Anne Sexton reading her poem The Ambition Bird

So it has come to this insomnia at 3:15 A. M., the clock tolling its engine like a frog following a sundial yet having an electric seizure at the quarter hour. The business of words keeps me awake. I am drinking cocoa, that warm brown mama. I would like a simple life yet all night I am laying poems away in a long box. It is my immortality box, my layaway plan, my coffin. All night dark wings flopping in my heart. Each an ambition bird. The bird wants to be dropped from a high place like Tallahatchie Bridge. He wants to light a kitchen match and immolate himself. He wants to fly into the hand of Michelangelo anc dome out painted on a ceiling. He wants to pierce the hornets nest and come out with a long godhead. He wants to take bread and wine and bring forth a man happily floating in the Caribbean. He wants to be pressed out like a key so he can unlock the Magi. He wants to take leave among strangers passing out bits of his heart like hors doeuvres. He wants to di