The Glass Menagerie

I was going to put up some lines i found in a diary which are very unlike India to have written. But then i came upon this:
" My favourite poem... beautifully desperate and so easy to relate to."
Here's what she's talking about - a poem by Alicia Ostriker, untitled:

Passing that fiery tree—if only she could
Be making love,
Be making poetry,
Be exploding, be speeding through the universe
Like a photon, like a shower
Of yellow blazes—

She believes if she could only overtake
The riding rhythm of things,
Of her own electrons,
Then she would be at rest…
If she could forget school,
Climb the tree,
Be the tree,
Burn like that.

…She doesn’t know yet, how could she
That this same need
Is going to erupt every September
And that in 40 years the idea will strike her
From no apparent source,
In a Laundromat
Between a washer and a dryer,
Like one of those electric light bulbs
Lighting up near a character’s head in a comic strip—
There in that naked and soiled place
With its detergent machines,
Its speckled fluorescent lights,
Its lint piles broomed into corners as she fumbles for quarters
And dimes, she will start to chuckle and double over
Into the plastic baskets’
Mountain of wet
Bedsheets and bulky overalls—
Old lady! She’ll grin,
beguiled at herself,
Old lady! The desire to burn is already a burning! How about that!

ps: i owe Gnarls for this putting me on my way to discovering this one.

WHITE

As promised.. Here's a poem written by Alanis while The Four were in college. Found it in a letter written from India to Shade...
"That damn Lupin, he's such an overbearing ass, i have no clue why u like his philo class so much. He's attempting to get Alanis to change some lines and punctuation before White is published in the college mag. Not surprisingly, she held firm. It was her poem and her meaning. The punctuations fell where she willed them and to change them (ostensibly for the better) would reduce meaning. As a wannabe poet, i whole heartedly agree."

“Brown” is what the farmer says, the color of earth is.
Blue to a scuba diver or Neil Armstrong.
Pink to six year old’s, Aerosmith.
Green to a gardener.
Red to a Cardiologist.
Black to the blind.
Yellow to the sun.
Orange to the birds that fly past it.
Purple to Govinda.
Grey to my grandmother.
Gold to Goldilocks, blonds, the God’s.
Silver to the optimist.
White for the snow and the clouds above to Tenzing or the Icelanders.
White to any European during the imperialist regime.
White to all the browns, blacks and yellows that represent one universe, at that time.
It never boiled down to skin, bones and blood.
It’s about what the eye meets.
What lay on the surface.
White the coral beneath the ocean.
White the cleanest sand.
White the sky when it chooses to be.
White the color of our smile.
White the palm’s of our hands.
White the bones beneath any skin.
Red when you open the white skin.
Red when you open up any skin.
Yet we do not live in harmony with our surfaces.
We toy with the color’s we have.
Slay the green.
Rot the grey.
Spill the red.
Blue for background.
Black and brown as base.
Yellow for finishing touch’s.
White left behind.
We have a perfect world.
With differences.
Colorful.