January 2018
I was born in Connecticut, but have lived in California most of my life after my father found a tenured faculty position at USC. I have two adult children, too many animals (or not enough), and spend my working life as a substitute teacher and test proctor when I am not corralling shedded fur. My work has appeared in The Rise Up Review, the California Quarterly, and the Ekphrastic Review, among others. Writing has given me a voice, a way of processing the world, and best of all, a community.
Music from a Farther Room
A lost soul, set in his ways,
a haze of indecisions and revisions -
like a young Prufrock, his hopes
receding like his hairline.
Ambition and intelligence no longer aligned.
His mind a fast current, a rogue wave
threatening to drag him out to sea.
He recoils at the shoreline.
Hesitant, he ages, his summer fruit
left spoiling upon the tree:
his body an empty husk, weighted down
by the wet sand ballasts
rolled in the trouser cuffs of his dusty dreams.
The way ahead no longer clear, a blurry line,
the end always slightly out of reach, slightly out of mind.
He’d beseech the empty heavens to dislodge
the universal despair that, insidious,
cloaks his brain, should he dare.
There will be time, always time -
ticking time bombs of the buried past,
left with nothing but siren songs at last
to call him back from the precipice
of painful memories reflected
in the distorting mirror of his muddled mind.
Genetics and circumstances:
a reverse alchemy of the two,
turn the golden child to lead.
Thoughts cryptic and incessant
scramble for dominance in his head.
His resources, finite, are strained past bearing.
His etherized brain is long past caring.
Paralyzed by lethargy and liquor -
his toxic toast and tea -
each choice a momentary cure for the illness
of intolerable sobriety.
The mermaids sing still upon the distant rocks;
he sleeps sated upon the floor, breathing, ragged,
muttering but not malingering. Seeking refuge,
his thoughts scuttle across the rocky sea
bottom of his crumpled universe.
In time he shall emerge from his gray chamber.
The sand now dry will trickle through the open weave.
Lightened, this steep hill he shall conquer,
and unburdened, take his waking leave.
first published in The California Quarterly
Music from a Farther Room
A lost soul, set in his ways,
a haze of indecisions and revisions -
like a young Prufrock, his hopes
receding like his hairline.
Ambition and intelligence no longer aligned.
His mind a fast current, a rogue wave
threatening to drag him out to sea.
He recoils at the shoreline.
Hesitant, he ages, his summer fruit
left spoiling upon the tree:
his body an empty husk, weighted down
by the wet sand ballasts
rolled in the trouser cuffs of his dusty dreams.
The way ahead no longer clear, a blurry line,
the end always slightly out of reach, slightly out of mind.
He’d beseech the empty heavens to dislodge
the universal despair that, insidious,
cloaks his brain, should he dare.
There will be time, always time -
ticking time bombs of the buried past,
left with nothing but siren songs at last
to call him back from the precipice
of painful memories reflected
in the distorting mirror of his muddled mind.
Genetics and circumstances:
a reverse alchemy of the two,
turn the golden child to lead.
Thoughts cryptic and incessant
scramble for dominance in his head.
His resources, finite, are strained past bearing.
His etherized brain is long past caring.
Paralyzed by lethargy and liquor -
his toxic toast and tea -
each choice a momentary cure for the illness
of intolerable sobriety.
The mermaids sing still upon the distant rocks;
he sleeps sated upon the floor, breathing, ragged,
muttering but not malingering. Seeking refuge,
his thoughts scuttle across the rocky sea
bottom of his crumpled universe.
In time he shall emerge from his gray chamber.
The sand now dry will trickle through the open weave.
Lightened, this steep hill he shall conquer,
and unburdened, take his waking leave.
first published in The California Quarterly
©2018 Betsy Mars
©2018 Betsy Mars
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF