Halfway Home

June 30

Halfway Home

Too far to turn back to the origin, not quite close enough to my destination; I am halfway home. I sometimes forget where I have come from, forget too where I’m bound. I gently remind myself I’m making progress no matter what I know. I am not where I started, not where I am going, but I am not without. There is plenty to do and much to look forward to. I lift my feet one at a time, left then right. I try to keep the steps equally spaced, to prevent past curves and circles. Lost is not as bad as it sounds though I do dream of clarity, stone free shoes and a home cooked meal when I arrive.

Appreciate the bridges in your life

*

REGENERATION

When I am grabbed by the extremity of my thinking

I drop my mind like a reptilian tail.

My feet believe they are in no need of my brain in order to run

Independent flight is the action of the day.

Far from the time and place of my dissection

I find regrowth the problem to be solved.

Unlike a salamanders toe

Can I regenerate my wits to their former ability

Or must I live out my existence with a docked psyche?

My desire curls like a python

But dreams of becoming a phoenix.

When I rise up and when I lay down

June 29

When I rise up and when I lay down

In order to be happy with you I have to learn to be happy without you. I gasp at the pain of it and desperately wish that the above statement were not true, but alas, you are gone in a way that I can never reclaim you and to hold on to what of you is still tentatively available I must release my frightened grasp. A wisp of smoke is not the bonfire of our past, but it is what remains and I breathe it in as best I can. Immediately I realize I am holding on again. I breathe you out, let you go. I want to run screaming throwing you from my bonds, yet another of my attempts at control. So, now it’s time to pray. Not a prayer to get my way, not a prayer to make you stay, not a prayer to make you gone, just a prayer to live on my own. G-d help me please to live my life, please guide me away from strife. I am lost and can’t find my way, Father, hold me til the light of day.

Putty the cracks in your hopes

*

SHIMMER

The water ruffles over metallic sheen

Lap after lap screen the view

And still the gilt reflection shines in my eyes.

Hypnotic, the undulance pulls me near

I stand on the edge, gaze then gawk

I follow the underwater movement and iridescent tremolo

I forget place and time, I lose sight of the fact

Gold isn’t the only thing that shimmers

Sometimes that glint is just a fish

.

Life is full of fins and fantasy

My sponsor suggests--I stop looking for my life

In a wishing well.

Chock Full of Nuts

June 28

Chock Full of Nuts

I am not a coffee maker. I come from a long line of non-coffee drinkers and I don’t drink it myself. I made the coffee for my home group once and was asked not to do it again. This is when I realized my service talents must lay elsewhere, and they do. I am a good sponsor for those who want what I have or at least want to attempt what I am trying to get toward. I am a good representative. I can carry the wishes of my group to the district. I am learning to share my story and carry the message and hope to do it well. So, my question to you is to what service do you most naturally bend?

Save a key from your past

*

PASTRY

Like French pastry--sobriety gets richer with each layer

As I investigate these layers I approach the buttery center

The fat seeps through the years

Making boundaries crisp and intimacy velvety.

Ingredients which ordinarily wouldn’t mix

Somehow blend and counter point one another in a flaky shell

Fruits and nuts improve every bite.

Though there are times which are a bit crumbly

Most of the structure is strong and invention skillful

Pastry and sobriety are compositions of strength and brilliance

Which are meant to be taken internally.

I am not an Island

June 27

I am not an Island

Upon finding myself alive I decided to throw my life back into the sea. I was not living on this dry and sandy shore. The baking sun does nothing to improve me. I was dis-engorged onto the beach, but never belonged there. I tried to see myself as evolving, tried desperately to sprout some legs. Sucked air through my gills and attempted to sing, but I am not ready for this today. Perhaps this is my future, the way the current will carry me that I can’t yet tell. I do know I need the water on my scales and pressure in my lungs right now. I do not know what tomorrow brings or what I am capable of just that I will not fault myself for not having been born a dove.

Remember that time passes

*

COLD AND FLU SEASON

The spiritual cold and flu season is upon me,

I am awash in reaction and confusion.

I have been overexposed to the dry thinking

And barking orders of the cough

So associated with this disability.

My eyes swell and blur with my refusal to accept reality

The tickle of discomfort from inhaling disagreeable ideas

Is small in comparison with the nausea I suffer when I swallow

Every line put forth from my dizzy and congested mind.

There is no pill to dissuade my symptoms

I must raise the heat on this inertiac little bug

Parasites breed in the stagnant water of my paralysis.

If I move in my sobriety, sweat a little and flush my system

I should be able to shake this insidious germ

Then I can reach my hand out to the people

Who caught the spiritual flu from me.

Living as a Megaphone

June 26

Living as a Megaphone

He whispers in my ear, I part my lips and let it all run out. Vacant tube of a thing, his words pour through me nothing to stem the flow, no diversions, no catch basin. He hides behind me, the bully that he is. I stand with rings painted bright concentric, bold. I am nothing; I know it and don’t need him to tell me, my inactions speak louder than his words. He is not the one who bore right through my core; he is just the little worm who is living there secure. I will have to purge him out to be his megaphone no more.

Protect your awareness

*

OPTICAL ILLUSION

From the right angle a hat pin can appear

Taller then the Empire State Building

I can skew my perspective to such an extreme

Or let my disease do it to me.

I can believe myself to be other than I am

The sweetest, kindest, smartest quickest,

Smallest, slowest, lowest, meanest.

I can see myself as all this and more.

As long as I squint with one eye

And look at only half of an issue

I can play the parts and act as if

These things are true.

I can even get others to play along

I can make fantasy fact if I lower the floor

I can die in the basement, many do.

I can turn my face from science

And be the center of all that spins

Or climb the stairs to ground level.

I can turn my mind to facts and fractions

Leave my better-than, less-than universe

And see the height of everything

And stand tall with my eyes open.

For Want of Frith

June 25

For Want of Frith

I feel like I am standing on a trap door, every flex in my footing triggers insecurity. With my arms spread wide, I think the wiser move might be to hold them to my sides. For if the little square did give way my arms might be sheered off with no time served for the tears I’ve cried or the blood now shed sprinkled on the earth. Step from this, I tell myself, do not make delay, for all the ground is not a trap nor all the world a stage. But is it not the trade in pain that sticks me to this spot and keeps me here for all my life just waiting for the drop.

Sweep a path to your goals

*

UTILITY OF EMOTION

I plug into the utility of my emotions

These utilities aid my life as all utilities do.

The duel prong of anger serves to light me up

And gives me strength to set boundaries.

The four line clip cord of pain allows me to keep in touch

With my Higher Power, my friends and my fellows.

I have nothing to share if I can’t stay real about my pain

.

Fear is hard to contain and is carefully piped

Explosions of fear can start so easily,

It’s a good thing its foul odor can be smelled in the air.

The co-axial cable of joy screws neatly into the back of my mind

And gives me delight,

Color and sound are the privileges of sobriety.

Emotions are plainly utilitarian

But they help me survive

And make living into a life.

The Tide in Texas

June 24

The Tide in Texas

I cannot tell you of my pain, how the liars took me off my land, how my heart lay shattered all around, how I’m so foolish and left in town. I cannot show you the big red ball, which to me is a shame or how it bobs and sways or how the tail of it hangs out of reach and taunts me all the day. But growing up to face the facts and finding my strong legs has put me to another tact and sucks the mud away. Sharing my disappointment and my grief is like adding ballast to the boats. It lifts us all instead of sinking me. Not much of a price to pay.

Cruise your assets

*

RENTING JOY

I cannot buy happiness

No matter how much money I spend,

No matter how hard I work,

I can never pay bliss off on layaway.

The angles of escape for glee are phenomenal

I see runaway emotions and concede ownership

When opportunities arise for satisfaction

I pay the fare and take the trip.

The boat isn’t mine to keep

But the tour is forever in my heart.

I can’t take it home and bury it in the yard

I need to enjoy each measure while the music plays.

I remunerate for time in proximity

Delight arrives and stays as long as it likes

I linger at the table and enjoy my desert

Leasing elation is an occasion of celebration.

Living moment to moment

Has given me this chance

So I take it.

Do Not Enter

June 23

Do Not Enter

Putting all the mess securely behind that door is no protection. If the keys are changed will I be able to open it? If the locks retumbled will I crack the combination? Like a demon sealed within a womb emergence is inevitable either upon this mortal plain or cellularly encoded and reborn at a later date. Prison is what holds captive the innocent, evil is always at liberty. Walling off my parts and pieces severs limbs and destroys thinking. Loads of cheesecloth is what I need; filter and refilter, catching all debris. Putting the toxic things to better use and making myself free.

Respect experimentation

*

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

Arrested development was bad enough

The living death sentence it imposes

Is completely unacceptable

My childhood ran down the hill

Away from the mountain of confusion

Which is life in this society

My ability to mature was damaged

And what I learned to do was mutate

I could move laterally but never grow up.

I became the goose being grown for its liver

All the honk and squawk in the world

Couldn’t change my plight

I don’t have to understand how I was let out

Of the prison of addiction

As long as I don’t go back

I’ll never fear breaking out in handcuffs

Or getting locked in my crib.

Notice

June 22

Notice

I put myself on the auction block and wait to see how high a rate I will have to pay to become slave to my illusions. I have worked so ardently to free myself from past enslavements and here I stand naked on this block, selling myself and hoping I will fetch a price. Poisonous pedagogy is atomized, contained in every breath, I don’t know how to live apart from it and thus I stand waiting to be bought. It no longer matters how I got up here the first time, for who cares that slaves enslave. All that matters is that there seems no safe way off this block or out of this web, or down this street; the world seems a bad neighborhood everywhere I turn. Yet I must admit that standing here affords a view I would not have if I were buying. If I am slave I can have hope of someday being free, if I am owner what hope might there be?

Manage your behavior

*

CURRENCY OF FEAR

Fear pays the way for my disease to enter.

Once inside fear seats itself front and center

Fear is the currency that allows entrée to the far reaches,

The coinage is ancient and steeped in tradition.

There is no time or place

Which hasn’t been moneyed with fear

And it’s derivatives I can’t hide from

So my job must be to educate fear.

Fear is real

And has a place as protector and warning

But fear expands with ignorance

And devalues the purpose of caution.

Fear cannot buy safety

Though I can use it

To pay the toll

Across the bridge to balance.

In the Beginning is the End

June 21

In the Beginning is the End

I wonder if the road would show the reflection of its end would I walk down it still. I always decide that I wouldn't want to miss anything, not even the most painful things, yet this may simply be a flaw in my upbringing. An over-valuing of survival. What of you? If the knowledge of beginning and end were within your grasp would you begin? Would you flee the end? This end or every end? Or is it the beginning that you fear? And why not, for doesn’t every beginning hold within it every end?

Enjoy the season you find yourself in

*

THE POODLE

Those pointed toes, slender legs

Carry her across my outstretched mid.

What a blessing to be sober long enough

To have never done any unseemly or frightful thing

Which might have caused apprehension in this firefly of a dog.

I read until she lays her neck over my mouth

For her kisses and ear rubs.

She is the center of the universe and I needn’t compete

I am content to serve as a resting place and nurse maid

I no longer look to be everyone’s pet.

I can pamper and indulge this little one

She has the whole stage to herself.

I can be her faithful audience

Having given up my farce.

Who is Who

June 20

Who is Who

Remake the bed for the restless child in you who sleeps better if attention is paid to the small kindnesses. Placating her saves you the sound of her plaintive cry. If you teach yourself or allow yourself to grow fond of her, this child, you, these simple chores will seem light, refreshing, natural. If you fight her she will grow strong and you will grow weak. Don’t resist nature. Don’t resist your nature. Take a hug to share as you would take an apple divided on a walk in the woods with a companion. Share emotional embraces, let your thoughts surround her when you make plans and do deals. If you treat her as if she is the best of you, you will become the best of her.

Collaborate with your missed cues

*

SMOG

When I burnout the smoke affects everyone in the surrounding area

I forget to keep my wick trimmed and lamp full

I empty out and my light grows dim

I am responsible for maintenance and upkeep.

If I don’t protect my own radiance I will lose it

And the darkness will be felt throughout the neighborhood

I can’t risk the death of illumination or incur smoldering haze.

Fortification of my sobriety is a simple task

If I make proper use of resources.

When I turn energy to obligation I am distracted

And separated from my source

Then the source I am to others is extinguished.

I can only light the darkness where I am

I can’t illuminate someone else’s path

Nor should I pollute the way with smoke and vapor

Due to a lapse in my spiritual condition.

Tea Totaler

June 19

Tea Totaler

My alcoholism was anonymous even while I was active. My destruction was internal, outside evidence kept to a minimum. It is easy to understand why so many from my past as well as my present are shocked to see me a member in good standing for a club they never saw me pay the price to join. But cost doesn’t always advertise in the public square. I know the score, the numbers etched upon my soul. I need to be well even if you didn’t know I am sick. I take the medicine; offer a smile to those who think it prophylactic and keep upon my path. Just because you didn’t know the contents of my bottle doesn’t mean I didn’t earn the tag on my tea.

Attend the clues your body gives you

*

ONIONS

I heard people in meetings sharing about peeling onions

They say they peel layer after layer until it’s all gone!

What the hell is that all about?

I demand in the general direction of my sponsor.

Zealotry, it’s about zealotry

I peel my onions too,

I have many layers of dried-up, paper-thin rhetoric

Which I use to protect myself.

I have to slit this papery husk

And eject myself from the illusion

To get the living and vital usefulness underneath

Then what?

Then I try to let God decide where is the best place

To add flavor, stew is good but salad is a treat

I can go anywhere once the waste is stripped away.

What about the issues you haven’t worked out yet?

I bait my sponsor

Well those are other onions-

Is all she would say.

Limen

June 18

Limen

Do you leave when it is time to go or are you the type who exits early? Does departure time find you lingering trying to squeeze out one more minute rooted in this spot? Are you the kind of person who loves the street, but avoids the parade? Can you bear to go, bear to stay, bear to think that the world exists beyond this door? Do you move with the other sheep when all the crowd says, “Baa.” Are you fleet with a sky full of clouds obeying the breeze, flaunting the tides? Do you change with the seasons or are you passed from hand to hand, living your life in the snow of a globe? My life is my life, but the most vital evidence of how I live it is what I do on thresholds.

Shake the trunk of certainty and see what falls to the ground

*

RECLAMATION ARTIST

I stand over the refuse can and peer in.

I drive slowly past the piles of curbside discards

I have so much trouble accepting

There is no reclaiming most of this growing mass.

There must be an alternate plan but I can’t see it yet.

I surround myself with hopeful stacks and wishful trinkets

I want to make a new world from old

Save past relationships and make them somehow fresh.

I don’t want to drown, I fear I can’t think fast enough

To keep the wave from breaking over us all

I will maintain an open mind

And be grateful my life was retrieved from the dust bin.

I’ll steal peeks at what has been put out for lost.

I was once lost too.

Poe-etiquette

June 17

Poe-etiquette

Cosmic questions cross the sky,

I wonder but don’t ask why

I pitch the tent, but don’t stay the night

I borrow money and don’t pay the rent

I sooth myself but can’t be content

I earn my keep though it is all been spent

The real true meanings are pushed away,

Has ready tragedy come to stay

Forever darkness, no more light of day

Cheerful greeting left to lay

All the poets bring their knives

For blood letting’s become their prize

Here I sit and tend the boat

Rocking dingy out to moor

I play the Raven, black and poor

I dare not speak it but in my mind sing “Never more”

Be wary of magical thinking

*

RECOGNIZABLE NONEXISTENCE

You will never take time to tell the truth

You will always take time to tell a joke,

As you run from your life

I see the familiar vapor trails of an unlived life.

When I flee my life through caretaking

I leave the same mist of unfulfilled desire behind me

I look at your potential

And the damage you do by not being here

I turn the magnifying glass on me

And search for the same trends.

I feel abandoned by you

The you, you never were

But always should have been

I pray for the key

Which will get me on the other side

Of the door you never opened.

I hope to live life

As it is

Rather than the comedy

It can never be.

What I Heard Through the Snow

June 16

What I Heard Through the Snow

The commentator’s voice fades in and out as the reception is lost and found among the static of my drive home. In here is a pattern, a connect the dots matrix; I try to feel my way too as I weave past the slow and stubborn traffic. Like a call from the wilderness distorted through a storm, my frantic thoughts obscure, sometimes distort the content, the intent, the soul of a message I so desperately need. Broadcast warnings, safety suggestions, help and hope are torn to slivers and rewoven in my careworn brain. The distraction of the road allows the subliminal heart beat to tattoo in my ear then my chest, all the way to my toes, bodily acceptance overpowers my relentless mind and clarity is achieved, no matter the drifts.

Lay a hand on improbability

*

ALONE IN A NEW WAY

I am restored.

I have my sanity like a Spring coat

I am not sure I need it

But it’s nice to have nevertheless.

I prayed for this state of reason

Believing it would give me entree

To a world where I was a late arrival

To a party I am no longer sure

Will ever take place.

I stand in the entrance hall

And practice new dance steps.

I search the space for prospective partners

But rarely see anyone who is swaying

To the same beat.

I am grateful for my sanity

Even if I have to enjoy it alone.

Down to the Watership

June 15

Down to the Watership

The immoderate champions immoderation; the glutton recommends consumption, more often than not a drunk will pour you a drink It is part of the social norm to conform to the addiction of the day. If we are all high we laugh at each other’s jokes and there is less finger pointing about the mess. When we are all in this together we sink or we swim, but we mustn’t look around. Like the rabbits who cannot ask, “Where?” We try to look at ease with dying and contented with our lot. More must be better for we can’t survive on less than what we’ve got.

Design trees for your secret garden

*

WATER BABIES

Timeless babies bobble in their underwater positions

Voiceless cherubs bounce and wink

The river of their wisdom to my feeble mind.

The noise of silence wrinkles and tinkles

As the waves crash soundlessly above.

My head fills

I must surface but beg not to lose my connection

When I break the tension of top-side sobriety

I turn these angels to screened-off faithfulls

I must owe all I have to these aquatic infants

Every hope, all my fear is held to test in the face of,

Swimming heroines and their embryonic grave.

Circular Needles

June 14

Circular Needles

I react badly when I find a loose thread because I never know what might be unraveling. I have knit my heart out; have dropped an occasional stitch to be sure. Unbeknown to me these little holes in my logic wait for the stress of overextension to run through the length of my life, untying earnest work. If I could catch these unsecured thoughts before it all goes too far, I might have a chance to hook back into the main fabric and prevent this unfurling of collateral. When the cord is cut and the line flaps freely real panic ensues. Even if capture of both ends is possible, knots are awkward, unseemly and gauche. I was planning a seamless life, smooth and beyond reproach. My fear of reprisal flares before the ever-burning coals of abject self-doubt have a chance to be felt. This banked inferno generates the things which bake and fry my nerves, burn my threads and disintegrate my mantle. I need to put out the fire before I re-knit my world.

Teach desire to breathe

*

TOO FAR, TOO FAST

Balloons filled with hydrogen

Race the atmosphere and fly away

The effect is stunning

So much lift for just pennies

The easy way has no line, no waiting

Fast dirty service is available

Risk assessment is counter-balanced

With dramatic outcome

Low initial cost and instant gratification.

How can I not want to rise above the crowd?

How can I not want it now?

Hydrogen is quick and plentiful,

Volatile, yes but why should this bother me?

I have a Higher Power to protect me

It’s not as if I were playing with fire,

I am only tempting it!

Sanitized

June 13

Sanitized

All the water in the well gone dry belongs to me. Such an offer, how could I refuse? I stand as near the edge as I can get and try my best to peer, is the goldfish alive? For you see this is still my best hope, you, the source are also my wishing well, more than just survival you are prospect, neigh dream. You say that what’s left is mine, but you think of it as incidental, not a need, merely a want. Someplace deep, beyond where you admit, you know that life is dependant on desire, but will play mine off as casual when it becomes inconvenient to your drives and blindness. Eunuchs do not immediately perish, but you must confess they do not live. I stand here a lock to which there is no longer a key and whether I am open or closed it doesn’t matter for the partnership of change is desiccated and I do not care for a waterless solution.

Check yourself for false steps

*

INVENTORY

When you say “self” who do you mean

Asked my sponsor

Do you mean the lovely velvet child,

Or the façade you built to show others?

Well I wish I could answer you, I do, my reply.

I see the shrine you construct in your sobriety

I love that you made it.

When you talk about ridding yourself of self--

I doubt you mean this edifice.

Do you speak of some creature in the past

Do you know of whom you speak

Are you parroting, then assuming this thing exists

Solely for you to now dispose of it?

I thought “self “ was self-evident- I feebly interject.

I want names and locations

If you only suspect some of these entities

Please provide me with a full accounting of your suspicions

I also want, to the best of your ability, the origin of these individuals

I am unwilling to cosign their disposal without a proper bookkeeping

I see by the bright look on your face,

I have made myself clear, she said with conviction.

So this is what you meant by self-inventory, I say and sigh.

Dido

June 12

Dido

Either I can have a bad relationship that I never wanted or no relationship and the painful isolation of having been lied to and deceived by someone who, in theory, should have been trustworthy. You are off to war and I am agape not having realized until too late that you are a soldier. The fact is that one of these things will occur; you will be killed by a machine which cares nothing for you and sees you as its enemy or destroyed by the organization that sees you as its own or you will throw yourself on your sword and keep from bothering anyone else with this task. There is no scenario where you are the One you promised me you’d be. No homecoming, no welcoming arms to hold me. I stand on the sidewalk a garbage pail of cold water poured over my shock and dismay. To my grief you say that you have heard it all before, so why did you set me up to say it all again? I am heart stricken and cut in a place to obvious to hide and too hidden to speak of. You have no time to talk, no aid to give, no love to spare. I thought I was yours, but see that I have been swept from your life by the flood of a large gauge hose and water of questionable origin. Everything is wet but nothing is clean. This is an unholy act and I am defeated and living in Carthage.

Forgive loneliness

*

FABULOUS

I don’t care what else is on the inventory-----

You still have to take responsibility for FABULOUS

Said my sponsor with a determined look on her face.

But you don’t understand------

The other things on the list make it impossible

For me to be FABULOUS

You can’t see how incapable I truly am, I say

As I collapse into a pathetic heap in the overstuffed chair.

What you don’t comprehend is that FABULOUS

Is not affected by your other little grumblings

You can’t tarnish FABULOUS

It doesn’t wear away with burden or neglect .

This is why no matter how far you bury it

Or misname it, or even flatly deny it

FABULOUS shines like a beacon

And you end up with every Todd, Nick and Martha

On your doorstep.

Expecting you to be who you are

And let them warm in the glow

So my cherub--you can fight it or live with it

But FABULOUS is here to stay