Simultaneous Acceptance

February 8

Simultaneous Acceptance

Being typical is a difficult thing to live with, but I am typical.  Being extraordinary is a challenging thing to live up to, but this is also mine to bear, you see I am a typical alcoholic after all.  Walking with one foot in each camp is not enough. I must simultaneously accept both my common commonality and my lottery winner uniqueness if I am to travel hand in hand with my Higher Power.  If I don’t integrate this double reality, allow it to imprint my thoughts the way it is tattooed in my DNA I can not possibly take the biggest step of all and drop my judgment of these things so that humility can dwell within.  You see there is not enough room in the vortex of my humanness to accommodate the jags of verdict and the desire for the sublime smoothness of humility. I can’t chase humility I have had to face that, but I can remove the impediments to its residence.

Have some compassion for your wounds

*

READY

Ready or not here it comes.
Life on terms of its own.
Bracing for the onslaught of gravity
I grip too well the implements of past days.

Fearing the pressure, I lay in my shallow grave,
The ground having been scooped out by my own hand.
Withering from expectation, my blood runs slow and dark,
Reducing to coagulated futility, loosing my life in anticipation of death.

Attempts at being less, as means of protection,
Less is not a solution.
Fading does not make life more livable
It makes me unavailable.

Readiness is my responsibility, it is momentary, momentary is sufficient.
Sobriety is nothing more than lining myself up with the needs of this instant
I need go no further,
Whole solutions are not my department.

Showing up,

dressed and washed,

ball and bat in hand if possible,

Just making it to the lineup is my full-time job.
Even if I never swing

It is better than being buried in the field

Popcorn Flavored Lollipop

December 17

POPCORN FLAVORED LOLLIPOP

I can’t know it.  I can’t believe it.  The world of popcorn flavored lollipops is now being visited upon me.  Both a surprise and a comfort, a popcorn flavored lollipop is given to me by the gas station attendant.  A blast of sugar and salt waken my tongue.  What can a mind do in the face of a buttered, salted bonbon on a stick?  I wouldn’t have thought of it, not in a million years.  This is somehow a source of hope to me.  There are open-minded people living in the world around me.  I often pray for creative thinking on the part of my Higher Power; I inadvertently dismiss the populace who is producing prodigies of ingenious originality and cunning.  I want the world to be gifted with what sobriety has given me.  Candy is not world peace but many great things start with a little sweetness.

Real rules can’t be broken.

*

Not My Best Friend

No matter how tightly I hug a lump of coal

I will not prevail in turning it into a diamond.

Some days I accept this better than others.

My desire may affect the coal,

but this affect is not diamond producing;

though it is stress producing.

I know it stresses me and chills me to the bone.

I had thought of coal as warming,

but the disparate love of coal proves to be anything but.

I have pinned my hopes

on what this lump had the potential to become

rather than acceptance of what it is and now.

I see I must light my own fire

and know the coal is not mine.

How Things Seem

April 26

HOW THINGS SEEM

Not everyone who pushes me down is my enemy and not everyone who pulls me up is my friend.  I have been seduced by the closeness of people who used me as their shield.  When I have been held in the place of honor, the point man of life, I forgot that made me the replacement target for the one who stood behind me.  I had been offended as I was thrown to the ground.  The hands that shoved me, I saw as my rejecters.  I was spared the tragedy and peril of the thing that flew by my ear thanks only to the grace of a thrust in the right direction.  Accurate appraisal is my weakness.  Seeing things for what they are is hard.  Things are rarely how they seem.

Grow tall with your grain and the years will grow around you.

*

Would You Rather a Lamp?

I am a girl filled with expectations.

Like a ginger jar filled, stuffed caulker block full,

though the filling is the part which is unpredictable;

It could be match books, or seashells,

acorns or all those pretty capsules.

This makes me erratic and sometimes volatile.

Are you strong enough or far too sane

to stay and help me sort the contents?

It’s lonely work without a witness or a spotter.

I rather be alone than with you reluctantly,

so please try to shuck that husk and remain.

Yes, I am sometimes capricious, but I try never to be cruel.

I know sometimes you convince yourself

that leaving me to my own devices is the wisest of courses,

but don’t be fooled;

You disappear due to your weakness not strength

and the worst part about the price of abandonment

is that everyone has to pay it.

Yes, That Too

September 11

YES, THAT TOO



When kindness becomes a weakness, when mental agility becomes emotional instability, it’s time to reassess everything. I cannot leave any thing off my inventory because my grandma, or society or the preacher says it’s a good thing to be. Every blessing can be a curse; all my characteristics have their dark side. I have to list the entirety of my cargo and keep a watchful eye. I have to moderate my investment in all my abilities or I could lose myself. Warmth is nice but I don’t want Death Valley. Integrity requires balance or depraved indifference will be the outcome. Weak and strong, right and wrong, it all goes on the scale.


Be generous with yourself, then others.