The Madonna Speaks

I’ve been talking to my

mother lately. She is no

longer alive, no longer

vibrant since I was so young,

but she speaks to me

in Colossus words,

through Ariel metaphors,

through Sylvia Plath,

Goddess of the Seppuku.

I believe she speaks,

she walks like Byron’s

night beauty through Plath,

my revealed secret—

as imprudent as your savior

floating in the sky.

And each night I cleanse

each

word,

letter, with holy bubbles,

and her words dance

amongst distorted bars

of music—

sanctimonious

descriptors,

and I can see her fading

amongst the blue jewelry

box pills alongside her

own mother—

generations of sacrificial

pain, euphemistic passing.

Plath saves me from

the hierarchy of

my destruction.

Ted Hughes, the jewel my

mother lost was also

birthday blue,

but she had no devil-angel

archetype balanced on

her placid, pallid shoulder.

She has become my

archetype perched

on my own shoulder—

fashioned from ivory

by the gods.

Like a pyramid

tiered upon

Good Evil

God Devil

Crazy Sane,

she is the dignitary of

the Great Sacrifice—

the golden ram.

Her whispers, dissipating

words, letters, leaking

from the page into my

existence, my comparable

time, suppress the mind.

She tells me of the blue ether.

And I listen.