Empty is Heavy

Empty is Heavy:
mirror 7117
(*draft -- I still need to cut out most of these words!)

​I am only as useful

Beautiful

Disgusting

Terrifying

Calm or

Turbulent

As the images

you project

Into and

Onto

The mirror

I am.

I am not convinced

That I have any greater purpose

Yet

Than to show you --
each of you --

Who you are being

by reflecting

who shows up most.
I don't mean to notice.
I just came that way.

I pay a price for
this gift, it is not free
to see in you, sometimes
not the loudest,
but the parts
you silenced
when they tried to scream
and it vibrated
like indigestion
or mosquitos
agitating your soul.

You swept them
aside with a stroke
of a thought,
like a wave not formed
enough to break,
but strong enough
to send ripples,
the same way
the finer grains
of sand can be swept
away with the tide,
or under mats,
or left alone, invisible
blending into the floor.

The ones I see,
they demand, sometimes
but mostly just need
to be noticed
this time.

The timid
and curious, innocent
laughing ones
and other ones
who only cry
in ways you are not
able to hear,
in ways you recognize
just enough 

to deflect
and forget.

When I am

Alone again I remember

I am

Empty only

With no one to

Define me,

except for the suffering.

Useless is pain

I carry for others

when it does not

free them

or redeem me.

It has become too heavy,

The burden of carrying

All of the broken ones

You knew I would bear -

No cost to you.

How much I tried

To keep you out of debt

And offer my well

As a gift.

But wells

and mirrors

Are not as forever

As I once hoped.

Maybe they will be

Again eternal

When I clean them.

First I must believe

That they are worth

The effort,

the faith required

to remove the

Blackened,

hardened film

I once thought

Would magically

Transform into

Weightless wings.

Or at least a heaven

Without gravity.

No, that fantasy was

Only as useful as it could be,

having fallen

And fallen

Past my knees,

that once caught my body,

Trembling and begging
to a savior
I hoped was more than

a hole in the ground.

It seems to bury and contain

Whatever anyone would not

-- could not fit in their image,

That thinner-than-paper

Barely two-dimensional

Illusion that bought you

Adoration and a sense

of being light without being

Empty -- don't you know?

Empty is not light,
it is the name calling
to me, the mansion
in heaven

[for the ones already

Lost , fallen

Into the pit I dug

For you and you

and all I invited you to cast 
on all I thought I was,]

I took on that name,

And I have only myself

To blame for painting my image

the color of nothing,

of Hell, if there is any color

That defines it.

Hell, as I now understand it

From a place of drowning,

Is the process of trying

To define and create

Living from the death --

Beauty from vain repetitions

I was taught to avoid

And also embrace,

depending on the day

And place of worship,

The walls of my house

On the hill,

Or the chapel of warm,

Well-intentioned shepherds

On the hill, gathering,
gathering sheep

to keep them from escaping.

Had I known I had
a name that I would recognize
if I wandered astray,

I might have also had a heart

that dared to leave,

So I could be found by the One.

It is said that he left
the ninety and nine

to find the one.

Maybe the one
and the One

Are the same,
like mirrors -
but I am not

Certain I will remember.

All I seem to recognize

Here, where even skin

Hanging on my soul

Feels like torture.

Hell is not being full

So much as being

Filled with desire,

reaching out

to catch it, or run

Towards it, or find it

as a refuge to enter,
an embrace to hold.

I hit my head against the mirror,
from the inside --

Already cracked from other attempts
at being identified

as someone who can be loved.

I do not lie

When I tell you

That what you

Praise or detest

When I attend

The story of you

says more about you

than me --

often in ways

that inspire

and tempt me

to believe I am

as significant

or as insignificant

as you believe

you are --

-- even when you try

too hard to hide,

to seek,

to show.

When I try

too hard to hide,

to seek,

to show

the parts that might

reveal who I am,

I do not take

you with me.

I would take

some of most

of all of you

who are not afraid -

if I knew how.

I am only as wise,

Kind,

Broken

or whole

As you allow

Me to show

When You notice

Your reflection without noticing

Who holds up the mirror.

I retire from this

Position, for good.

Rest In Peace,

Old moon of hiding

And being nothing

But a shadow beneath

The sun.

-- Mary Anne Stewart, July 1, 2017

Showing Up

[It seems that showing up is overrated, at least right now.]

Update (the statement above was written as the beginning of this post months ago):

Showing Up
(first draft - May 21, 2017 - after 1:30 am)

I do not know how to not show up.
I do not know how to shut off my brain
long enough to sleep away the pain
I absorb and absorb, like a drug I need
and that is also killing me without a way
to transform the black into gold.
The night has become too long,
the day too scarce and unfamiliar.
The fog in my brain leaks through my eyes,
the mist heavy upon my eyelids.

No one seems to see what they speak.

I will not be reached, I beg to be reached.
I understand now what a beggar might
be feeling when I pretend that they have
lost feeling so I do not have to see.
I think I know now that they beg from that place
that does not know how to forget,
will not forget the need for a morsel --
of food, yes, the way the body does its job . . . 
but I speak of the morsel of love
that Carl Sandburg speaks in the poem
At a Window
that I am starting to understand.
I keep reading to soothe the ache of a loss
my parents will not reach.

This window that separates us
makes the hell unbearable.
I would rather have no window 
than this one that allows me to see
what you seem to hold back,
what I am not able to receive.

Unreachable me, please let me
reach you.

I am the only one who can,
as much as I have tried to find others
to fill the position,
to fill the empty
that is heavier than steel
around my heart.
I am the one who has listened,
who has sheltered,
carried these fragments
that no one else wanted,
like the girl we pity on the streets
selling useless wares to feed
her poor family.

I am the one who knows
this poor family inside,
somewhere below my doubt
and fear after fear after fear
that what seems too poor
to value is broken,
but not beyond repair.
They must not
be cast away as nothing,
but must take root --
in the desert for now if needs be --
and prepare for the end
of the famine, 
the beginning of dust
to mud to water
to wine to love
that was always there
waiting for me
to offer it to the 
starving plant.

I waited too long
to share the love
I thought I was keeping
only from one --
how many suffer 
when we think we hate
only ourselves?

I waited too long,
but there is nothing
left for me to do or try.
Even death will not
receive me.
Even the night that
I will not leave
to rest,
rejects me.

Drink, drink
you desert child.

The roots have not
forgotten you. 

They know how to hold
the water until you
are ready to drink
and live.

Last Carl Sandburg Tuesday

What will I do without Carl Sandburg Tuesdays?

Yesterday was my last day playing the piano for dance classes at Carl Sandburg School. 

I will miss those sweet children, and even the ones who did not seem sweet at all.

Here is the poem for today:

At a Window

Related Poem Content Details

BY CARL SANDBURG

Give me hunger, 

O you gods that sit and give 

The world its orders. 

Give me hunger, pain and want, 

Shut me out with shame and failure 

From your doors of gold and fame, 

Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger! 

But leave me a little love, 

A voice to speak to me in the day end, 

A hand to touch me in the dark room 

Breaking the long loneliness. 

In the dusk of day-shapes 

Blurring the sunset, 

One little wandering, western star 

Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow. 

Let me go to the window, 

Watch there the day-shapes of dusk 

And wait and know the coming 

Of a little love. 

Rage

17.02.08 (still in process)

It wasn't a song that day.
It was Rage.
It simmered, simmered for many months
before she could no longer
Hold the heat.

It was harm that lived inside her,
and she was afraid
it might seek revenge without
Consideration of who
and when it might strike

So she stopped and heard, instead --

the voices of all
who had ever been made
to feel or seem less than
they could have known in shadows --
not their own, but darker

Every one that had been silenced
Every part untold, abandoned
Still alive beneath the dirty
breath and sweat of greed --
She recognized as part of her voice
and her story in all of the
Voices and Stories.

She let them rise as a chorus of broken,
looking for other shards of broken
Wholeness that wanted itself again

But she could not go back
or forward to find it --
Only in and through
the now of breaking --

She found it
in pieces
Curious to join what seemed familiar
Dissonance giving way to heat
Gathering pressure,
the pressure of rage
Rising rage

The simmering now boiling,
She spoke to the ones pretending
Not to see her
staggering as a servant,
Once too young
Now seeming too old and worn
to manage their load

She spoke to them, knowing it meant
Nothing right then –-
She could see that
in the absence of their seeing,
They would not hear
Her voice, the sound 

they knew was strong --
however faint it first was
when they shoved it back inside her.
along with their fear.
They knew she could hold it
as Silence, the way
they denied the wounds
and tried to control
Her voice, becoming
Strong with the weight of burdens
They refused and inflicted

Silence, the way
she almost died,
the way she survived.

Remembering this dying,
still hoping for life,
The heat increased and overflowed
boiling out of bounds
Set by trying to contain
the past in a past

that does not forget

or fully remember.

No longer able to be silent

or order madness into words

All she could do was make noise

with the crashing of dishes,
Against the sink, overflowing
with cups, silverware, pans, and plates
Banging against the metal
and each other
As if she could infuse a spark
of rebellion in their lifeless shapes,
a purpose and a message
of refusal to remain debased.

But Rage has a way, if you wait.
Keep it restrained, but not too tight
And the heat will eventually
Melt the bars of its cage
If it knows you understand
When it needs to fly
It will bear a song.
And a bird will sing it and carry it,
carry you away,
far away from the burning.

And the ones who have been sleeping
instead of seeing,
They keep on sleeping.

[I know where it goes, I know

I will answer when it calls
It will carry me
Where I need to be.
It will carry you
and let you lead
the way.
Your voice already knows
the song]

Carl Sandburg Tuesday

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967).  Chicago Poems.  1916.

124. Dreams in the Dusk

DREAMS in the dusk, Only dreams closing the day And with the day’s close going back To the gray things, the dark things, The far, deep things of dreamland.         5   Dreams, only dreams in the dusk, Only the old remembered pictures Of lost days when the day’s loss Wrote in tears the heart’s loss.   Tears and loss and broken dreams         10 May find your heart at dusk.

Illuminate

17.02.17

I have lost myself
In everyone
Absorbing
What you could not
I have died
with your shadows
Dispersed inside me

I consumed the poison
Before remembering
How to access the source
Who draws out
the toxins
[without receiving
or deflecting them]
To transform
Black that even night
Refuses --
To light
Embracing darkness
Day knows only as
Separate from itself,
Shade and hiding
Places for secrets

I go now
Not to hide
But to unbury,
Unveil my
Self
Before the stone
Has been set upon
the grave
Containing my body
Decomposing
All but entirely
Covered with dirt

I am no longer
Able to accommodate
Death as a companion
Denying
The Source

I run from
the grave
Gravity not heavy
Lifts me

Is this Resurrection?
Maybe --
This is more
than runner's high --
to Know
Where I go
without having to know

I check my compass
Only to make certain
that I am 
Directed
To and not away from
the One who can
Hold the Many
Shadows and still
Remain brilliant

I run away
To run
To life

We will
Know each other
Again

-- Mary Anne Stewart, completed
Feb. 22, 2017

One More from Carl S.

I can't resist this one . . . 

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967).  Smoke and Steel. 1922.

V. Mist Forms

33. Wind Song

LONG ago I learned how to sleep,
In an old apple orchard where the wind swept by counting its money and throwing it away,
In a wind-gaunt orchard where the limbs forked out and listened or never listened at all,
In a passel of trees where the branches trapped the wind into whistling, “Who, who are you?”
I slept with my head in an elbow on a summer afternoon and there I took a sleep lesson.	5
There I went away saying: I know why they sleep, I know how they trap the tricky winds.
Long ago I learned how to listen to the singing wind and how to forget and how to hear the deep whine,
Slapping and lapsing under the day blue and the night stars:
Who, who are you?
Who can ever forget	10
listening to the wind go by
counting its money
and throwing it away?

Carl Sandburg Tuesday: How Yesterday Looked

*I dedicate this post to the seemingly endless wind in Salt Lake City that kept me up for nights and finally had some tears to show today, for all its moaning.*

How Yesterday Looked

THE HIGH horses of the sea broke their white riders
On the walls that held and counted the hours
The wind lasted.

Two landbirds looked on and the north and the east
Looked on and the wind poured cups of foam
And the evening began.

The old men in the shanties looked on and lit their
Pipes and the young men spoke of the girls
For a wild night like this.

The south and the west looked on and the moon came
When the wind went down and the sea was sorry
And the singing slow.

Ask how the sunset looked between the wind going
Down and the moon coming up and I would struggle
To tell the how of it.

I give you fire here, I give you water, I give you
The wind that blew them across and across,
The scooping, mixing wind.

Carl Sandburg

Sleeping Awake

what PTSD sometimes feels like

17.02.07 

Strange stillness
I can't tell if my heart
Beats fast or stops
What time it is
What is time
An alarm rings
Over and over
Then snoozes
The wind is tired
From howling
Moans a low
Almost whisper
Almost a chorus
Harmonizing
Agony, almost a
Whisper slowly
Dying or being
Absorbed into --
What is this?
Strange silence
Alarm still not
Waking or
receiving the
Alert to join
The frantic calm
That i have known
In other times
of Purposeful
Ability to be
Still as stone
But also ready
to pounce into
What? I listen
for that alarm
Remain Paralyzed
Until it screams
its demands
To wake
and pretend the night
does not exist

Carl Sandburg Tuesday

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967).  Chicago Poems.  1916.

108. Last Answers

I WROTE a poem on the mist And a woman asked me what I meant by it. I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist, how pearl and gray of it mix and reel, And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening into points of mystery quivering with color.     I answered:         5 The whole world was mist once long ago and some day it will all go back to mist, Our skulls and lungs are more water than bone and tissue And all poets love dust and mist because all the last answers Go running back to dust and mist.

Remembering Wisława Szymborska, 1923–2012

Wisława Szymborska died five years ago today -- on Feb. 1, 2012. 

I have only known of her since December 24, 2016, and she has already changed my life in significant ways. 

This poem is dedicated to a poet friend who introduced me to this Polish poet (via Map). I specifically chose Clare Cavanagh's translation, knowing she is a valid scholar, authorized to translate Wislawa's poetry.

Sources: 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/48271

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/translator-notes/detail/48271

Consolation

Related Poem Content Details

BY WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA

TRANSLATED BY CLARE CAVANAGH

Darwin. 

They say he read novels to relax, 

But only certain kinds: 

nothing that ended unhappily. 

If anything like that turned up, 

enraged, he flung the book into the fire. 

True or not, 

I’m ready to believe it. 

Scanning in his mind so many times and places, 

he’d had enough of dying species, 

the triumphs of the strong over the weak, 

the endless struggles to survive, 

all doomed sooner or later. 

He’d earned the right to happy endings, 

at least in fiction 

with its diminutions. 

Hence the indispensable 

silver lining, 

the lovers reunited, the families reconciled, 

the doubts dispelled, fidelity rewarded, 

fortunes regained, treasures uncovered, 

stiff-necked neighbors mending their ways, 

good names restored, greed daunted, 

old maids married off to worthy parsons, 

troublemakers banished to other hemispheres, 

forgers of documents tossed down the stairs, 

seducers scurrying to the altar, 

orphans sheltered, widows comforted, 

pride humbled, wounds healed over, 

prodigal sons summoned home, 

cups of sorrow thrown into the ocean, 

hankies drenched with tears of reconciliation, 

general merriment and celebration, 

and the dog Fido, 

gone astray in the first chapter, 

turns up barking gladly 

in the last.

Source: Poetry (April 2006)