When your friends

misunderstand your works

and your enemies understand

them all too well, when

waking up every morning

feels like a defeat rather than

a triumph, when the razor

blade or the cliff's edge

beckons, remember--he is not

pretty, death, only

well-advertised. Remember

what they did to

Michelangelo: they waited

until he was dead and then

painted over all the genitals in

his Sistine Chapel--just as

Nietsche's hated racist sister

presented him to the world as

a proto-fascist genius after he

lost his mind, just as Paul

used Jesus, and Plato

Socrates, and the

Communists Durrutti. Give

your enemies nothing. Let

your tears freeze to stones

we can hurl from catapults,

screaming. Write your own

epitaph and say it loud,

still alive. This life is a war we

are not yet winning for our

daughter's children. Don't do

your enemies' work for

them--finish your own."

-From a letter that didn't reach

Sylvia Plath in time.