Special Gifts

 Mary McCarthy

  

 By Editor Sharon Waller Knutson

Poet and Artist Mary McCarthy shares her remarkable journey to hell and back with Bi-Polar Disorder from her poetry book, How to Become Invisible. (Kelsay Books 2023) the cover of which she illustrated herself.

Mary is an example of a survivor who despite an abusive childhood and a mental illness doesn’t feel sorry for herself and portray herself as a victim. She simply describes with metaphors how it feels to have no control over your mind, body or life. The book helped me understand the people in my family with mental illness.

With cycles of depression and mania, visions, hallucinations, bad medicine, suicidal thoughts and stints in hospitals where she received electrical convulsion (ECT) treatments, Mary could have ended up houseless and penniless. Instead, she became a productive member of society.

“I first studied English literature, earned an MA, and taught classes in literature and composition. Went to nursing school in my early 30's and worked as an RN for 13 years in both acute and rehab care. Have been married 41 years. Owned our home in Pennsylvania for 33 years and in Florida for 7 years now,” Mary says.

I will let Mary’s strong stellar poems tell her story:

How to Become Invisible
 
Lose your job, your mind, your husband
step over the lines, off the map,
into unmarked alleys
 
Talk too fast, too much, too loud,
or not at all
 
Balk at the strangeness
of ordinary things
spot the dark intent behind
their bland disguises
 
Walk too close to the edge
of every conversation
answer the words behind the words they say
 
Forget to smile, to wash, to comb your hair
wear your clothes carelessly
 
Count the rough stitches
where the patchwork world
threatens separation
 
Carry your ghosts with you
shuffling and mumbling
in a long procession
that follows you down the street
 
Where no one sees you now
you’ve lost your place
your face your reflection
 
And even your shadow
fades to nothing
in the unrelenting sun
 
 
They Should Have Known
 
I was trouble
when at three I threw a tantrum
because the sun set
Should have known I’d be
always at odds with the real
so obstinate in my refusal
of the usual
they feared I might someday
deny the law of gravity
and lose touch with more
than sanity
unlock my grip
on the earth itself
and come untethered
like a loose balloon
flying out of reach
 
 
Metamorphoses and Mood Swings     
 
Sometimes I am Byzantine, winged  
and intricate as an insect, a mantid  
with many jointed legs,  
hard and jeweled as a beetle  
soft as a moth.  
Sometimes I am sad, muddled  
and formless, tired and full of rain.    
My tears flow endlessly down,  
a salty river,  
where, like a new Ophelia,  
I barely keep afloat,  
and nothing can reach me.  
Sometimes I fly, like a steel  
needle, through air clean  
and sharp as a cut. I feel  
everything at once, elbow deep  
in trees, their leaves caress  
my face, and I can feel their roots  
curl in the earth.  
Sometimes I am too fast  
for anyone to catch, I can do  
and do more than I ever  
could before. I go beyond  
the need for sleep, inventing  
unusual uses for every hour.  
And sometimes I am far too tired  
to be anyone, to walk or speak  
or think. So I shut down  
and send them all  
home with a note  
that I won’t be back until the next  
resurrection.  
 
 
Symptoms
 
I can’t read.
The words go on and on
under my eyes, but they refer
to nothing I can imagine.
I might as well
sit with a text in Arabic
and at least admire
the shapes the words make
on the page. That way
there would be no question
of meaning between us.
My hands lie curled up
in my lap. If I open them
it is only to stare
at the nothing I keep there.
Surely somewhere there is a map
for this place. I have found myself
here often enough,
But I can’t remember the way
in or out. Everyone talks at me
from behind a mask.
The voices,
disembodied, could belong
to anyone. I taste fear bright
as metal on my tongue.
 
 
Depression
 
Rising quietly at first,
it brushes me with a soft wing,
darkness like the echo of some
final cry,
sadness like the taste of cold
iron, salt on my lips,
tears rising hot and bitter
to blur my sight.
Suddenly all is lost and I stand
hopeless again in the litter
of my days; nothing can save me
from the nothing in my heart.
I can light candles, cook dinner,
iron clothes and wash the floors,
it doesn’t matter.
What you see is the event horizon
of a black hole.
There will be no escape
from its terrible gravity,
swallowing my life as
fast as I live it.
 
 
Talk Talk Talk
 
It’s a simple conversation
until I join it.
Then, helpless,
I watch myself
effervescing
like an Alka Seltzer tablet
in a glass of plain water.
I see it but can’t
stop it.
Once tipped over the rim
it has to drop
until it hits bottom
and foams itself away
into nothing but salt
and a bitter taste.
I try to swallow,
hoping no one will remember
my foolish tizzy
The crazy words coming
Too fast, too full
of puns and rhymes, rising
like bubbles to dissolve
against the walls
of your silence,
 
 
Strangers So Unkind
 
Lined up on gurneys
by the elevator
we wait to be taken
downstairs where
they’ll start IV’s
and gel our temples
and strap the rubber
and metal crowns
to our heads
without once looking
any one of us
in the eye.
Then comes the whiff
of plastic and oxygen
as the mask comes down
and darkness rises
covering you like a lover
with a dark surprise
in his pocket.
You’ll wake with a raging
headache and no
memory of anything much,
floating through the days
without leaving a trace
you could point to
and say, “This is mine.”
You have lost your right
to time. Maybe someday you’ll
remember this and
it won’t be a nightmare
but I wouldn’t
bet on it.


That Last Time in the Hospital
 
They took my nail file and pocket knife
and set someone there
on constant watch
in case I found the sudden
energy to act-
But I’d lost so much,
the flow of tears like blood
from an untended wound
diminished me
hour by hour
until I had  
nothing to take me
from one night to the next.
 
I was too far away
for words to reach
that morning when the chaplain came.
Instead of prayer she took her violin
and played for us,
five people in a small room
all broken, stopped, defeated,
dumb with sorrow–
 
And music fell on us
like sweet rain,  
a blessed absolution                                                                 
outside the rules of pain.   
                                                                               
 
Imposter
 
I don’t know this woman
living in my house
doing everything
better than I did
speaking for me
using my voice
accepting all the compliments
I never got.
I dream of getting rid of her
cleverly and permanently.
I dream she goes away
without my help.  
I wouldn’t mind so much,
dear husband,
if you hadn’t made her
so welcome.  
Your sigh of relief
hurt more
than all her arrogance
and you are too content to see
she has erased me.
 

Enthralled        
 
for my sister, who always knew me, and never let me go.                    
                                                             
I found myself lost                  
black, mechanical,                   
an alien left behind.                 
I had razor blades
instead of bones
beneath my skin.
I spoke in colors
words like sequins
breaking light
into smaller and smaller
fractions.
I had to sort you out
between the voices
of the trees, the grass
shouting and singing
sharp and dangerous
as fields of broken glass.
I came naked
feathered and spurred
my tongue baroque
unregulated,
my arms full
of awkward gifts:
apologies like small
black holes
swallowing worlds
blind spots white
as lepers
running fevers and other
sudden lightnings
hard to find room for
in any reasonable space.
But you held fast
through fire season,
keeping track
while I burned and raved,
a speed demon
racing through a thousand
changing shapes.
You held strong
laying claim
against enchantment.
You never blinked,
never saw
any face but mine,
rock steady,
waiting for me
underneath the shadow maze
of  strange mutations
where I found myself
lost .

To read more, buy the book at:

https://www.amazon.ca/How-Become-Invisible-Mary-McCarthy/dp/1639804773
 
To read more on Mary McCarthy

https://stortellerpoetryreview.blogspot.com/2023/04/storyteller-of-week_28.html