I should honor Ann Sexton
after all, all we woman should
after all, I only heard about her
while leafing through
a psychiatry journal in my student health
counselor's office waiting room.
Same counselor, MSW Master of Social Work, not able to write
prescriptions for Prozac
who
advised me to enter
my first poetry competition
so I did
dropping five poems
into the tray in the English Department
under the big portrait poster
of Shakespeare
subsequently won
The William Carlos Williams Award
of the Academy of American Poets
Judge Dannie Abse
and my first $75, from poetry
subsequently
thousands of $$$ worth of poetry trips
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Kalamazoo College
Cornell
Univs of Toronto, Alberta
Helsinki, Berlin, Chiangmai, Bali
Boulder, CO.
two churches one bar
no two?
Lafayette Square near the White House
only very lightly hitched
to that dread dead anchor Burma.
It was Ann who wrote, of Cinderella
Oh, that story?
I said I would divorce my husband, and I did.
Of course, now you get to the point
where you don't really care
if anyone from your former life
is dead or alive
we all die anyway.
Only the children with their lives ahead of them really
matter
only for them would I do an Intervention.
But before that
we can go on stage
or on air
and read
our own poetry dead or alive suicide
with our own rock band
immaculately turned out
in very preppy or bohemian clothes
it does not matter which.
It's called correlation and causality, and the two things
are mighty different.
They didn't commit suicide because they were poets
they did so because life was unbearable and they were
depressed
the mental health of that day was not good, still shock treatments
and no things
like serotonin re-uptake inhibitors
not discovered or invented yet
could be the Burmese monk, healing
madness with fragrant
ripe guavas
and sour plum soup in the summer
could be anything
but it was pain and trauma that caused them to write poetry
in a kind of self-medication and a self-therapy
like thousands of people now looking for themselves
on line. One Like,
one Like
if only you will grant me one Like.
Make us new Faces
oh, that story.
Kyi May Kaung
2-21-2-16
Photo tea cabinet
KMKaung
Photo shadows of fake roses
FB
