Flying with Icarus
(Remembering Ann Sexton)
Published in The Poet's Domain, 2000 Edition
Published in The Poet's Domain, 2002 Edition
Published in Skipping Stones, 2007 Edition
Copyright © 1996, 2005 by
Jason Lester Atkins
985 Fleet Drive, #347
Virginia Beach, VA 23454
All Rights Reserved.
Join me singing
For our winged friends
Who have flown like
Icarus up the double
Helix lines until some
Errant gene tripped their
gentle madness,
Causing them to put
naming aside,
Causing prayers to end
In the teaming tyranny
of their minds.
Sing with me
A song of praise
For our beautiful "Annie",
Jingling her golden bracelets
And checking her lipstick,
While calmly floating on
An unmoored rocking raft
In a placid sea
of "Prozac".
She composes crafted lines
Of a beauty in "Bedlam"
Waiting for her cue,
Waiting for the casting
call of darkness.
Taking enough toxic pills
To step upon the stage,
She does not hear
Her defiant closing lines,
They are driven with
blood red ink
Onto the white pages
Into which she sinks.
Some Information About the Above Poem
This is one of a series of free verse poems I wrote concerning the poets that self-destructed: (Plath, Berryman, Sexton, Lowell).
To understand the “poem” a little better about Ann Sexton (1928-1974):
Anne Sexton was a New England poet who taught at Boston University. She was an excellent poet but she was terrified to speak on stage before an audience. After a speaking engagement she would go home and sit in her daughter's lap to regain her emotional composure. Anna was a very beautiful woman but she was also mentally unbalanced and she periodically spent time inside an insane asylum (bedlam). One of her most famous poems was "Beauty in Bedlam."
Jason Lester Atkins - June 1, 2003.
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