Other Poetry by Mary R. Drews (Mary R. Shefferman)
Some very new, some very old.

The mirror does not
reflect me.
I elude it -- unwilling
to know
the lines digging
valleys through my skin.
Unwilling to age
with or without grace
or fear.
It isn’t my business
what time will do with me --
let it.
No force, no will
can stop it.
Time, gravity, regret --
it’s all here --
if you look.

6/28/02

I worry over you,
aging, aged
not frail
but nearing the edge
of fragility.

Afraid of losing
what I only now found --
afraid you'll be gone
before I can absorb
enough of who you are
to change me.

It's a greedy need;
you're only the jewel
I covet.

2005

Eyes, breath, the heart’s rhythm,
the subtle evidence
of living --
empty wrappers, footprints.

If this is not enough,
there’s no alternative
but suffering,
an ever-present sense
of regret.

If this is not enough,
let go the breath,
take nothing back.
Leave.

Oxygen
is for the rest of us.

July 2003

I am a blue calm,
I am a pill
you take
for vision,
for blindness.

I am the chill
you feel in quiet --
the comfortable cushion
of humidity.

I am to be swallowed

like red candy --
dissolved to smallness.

I am the red stain
I leave on your tongue --
the red sweetness you taste
for hours.

You can't ignore it --
it moves in like an
unwelcome guest.

You can't fight it --
it is Atlas-strong.
Or accept it --
it might be evil.

But you live with it.
Learn to love it --
like the dying
learn to love
death.

It's a disease.
It spatters energy
onto canvas -- or
pages -- or into
a melody sad enough
to break hearts.
strong enough
to survive,
beautiful enough
to be forgiven.

4/14/89
5/29/89
6/5/89

The rose won't bloom
cut off as a bud.
Kept in warm water,
still --
it will not open up.

Neither will I.
Not to you. No,
I do need care
and attention -- still --
that alone does not
make love.

There's another part --
deeper and more cruel --
that must infect, affect, effect
me. Not you,
little boy.
My big dreams could never
make you dance --
and your small ones
don't move me.

4/7/89
5/29/89
 

A kiss
suffered on the cheek of sleep
to console
a mother's quivering lips,

a sweeping back of hair
from the forehead of death
to comfort a body that,
with no soul now,
can do nothing
but be sprinkled with incense,
washed and lowered --

something proper,
something God can abide by --

what Mother thinks
is better than a kiss,
better than a touch,

but already as useless
as mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
 

1969 -- the year
of the ice-kiss.
I was a six-year-
old child.
I held Simplicity up
to the light -- and
I liked it.

But I pushed
my thumb through
Simplicity's transparency --
passed the years --
and Complication slipped
in through the hole.

Complication's plague spread,
grew -- stopped everything
it touched--I wriggled
through the hole,
and dropped out
here.

I see Simplicity --
inside the year 1969 --
on the window sill.
I take and bite
into old Simplicity
like an apple. It tastes
good. I like it.

It's poison.
And the page
is a syringe,
pulling the evil
out of my soul --
out of my infected soul.
 

Art -- inescapable
vision -- a style of
insanity or a
dreamworld offering:
ambrosia.

Darkness opens -- eggshell white --
opens to emit what sun-like
light it takes to
lurch a world free from
avid complacency. Warm
rocks thrown at cold
stone bones.

Splintered Reality falls to rest --
a different picture, marked by
light seen from an eye that
vowed a perfect
absurdity. Now the last
darkness opens to let go the
odor of a singed and timeless
religion.

Damn this cold weather --
after so much
light,
it is dark again.

Kindness is a form of
cruelty to one's self.

I have seen your pain expand
shapelessly --
And I, with my trowel,
have scraped it together,
shaped it into pills
you can swallow.

Now I feel the inches
of my cheeks warmed
by tears, my lips
dry with brine.

Now I need you
to make little pills
for me.

But I can't
ask you
for the kindness.

Kindness is a form of poetry --
born of the soul,
insatiable as the spirit --
it asks only that you receive.

How precarious
life is --
perched
on the fuzzy line
of dim
between darkness
and dawn.

Standing -- each
organ alive,
but waiting
to stop
short -- stop
mid-
sentence
stop.

Tonight the stage is set --
table, chairs, two glasses --
for the ending of nothing.

She stares at her
fingernails;
her stares at her.
It could have been
painful and real.

Tomorrow she'll end another
and another -- until
there's no one left
and she's alone again,
she complains.

4/5/89
 

Time grows
late as I smoke
my last cigarette
and contemplate
rotten ideas.
You think I'm a poor
excuse for a person --
same to you.

I've seen you struggle
with death too,
you didn't do well
either.
At least I had some
composure --
you became agitated,
you made yourself
dizzy. Watch out --

you may see my
tombstone first,
I'll be free --
you'll be imprisoned
in memories
of when I used to comfort
myself with drugs
and you used to tell me
I was wrong.

Maybe I'll die
a good death
and you'll be un-sad,
or maybe I'll die
a terror death
and you'll scream
for me
because I didn't
get the chance.

March 3, 1982

I am going to sit here
and contemplate your death.
How do you want to go?
I thought knife
first.
But then I saw your face --
drained, drawn, white.

No.

I thought of poison,
but convulsions are not
your style.

I thought gun,
but that's too much noise --
you, quiet, No,
it would clash.

Finally,
I thought of
an accidental fall --
how good
that would be
for you
since you've never
flown.

I eat these
bones of sadness
one by one
knowing this
will not fill me
with wisdom
or immortality --

I slake thirst
with blood
sucking and smacking
the life down
to quench the death
in my stomach --

I pray
and God lies
down
next to me
but rises
with the sun
and leaves
me ignorant
as before --

The wind would roar
those nights alone,
would shiver the house --
my bones.

And dark would cover
black as the devil's pupils.
Lamplight would jag across
the room -- break
through icy panes of glass.

It was winter then --
the music of silence
drove through me
like a train.

2/11/89
2/26/89
 

I can't bear the mirror --
my face a mirror itself,
and you, Mother, my image --
a ghost cool as a shrug.

If you had died
some other way,
the cigarette at my lips
would not remind me
that our kind die
of things like these.

I do not appreciate
your bequest: a genetic
carcinogen.
It is not one of the treasures
I'd expect from a face like ours.
It's a kind of hate
that fuels my imaginings.

I do not want to be
you.
But the mirror's unrelenting echo
stares back -- alive as breath.
It is a cruelty
that children should
resemble their parents.

A cruelty I have the better of
now that you and I are shattered --
shards of reflection at my feet.
At last, I can bury you
without burying myself.

Only the broom is between
you and me -- only the strength
you left me
to put you away
until another mirror
rejects my denial.

I am you too much
sometimes
to be me.

3/3/90
3/31/90

Mad

You have plucked out my eyes
and circle like the ducks
in a carnival shooting gallery.
I grope for you, plead with you:
Your icy silence mocks the blindness
you’ve given me      like a work of art.

Spigots -- my hollow sockets
water the love      or hate
someone’s gentle fingers
tucked into the soil
our souls are becoming.

Let’s see what grows now
in this dark, starved garden.

Friendship’s fragility -- trust --
thrust into shadows
where only fungi thrive.
Poison mushrooms masquerading
as the finest French truffles.

We were, you said, created to grow
old and eccentric      together --
not apart and into creatures
hardly stranger than truth,
but ordinary and too young
one way or another
to see through the black
we choose to bear
on our backs and shoulders
like a scar. 

What of scars?
Can we match up -- mirror
to mirror -- infinite ways
as deep as space?

But you have my eyes:  Blue
neon penetrating every object.
You’ve looked into me
and lit every dead bulb
in the miswired lamps
I carry like rabbits’ feet
to remind me      there must be
a plot      intricate as the miracle
of vision. 

Superstitions      naked
as women you touch
and betray, boil
through me; steam sprays
from the holes you’ve left,
seeks you      like me --
seeks to scald you, so I can hear
your screams; find you.
But the steam is only a cool mist
that chills you further      and farther away. 

These compulsive rituals are impotent as eunuchs:
I wish on numbers and turned necklaces
and stars for you to even sigh,
give me back my small green eyes.
I want to see      you.
But these wishes are selfish as EGO
and desperate as the arid inspiration
you’ve left me. 

(And what do you think so far?
Have my words dehydrated?
Am I sightless as a newborn kitten,
mewing from starvation?) 

Your words, warm as my just-worn dress,
echo truthless; this mutilation
transfigures them to the lies you tell
when corners come too close.
You told me the Cosmos has order:
You were meant to share your wisdom
with me;     you told me you didn’t want me
hurt;           you told me you care--
as your eyes radiated crystal-blue
insistence as truthful as love. 

Now I see nothing --      skin,
pink and puckered, grows over
my eye holes. The windows
are smashed and boarded --
and my soul      whispers
a constant dirge, low but keen
as a carving knife.
Still you frenzy, knowing
no matter how still you lie,
I am blind: I can find you
only through the sounds you refuse
to make. Knowing I’ll never find you
in this cold, peaceless night. 

As you play      your own imposter,
you can hear and see --      I must speak
and write      what I will say.
Even now, as you finger my eyeballs
like lint in your pocket, you see
my soul      claws      to escape me --
to reach you --       anyone;
it sucks      deep to draw you in. 

Don’t you understand
what I would give to you
for my eyes? An uneven exchange
that would leave me artless      but
I would give you whatever you want:
Freedom weightless as hydrogen;
Love silent, distant as the Pyramids;
the memories of you I wrap myself in.
You can have everything      back --
anything at all --  because      you see:
I’m afraid of the dark. 

5/23/1991

You want me
frozen soft
as melting ice cream:
just cool enough
to stand your heat,
but not my ground.
You taught me all I know
of coping,
of hot and cold,
now I'm a faucet --
you turn me on,
hot for my anger,
cold for my love.

Remember when I was
your girl?
I always had viruses
in my stomach.
I still do --

These are the seeds
of sickness you planted
while you were watering
your liver
waiting for cirrhosis to grow.
And any day now
I'll regurgitate
that ice cream
image of me
on you      and you
will feel
the hot chill
you've always wanted from me.

April 10, 1982