keeping secret intentions.
Wade to its depth, appear unsuspecting.
Let it take me.
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