Oh What A Poet I Will Flay

I Want To Be Able To Sleep In An Open Field, To Travel West, To Walk Freely At Night.

And I A Smiling Woman. I Am Only Thirty. And Like The Cat I Have Nine Times To Die.

You Have Lost All Delight In Life. Ahead Is A Large Array Of Blind Alleys. You Are Half-deliberately, Half-desperately Cutting Off Your Grip On Creative Life. You Are Becoming A Neuter Machine. You Cannot Love, Even If You Knew How To Begin To Love. Every Thought Is A Devil, A Hell-if You Could Do A Lot Of Things Over Again, Ah, How Differently You Would Do Them! You Want To Go Home, Back To The Womb. You Watch The World Bang Door After Door In Your Face, Numbly, Bitterly. You Have Forgotten The Secret You Knew, Once, Ah, Once, Of Being Joyous, Of Laughing, Of Opening Doors.

I Collected Men With Interesting Names. I Already Knew A Socrates. He Was Tall And Ugly And Intellectual And The Son Of Some Big Greek Movie Producer In Hollywood, But Also A Catholic, Which Ruined It For Both Of Us.

Tonight I Am Ugly. I Have Lost All Faith In My Ability To Attract Males, And In The Female Animal That Is A Rather Pathetic Malady . . . I Don't Care About Anyone, And The Feeling Is Quite Obviously Mutual. What Is It That Makes One Attract Others?