Super Donair kind of Experiment (I sold all the soup)

So today in Kerry's class we looked at some cool closed cpoetry–sorry, poetry. Anyways, I really liked a lot of the forms so I wanted to quickly post what I wrote in the 8 minutes we were left to experiment with...going to work in like ten so I'm going to have to write fast, edit and add to the blog later. See, I'm that excited about trying some of these out!
Also, kind of upset because I waited on a table of eight today and managed to sell 7 of them the soup special...leaving no beef soup for me! I may have a super donair when I get back to work, and though it is not the soup for soul, it is pretty damn good. :)

Remember, this is rough!!

I have trouble sleeping,
voices crawl along pillows
leaving stains on the satin.
His red wine kisses–toxic,
arms strong and bent like bars 
and caging me to his heart.
He leaves the window wide–
to let in my nightmares.
I close my drunken eyes,
remaining wide awake.

Remaining wide awake,
I close my drunken eyes
to let in my nightmares.
He leaves the window wide;
and caging me to his heart,
arms strong and bent like bars.
His red wine kisses, toxic,
leaving stains on the satin.
Voices crawl along pillows,
I have trouble sleeping.

I will be BACK...after I work.

Beef Soup and Fresh Breadsticks

So lately I've been working like a crazy poor person (aka student) at a great restaurant in Vernon, where I not only get amazing (Actually ah-mazing) soup for lunch on split shifts, but I also get to work with some great people and SURPRISE! I love my job...
That being said, I haven't had a lot of time to go through poetry, or view other peoples blogs/write comments. I'm hoping this reading break will let me catch up, because from the posts I have seen my classmates have been posting some pretty neat things. (Not as neat as soup though, of course).

So for this post, I thought I'd talk about Anne Sexton and her poems that made me believe I may develop some interest in the genre. Anne Sexton wrote mostly 'confessional' poetry that reflected on her struggles with mental illness and her relationships. She tried to commit suicide many times, until she finally succeeded at the age of 45 by locking herself in her garage and running her car. Her story is a sad one, and her internal struggles with depression are reflected in her works. This is what initially drew me to her poetry.

I've always have had an interest in metal health, especially depression. Actually, one of my dreams, besides becoming an author, is to go back to school later on and earn a degree in Psychology. My interest began as a child due to members of my close and extended family struggling with mental disorders such as Seasonal Affective Disorder, depression, and schizophrenia. As I grew up, I had to witness my friends struggle through high school, many of them talking to councillors and being diagnosed as having SAD or depression. Of course, the answer for the doctors and councillors was to prescribe 15/16 year olds meds to 'make them feel better'. I do believe in medicine, but I'm a big advocate of not treating mental illness as diseases that can be solely biologically 'cured'. After all, I've never heard of anyone truly being 'cured' of their depression.

Now I'm rambling. Anyways, so the point is, I'm highly interested in writings not only about mental illness, but from writers who've struggled with mental illness as well. Sadly, Anne Sexton was one of those amazing artists that lost the battle. Yet, I believe her work to be some of the greatest examples I've read of examinations of the struggle with depression and how it infects more than the mind, but the body and the world around oneself as well.

Below I'll post two of my favourite poems by Anne:

Love Letter Written in a Burning Building

I am in a crate, the crate that was ours,
full of white shirts and salad greens,
the icebox knocking at our delectable knocks,
and I wore movies in my eyes,
and you wore eggs in your tunnel,
and we played sheets, sheets, sheets
all day, even in the bathtub like lunatics.
But today I set the bed afire
and smoke is filling the room,
it is getting hot enough for the walls to melt,
and the icebox, a gluey white tooth.

I have on a mask in order to write my last words,
and they are just for you, and I will place them
in the icebox saved for vodka and tomatoes,
and perhaps they will last.
The dog will not.  Her spots will fall off.
The old letters will melt into a black bee.
The night gowns are already shredding
into paper, the yellow, the red, the purple.
The bed -- well, the sheets have turned to gold --
hard, hard gold, and the mattress
is being kissed into a stone.

As for me, my dearest Foxxy,
my poems to you may or may not reach the icebox
and its hopeful eternity,
for isn't yours enough?
The one where you name
my name right out in P.R.?
If my toes weren't yielding to pitch
I'd tell the whole story --
not just the sheet story
but the belly-button story,
the pried-eyelid story,
the whiskey-sour-of-the-nipple story --
and shovel back our love where it belonged.

Despite my asbestos gloves,
the cough is filling me with black and a red powder seeps through my
veins,
our little crate goes down so publicly
and without meaning it, you see, meaning a solo act,
a cremation of the love,
but instead we seem to be going down right in the middle of a Russian
street,
the flames making the sound of
the horse being beaten and beaten,
the whip is adoring its human triumph
while the flies wait, blow by blow,
straight from United Fruit, Inc.

Wanting to Die

Since you ask, most days I cannot remember. 

I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.   

Then the almost unnameable lust returns. 

Even then I have nothing against life. 

I know well the grass blades you mention,   

the furniture you have placed under the sun. 

But suicides have a special language. 

Like carpenters they want to know which tools.

They never ask why build.

Twice I have so simply declared myself,   

have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,   

have taken on his craft, his magic. 

In this way, heavy and thoughtful,   

warmer than oil or water, 

I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole. 

I did not think of my body at needle point. 

Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.   

Suicides have already betrayed the body. 

Still-born, they don’t always die, 

but dazzled, they can’t forget a drug so sweet   

that even children would look on and smile. 

To thrust all that life under your tongue!— 

that, all by itself, becomes a passion.   

Death’s a sad bone; bruised, you’d say, 

and yet she waits for me, year after year,   

to so delicately undo an old wound,   

to empty my breath from its bad prison. 

Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,   

raging at the fruit a pumped-up moon,   

leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss, 

leaving the page of the book carelessly open, 

something unsaid, the phone off the hook 

and the love whatever it was, an infection.