The Great Wide Empty

Your home is planted six feet down

in a casket of monarch blue.

A light sky crepe supports your crown

to give comfort and peace to you.

Flowers impart their folded breath.

A flood of reckon fills the eyes;

and through your death, I see my death.

This fatal skin its senses rise.

 

Empty frames embody a void,

echoes lost in a wordless cry.

A pantheon for Sigmund Freud,

bright stars are falling from the sky.

The universe is cracked in half.

The dimming darkness looms above.

A carved headstone and epitaph

are tributes to the one thereof.

 

Pictures not taken - going, gone.

Moments lived are once and only.

It falls apart, so on and on,

unremembered, lost and lonely.

Aching to fill the holes with light,

we lick lightning’s radiant rod

in Faustian realms of dark night

bursting wide on the lips of God.

 

The great wide empty heart of man

sheds shadows in darkened places

proffering what little it can

like children with dirty faces.

A hand out is a hand in need.

A lock is latched upon the door.

Bleeding out, we forget to bleed.

Instincts harden forevermore.

 

You lay within earth’s deep, dark keep

sculpting time with fingers of bone.

These are the truths we all shall reap

in a wasteland of stele stone.

The later years are maudlin years,

whittled thin as a winding sheet.

Redemptive tears are final tears

with martyred dreams beneath our feet.

 

I know the night is overdue.

There is a point of no return.

The flow of life from me to you

no bloody ghost can overturn.

The heart shall pen its final beat

in brittle veins of paper skin

in ode to life lived incomplete -

the great wide empty born within.

Author's Note

Reviews

[John the Baptist]

This is a meditation on mortality, no question about that, but I feel it was inspired by a particular individual. The person is never named, but it is whoever is being addressed in the first verse. There are other points in the poem where the same individual is being spoken to. Evidently, he or she represents death to the speaker. and perhaps their passing created an inner void for the speaker. This is not a happy poem, but it does focus on a truth: We are all going to cross that line some day.

[Linda Marie Van Tassell]

You are always so perceptive. This poem has been in the back of my mind for a while. The first stanza is about my mother, who died in 2009. I have always been bothered by the fact that I have no pictures from my childhood, and empty frames on a wall was the inspiration for this write.

[red93]

This is really Fabulous, and I admire the vaulting imagery and high ambition of the well-crafted verses. Excellent ✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️

[Ken Simm.]

There is so much here it requires more than just a cursory read and a say of I like it. Which I do. This is creativity. For me it is the empty canvas and the knowledge that I must do something but what and how will it develop as I paint. Along with my experience. A massive tour de force here. On the one hand a violent worry. On the other a gentle meditation of intent.
Could it be constrained into the sentence' The Death of Creativity as a person'?

[Neville]

the fascinating title first caught my attention and pulled me in .. then in a matter of moments I was content to be happily lost in the body of it ..

[Kelly Scheppers]

I am convinced, a stroke of genius has impregnated your soul, once again!

[Carlos Lorenzo Estrada]

It is truly sad that I feel within us all is one great gift or moment yet to be realized. Many fail to recognize such a thing within themselves. Never truly living up to their potential. Never leaving something of great or any value behind in their passing. These regrets are buried along with us. A haunting piece of poetry that asks us to reflect upon ourselves its message.

[light and ashes]

This reminds me very much of a poem I wrote in an extremely dark place both mentally and physically. It was about death and burying your dreams in the ground. It was good, but I'm going to burn it. I no longer want to live in that place. I am going to do everything I can to hold onto what positivity I can manage....
I do not, however, think that you should burn this or get rid of it at all. In fact, I think it would be a crime or a sin, if you did.
This is also reminiscent of Purgatory and about mortality.
Overall, this is a magnificent work. It is kind of astonishing to behold.

[Linda Marie Van Tassell]

Thank you, Light and Ashes. Beauty is born of sadness, and one cannot appreciate the light without the dark. Some of the beautiful works are written out of love and sorrow. You can appreciate where you are by remembering where you've been. Only through the cracks can the light get in.

[light and ashes]

In a way, I agree with you, but I think that it is light that allows beauty to breathe. It may be born in sadness, but it is light that allows it to flourish....
and you are so welcome. You are, in fact, incredibly talented.

[carl]

I would suspect a mourn for someone so very special there is nothing to fill the emptiness and pondering if perhaps this will be another's situation when I have gone. But all of this could be just my reaction to wondering how much time will pass until I am for all intent and purposes and empty frame. I know for a fact that my grandchildren have no knowledge whatsoever of my grandparents. It is difficult to contemplate disappearing. " Pictures not taken - going, gone. Moments lived are once and only." thanks for the post -carl

[Linda Marie Van Tassell]

Thank you, Carl. For me, I have no doubts that I will disappear. Separated from distant family and having lost both my mother and father and having no family of my own, I will be, as the song says, "dust in the wind." While sooner than most, sadly, I think it's the same for the majority of us.

[carl]

yes, agree for sure, my situation is similar with the exception of having five children. Make the best of it while we can???

[jacob erin-cilberto]

maybe for someone we loved who has passed, our pen can at least temporarily raise that person from the dead, even for the few moments of the poem dedicated to him or her.
Poets don't forget...
Poets write about sorrow so others may empathize, understand, remember their loved ones...
the relationship of poet to poem to reader....is magnanimous ....
j.

[Linda Marie Van Tassell]

Thank you, Jacob. I think you are magnanimous.

[1809 Black Plague Decem..]

Forgive my improvencia,
Vonifacent, the violin, pianna gocet,
I feel reluctant to say, it makes me ponder, wonder,
I love the part of deep under and empty art casses,
The cry so often left for absesnce, when a loss
I lost someone, and I couldn't bare life itself,
I couldn't stand the absence of his voice, his looks upon me,
I screamed! I screamed! So, slept,
Thank you so much for the poem you share,
I completely, encoumber
----1809

[Linda Marie Van Tassell]

Thank you, 1809.

[1809 Black Plague December]

most welcome, dear, hope you are having a grand morning, I am.

[Chris Shaw]

in ode to life lived incomplete -
the great wide empty born within

Someone here has gone to their grave, but not without making an impact on the speaker. I feel a darkness here, a void which can not be healed. It is too late for that. An acceptance of what was and what can’t be changed but maybe a wish it could have been different.

Beautifully penned Linda, as all your work is. Left this reader with a heavy heart.

Chris

[Linda Marie Van Tassell]

Thank you, dear Chris. I appreciate you.