in memoriam
Agent Smith is crouching down to Sylvia Plath. She is strapped
to a chair with black & red typewriter ribbons. Her hands
are free in her lap, but her mouth
is gagged. Sylvia's eyes stare defiance,
cold but on fire, as Smith begins,
for the 9th time, his interrogation. He loosens
the knot of his black tie, takes away his black shades, disconnects
the curly transparent worm whispering
in his ear. Now Smith's lower lip pouts as his words curl
slowly out from his mouth, to wriggle
in amongst the mass of cells that're Plath's brain:
'So, at last, the great Sylvia Plath. I have her gagged! Perhaps,
Miss Plath you’d like to type WHY there is still this incessant
stink in here with us. In my nostrils, Miss Plath, this . . . this
inescapable smell. Why? Is it sweat, the foul animal aroma
of Sex, Miss Plath? Or perhaps it is the stench of Death?
My colleagues think I'm wasting my time with you,
but I think you want to do the write thing.' Agent Smith slides
a table & typewriter across the room using his mind, and stops.
It just in front of Sylvia's fingers. The keys glisten. She begins
to reach, but there is a dragging-screech
as Smith's mind slides the table away
one imperial American inch.
Dear Reader, now adjust your viewpoint through
many points in a single circumference around
Sylvia strapped & gagged but reaching fast
for her typewriter. See her high-speed
flinch for the keys slowed
in an ooze of time. Through her nose Sylvia breathes
in and the ink-ridden straps across her chest slowly
snap; hear
the twang of each breaking fibre as she grabs
for her alph a bet & sacred vowels, her fingers hissing
as air-molecules slip along the grooves of her fingerprints.
And now the paper in the typewriter is reeling
at miles an hour, but you, Reader, can see,
milliseconds delayed to nearly a minute, as her fingers
punch the code: connect, connect to spread
her deadly pattern of black ink across a blank
rectangular section called A4. It infects, it breeds. Smith reads:
'You don’t do, Baddy, you Simulated Agent, you.
You're not even a you. But I’m an i, the i in Die.
You met Me in the meadow of a memory. My fat
gold heart slaps against my lungs pulling in men.
And there is a charge, a very large charge, to watch
a woman undress her bones until perfected: black
sweet mouthfuls of shadows, the blood of words.'
Sylvia has ripped out the gag and so begins
to take in one long lung-filling breath. The wOman
is inspired. Her purpose rushes, pumping through her.
Angel Smith's mouth is gaping black & wide, he is pale,
and on his brow there're drops of illuminated dew. He wails
vowels as now
Plath's black rain of letters splatters through his brain. Tears
are rolling like molten silver down Smith's cheeks. Just
for an instant, just before deletion, just as he's passing
through Plath's naked mouth, Agent Smith finally feels,
finely feels what it’s like to be real.