“Empty”

  

c. 2026 Rod Ice

All rights reserved

(8-26)

 

Empty on the inside, where daylight can’t go

A signature of self, sunken in the shadows

This is the consciousness chosen for me

By a chance meeting of minds, and biology

Were those two lovers free to choose what they wrought

I am certain their seed could have been carefully caught

Planted and grown, until a harvest would come

With a celebration of life over what they had done

But this sapling they sired and held in the womb

Caused a cryptic chant on a cloudy afternoon

My name was intended to bring joy when repeated

But soon they discovered that their wish was defeated

My face and its twin, in the mirror reflected

Became a sad sign of goodness, negated, rejected

And with that bad burden of guilt on my back

I carried those books off to school in a knapsack

Like an albatross dangling from a knotted piece of cord

Like a letter of scarlet, this marker, I wore

Heavy it was ‘round my neck as a curse

A warning from those who were not of this universe

Spat upon daily, the custom was kept

No one thought it rude to provoke this effect

I wiped it away, while bowing my head

This callous companion, an unbroken thread

It tempered my thinking, and colored my art

With a curious twist of a paintbrush in the dark

This portrait revealed what could not be shown

A song of salvation, a hymn for a new home

Carried as a tortoise shell from one spot to the next

A keepsake of literature, for a librarian to protect

Cocky and brazen, the mockery would echo

With the cackling of macaws and a counting of crows

This pecking at personalities was part of the routine

I came to accept what I could not wash clean

And eventually saw that my image had changed

From a child born to wander, into a vessel, reclaimed

A soothsayer’s apprentice, crystal ball at the fingertips

A poem on the parchment, a rhyme on the lips

This odd incantation brought much more than relief

It also enabled the career of a thief

Stealing back gifts, that were taken by force

Reversing the ruin, as a matter of course

Generating heat from this moment of truth

Keenly magnetic, and yet strangely aloof

Now that the code of silence has passed

A set of new values are enforced by an iconoclast

With a swing of the scepter, bold and ingrained

A crackle of connections made deep in the brain

Too long was this dormant ebb allowed to endure

Distilled to its essence by a dominance, impure

The keys on a ring serve to unlock this prize

A scripture of penance for the one duly disguised

A leap from the cradle, as liberties hold sway

No longer a babe in the woods, born yesterday

Shrill sirens may call with a temptation to flee

But the worth of a seeker will be recognized, eventually

At odds with the mapmaker’s chart of terrain

A shield from the storms, a parasol in the rain

Ducking into doorsteps along the ancient avenue

A black whisper of coal from a chimney flue

This is the result of a life lived in haste

Not vacant or superfluous, not given to waste

When the hour strikes a chime in the chest of a clock

And incites the ritual of a crowing cock

Then will the grandeur of a goblin go cold

With a changing of guards, the new for the old

The darkness will yield what was held in its grasp

And the coming of age will transpire, at last

This crockery kept for a purpose, unknown

Will be full to its brim and finally shown

As a treasure of tricks, incantations galore

A chessboard cleared, forevermore

Put on display where no eye may close

No tongue will deny this bloom of the thorny rose

It stands as a testament to goodwill, immortal

A step through the looking glass, a jump through the portal

One side to the other, from shame to renown

A pawn for the pirates, now wearing a crown

Never glistening with the glamour of a monarch who rules

But sturdy enough to replicate the tools

Which conjured a miracle from salts of the earth

I am what I am, let it validate my worth