What Becomes Within by ELJ Publications

What Becomes Within Poems By

Sarah Lilius

For my father Charles W. Williamson July 12, 1943-April 5, 2009 ~ For my husband and two sons who understand. ~ For every person who suffers silently with mental illness.

INTRODUCTION It is undeniable that mental illness is prevalent among artists. There are various theories about why this is the case. Studies have been done, textbooks have been written, and artists themselves ruminate on this topic in a number of ways. In What Becomes Within Sarah Lilius provides a fresh, open take on living the life of an artist with mental illness. She tells the story of what it’s like to experience the world with a heightened sense of awareness that mental illness often provides. This collection addresses the negative stigma of mental illness in such a graceful way. There is a kindness and a softness to this book. But there is also a rawness. An honesty. A bravery in facing the darkness with grace. A fearlessness exists in this book. The gross becomes beautiful. I had such a visceral reaction to these poems. I especially appreciated how madness continued to be personified throughout the book. So many perspectives are present. Writing about the lives (and deaths) of Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and Virginia Woolf—all women notorious for their mental illnesses and tumultuous histories—is a very gutsy move that I appreciate. There is a controversy that exists in many artistic communities— a disagreement regarding the place of the biographical in writing. We often ask how far away a poet should be from his or her work. Sarah is very close to this collection of poems, and this vulnerability works extremely well. The poem “Coming Off” was especially strong: You’re trapped outside with a pill in your throat. Then, walking into the light after darkness was your bread.

Darkness as bread is such an intriguing concept. There is this pull, this dialog happening between the remedy, the cure, and the disease. I started to ask myself how manic depression, chronic depression, and chronic anxiety—ailments that I also suffer from—may not always hold the identity of a disease. Sometimes I think that these ailments simply provide a different way of looking at the world. Tragedy in all its forms—mental illness; physical trauma; disability; the death of a parent, (as is the case in the narrative of this book) often gives us a strange clarity and wisdom. This book made me think about how we can bend our hardships and illnesses to our benefit. Certainly, writing books—especially books like this one— helps us to cultivate some kind of clarity or new way of seeing. The poem “Neurotica” was another piece that stood out to me; the end of the poem especially. In just the last two lines, a new chance to waltz. It felt like hope was stretching her hand through the mess, from under the rubble of everything heavy we carry with us. In poems like “Heathen” we seem to be grappling in a different way with burden, with the trouble of being human. It seems as though the narrator is having a kind of discussion with God, (or perhaps the spiritual side of herself) much like Anne Sexton did in poems like “Rowing.” The mandala in “Heathen” stood out to me: My mandala under your foot, a screaming sun. I also wonder if “Into the Ruins” is addressing similar internal quandaries. The mandala appears again in “Into the Ruins.” We also see lotus petals appear in many of the poems which is a very loaded image. I see an intertwining not only of artistic lineages, but also an intertwining of various religious philosophies, doctrines, and mythologies.

I was so moved by What Becomes Within. I believe that the best books—the best works of art—help us to become better at being who we already are. We as writers continue to expand ourselves through the work that we do, and I see this happening in Sarah’s work for both her, and for the people who have the privilege of reading it. Lisa M. Cole

CONTENTS The Writer Neurotica Reality keeping the window open Within Heathen Into the Ruins We are the crazies Coming Off Irritable For Anne Sexton Bipolar Madness Revisited Medicated woman depressed Thirst Disassociation For Sylvia Plath Stigma at Ground Level Fire and Ice Electra’s New Infatuation Reassurance When Freedom’s Over River Touched with Fire

3 5 6 7 8 10 12 13 14 15 16 17 21 22 23 24 26 27 28 29 31 33 34 35 36

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Grateful acknowledgement to the editors of the publications in which these poems first appeared: BlazeVOX, Denver Quarterly, Indefinite Space, and Wood Becomes Bone.

Not that it was beautiful, but that, in the end, there was a certain sense of order there; something worth learning in that narrow diary of my mind ~Anne Sexton, from To Bedlam and Part Way Back

The Writer The lush burst, once life, harbored. The ten oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;clock news echoes elsewhere. The lost thought plays poker on the far side of the mountain. In the morning, road blocks, fire trucks, the neighborâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s untamed muse. The smell of burning is your heart. Frantic people jump windows. As she misses the net, flame finds you there,

sipping sullen coffee on a blazing porch.

Neurotica It’s the pushing, the prance and gallop at 2 a.m. when the world is a planet again, lush and wild with noises of the mind. It’s the sweating, the work and wear at 3 a.m. when I wake him in this place, this city cannot be a paradise without his passive whimper. It’s the breaking, the fall from yourself at 4 a.m. when what you swallow becomes sleep—this paradise can wait, this gleam, this drunk, a pass from purity into the next realm. This is the junction of the mind. A burning crossroad backlit by a symphony nestled deep—gold sparkles from the bush— barely—you breathe deep, knowing the tune is yours, the ache is real, and tomorrow— a new chance to waltz.

Reality I try to compose reality in my mind, a sore thing, a beat-less numb. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sureness in a fact, facts become reality, reality is something we accept and hold tight as a dinner fork, a small child. I hold reality like a cigarette, with loose cautionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a thing on fire that hesitates, then disappears.

keeping the window open the view from here is street, car, cars, grass cut, grass uncut, concrete, house, house, minimal sky. the view from here, a safety pin of a city. walls and walls keep us, keep us minimal space. the view from here is rushing and sitting, growing and flyingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;spring birds, garbage from car windows. the view from here is old men shuffle, old women sweep. grinding of motors, halting of corner bus. the view from here is window pane and screen. open lets in breeze, minimal air for small breaths.

Within If we have not found heaven within, it is a certainty we will not find it without. -Henry Miller I was a tragic wind the day my father died. We stare through old windows before a storm, amazed by how night can take the day then stunned by how day can recover, return with a childish lightâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; we feel relief. We melt into a common dread. The oldest lie does not slap or pinch but leaves us fluffing our wings, waxing our chariots. Countless children ride past a dead bird, gray, stiffâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; its failure to fly summons. Within: a mangled desire inflated with hope, a cauldron of hot, hot fear.

We spin into each other to find the one who is not spinning. The one who is solid within shall be fearless without.

Heathen My mandala under your foot, a screaming sun. My deity, a faltered ego caught in the slide of doubt. Yesterday you reached into the sky. Buttery hand formed into cloud, a sunset fired, burnt your flesh, you blamed your god. Today I cannot look up. The hole opens but there is no Christ. He has left us here to find where the fruit is ripe and the people are ready. The mob rustles, they begin. My tremble, my taste, they string me up. They strikeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; my essence cut, it does not bleed. 10

The crowd cheers, a lock of hair, an earâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; your pockets full. Only then, my mandala is releasedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; lotus petals fall to your feet.

Into the ruins Buddha amid dust. This orchestra spells. We float enchanted, among broken seats. Buddha holds the ruins, he does nothing. Dead soldiers at the altar, bead by bead, pray faster. The sun collapses on the temple. War does nothing. Fire amid Buddha. This symphony sells. We cannot laugh when the blindfold is removed. Fire will bring ash, we will learn to hold nothing.

We are the crazies We walk and smile, nodding, the pills are taking shape. Lilac bushes bend a forced scent. I find the benches empty. Waiting for bombs in suburbia. Mrs. Johnson was rightâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; lock your doors. Paved, sculpted, a moan of earth pushes through.

Coming Off Like rain, puddled in the dirty street, a somber island with boundaries unstable. Like an ice storm in April, such a surpriseâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; the sharpness, the bland way that cold water settles into a landscape trying to find Spring. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re trapped outside with a pill in your throat. Then, walking into the light after darkness was your bread.

Irritable I could sit with this mood or I could move like an animal through a dark forest. Dead flower petals, all I have left in my hands. Someone has released the honey bees, they look for my skin. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a scream inside all of us. Not waiting to get out, but yearning.

For Anne Sexton How we thrash out moods and how we lie in the dark turning only when it’s convenient. What my heart gives out smells like baking bread but burns like wilted sage. It’s good to be back. The dose was lowered and I visit you on the couch, in my bed, in my car. There’s no garage where I live. There’s a pine tree heated in the summer I smell the needles, I rub my bones against the tree. This life is more then I know. I know you in the car, windows up. I imagine you with cigarette in hand— maybe a tear for it all, maybe not.

Bipolar I. Depression It’s a heartbeat stalled. It’s a call girl in the dark. It’s greasy hair, itchy scalp. On the couch, in the bed—motionless except for your heart, your useless brainwaves, your flowing blood. Put in a cell—your brain the captor with his ragged hat and cigarette down to the nub. This is nothing like the way pearls go with everything. This is nothing like Sunday. This is the endless cups of coffee you drink to feel alive. The food you were made to eat. The pills going down. Suicide is the rare guest you invite for tea but they never show. That deep anvil on the chest for days is the one who 17