To Anne Sexton

Muriel Rukeyser labeled me
the next Anne Sexton–

forced me to embrace
her strait jacket mind,

singing atonal musical scales,
chorus to her poems,
chemical brain in a lithium haze.

Yes to her confessional poems
almost too private to share.

This peek into her mind
so broken, a conundrum
fastened to metaphors

in some language partially translated.
Words defined her mania
and depression like states of undress.

She stripped for her readers,
deepening black lingerie.

Her thoughts reached above clouds
to ride the gulfstream–screaming of
intolerable joy, along-side
a canister of laughing gas,

desperate to prolong this mood
than face the downside.

Pulitzer prize recognition,
Live Or Die, hastened her breakdown,
pieces lost under the couch,
never to be found.

Normally
what’s broken winds up
in some landfill.

Where can a final breakdown go:
E.C.T., Psychoanalysis, Talk therapy?
Suicide such a clever decision
to excise torment—
fragmenting a brilliant mind.

Generational Shift 

She urges you
to eat the Octagon soap,
flushes the toilet
with your head underwater,
punches you in the ear—
breaks your eardrum,
locks you in a dark,
austere room for hours.

Her doctors
label this rage
a character disorder,
some new pattern
of behavior troublesome
to her and her sister—
now adults.

Troublesome
as she uses a thick,
leather strap on young bodies,
raises welts
in so many places,
too sore
to sit in any chair.

Road rage travels
through some families,
a fast ride
until the engine stalls
like a deadly
heart attack, it
strokes the brain.

Children just kids—
grow up,
memories claim
the past, while future
tense screams
new punishments.