28 April 2011

Hoffman Week, Day 4: Plath, Sexton, and Co.

OK, I cheated. I've had such a horrible case of writer's block, but I didn't want to disappoint, so I have chosen to post this poem from the actual class I took. Unfortunately, this was also the last class she taught me as she passed away before the end of the semester. I wrote this poem in response to the movie, Girl, Interrupted. It's not the worst thing I ever wrote.

I remember what it was like to be sane.
The grass was green, the sky was blue
and life made sense, even to a school girl.
Then one day, it went dark.
They told me I had to figure my life out by the end of homeroom.
I needed to have a plan for my future, one that involved college
Studying
And not boys.
I realized then I didn’t know what I wanted.
I couldn’t.
I still don’t know how they expected me not to go crazy,
constantly being compared to the better, prettier, smarter girls
as if I wasted my existence on
cigarettes, dead trees and alcohol.
I wanted to write.
Apparently, that was crazy.

Inside those padded, brick walls I fell.
Fell into a state of confusion
bliss
remission
reflection on the world and all who claim to be in it.
Inside is a different world
free from judgment
shame
privacy
and free from any decision you might have to make on the rest of your life.
Free. It was far from free to be in here, but as luck would have it,
My parents had more money than love for me.

Where did it go, the “world” I once knew?
I’ve emerged from the prison,
walked the plank,
chewed and clawed through my chains
and for What?
I returned to a place where nothing has changed.
For once, I am whole, just as everyone seems to be
falling apart.
I hope some day they will realize
that sanity lies only in the willingness
to be crazy.

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