All Better Now

May 17

ALL BETTER NOW

Mother kissed the booboo and I wait for the admonition to take effect.  Waiting, I count the problems like telephone poles on a long journey.  What will it be like, the world all better?  The anticipation nearly breaks me for a while until waiting turns to disbelief.  A chill fills the space and 'all better' becomes the cry.  My sponsor calls for moderation and lowering my expectation.  The child’s ears ring with the promise to be fulfilled.  She can not give herself over to a world where a Band-Aid is not a cure-all but only a cover for the slow work of internal healing, scars and all.  Sheer survival is not sufficient for the screaming toddler; heartbreak from injustice calls for more than endurance.  But, alas, a kiss is all we have.

Time pulls the tide and the tide pulls you; let it.

*

Who Rang?

Examine the instillation of your buttons

as a process of discovery for disabling them.

Pay attention to the wiring but also to the hardware.

Sometimes the advertising is the thing

which keeps alive something better off put to rest.

Many things are rooted in other pots

and have a lifeline from outside of the current host.

All the connections and housing should be explored

as well as what work the mechanism does once pressed.

Is there a gong, tinkling bells?

Does it release the wolves from their den or tiger from his lair?

Information is a tool which never fails to help me

in disassembling the traps and their triggers

I must not shy from the gathering.

You are reading selections from Sober on the Way to Sane and More Lines From My Life by Sherrie Theriault

http://www.amazon.com/Sober-On-The-Way-Sane/dp/1440417342/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1388576888&sr=8-1&keywords=sober+on+the+way+to+sane

http://www.amazon.com/More-Lines-From-My-Life/dp/1448677203/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1388576956&sr=8-1&keywords=More+Lines+From+My+Life

Dominoes

February 24

DOMINOES

  What happens to the dominoes that do not fall, the show cut short by my sobriety?  The tiles stand front to back; the least foul respiration will send them to their preordained destination.  I hold my breath as I glance over the display of generations.  The design is set.  Painstaking patterns lain with meticulous, ingenious deft.  Skill for falling, laying waste.  Sad pictures told and retold in speedy drops.  The rhythmic fall of dominoes turning eight blocks to a corner.  Direction shifts but the descending continues.  I can not occupy this ground.  I must not upset the arrangement.  I can not clear it from this world.  I must walk away from the upright mosaic, a flower waiting to bloom with destruction.  I have to move.  Climb the steep slopes.  Vertical life, leaving the tumbling destruction for Yet.  Grasping the sides of the cliffs, I haul myself off the tableland, a place set for a show of lying down.  I build my strength and keep off the well-known flats.  This is a life apart.  The game is there if I return.  It is a game no one can win.

Carry yourself.

*

Over Troubled Water

Though God might be everything,

for a long time God was a resident

of an unknown country;

a theoretical citizen of a theoretical land.

It took some time for me to spy yon distant country

and longer to realize what a miracle it was

that I could see my neighbor,

holding my optics turned around the way they were.

Turning over the binoculars came long before

introductions or interaction, but it was an important step

in relationship building nonetheless.

Having seen the island my mind fled

due to the trumped up stories about its resident.

Open minded observation cleared up the fallacies

of ogres and super heroes,

But this only told me who God wasn’t

and nothing of who God  is.

Direct knowledge was going to require direct contact.

I began throwing tethered balls of string

across the channel that separates us

and was shocked, delighted, horrified

to find that the far end would get tied to the far shore.

I threw twine next, then rope,

after a few successful repetitions

I was able to shinny across for the first time.

Filled with fear and trepidation

I arrived on the opposing bank

and stood shivering more from nerves than cold.

I saw no one and felt much.

I didn’t stay long and swam back.

The first plank bridge was simple and straight.

Having this link somehow emboldened me

to explore the land of my own country.

With great regularity I found narrow margins.

I crafted a new bridge for each slender passage.

The more I learn about me

the more regular my connection to that inner land.

Like something shy of my wrath,

God made an illusive sight.

The more I calmed the more often the sightings.

We made acquaintance and then we made friends.

I’ve widened some bridges and God has widened others.

We stroll together often hand in hand.

We talk and laugh, cry and joke.

Occupancy is fluid, times I live on the island

and others the surrounding continent

sometimes we live together

other times we are one another’s quests.

All the days are not happy ones

but we are  always happy to be together

and more than that I will not ask.

You are reading selections from Sober on the Way to Sane and More Lines From My Life by Sherrie Theriault

http://www.amazon.com/Sober-On-The-Way-Sane/dp/1440417342/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1388576888&sr=8-1&keywords=sober+on+the+way+to+sane

http://www.amazon.com/More-Lines-From-My-Life/dp/1448677203/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1388576956&sr=8-1&keywords=More+Lines+From+My+Life

Isolation

March 10

Isolation

I isolate from you, I isolate from others, I isolate from friends, isolate from G-d, I practice connecting by connecting with my sponsor, practice connecting with my friends, practice connecting with G-d, finally I am able to connect with you, the first thing I do is isolate us from them, my sponsor, my friends, my G-d, they are all now on the outside of the bubble of us and I must start again, only now I must try to maintain the you and me connection while at the same time connect with the rest.  Are we still us if I am connected with them?  Are we still us if we are in the midst of the crowd I think of, the crowd I call, them?  Just because they see us as us, refer to us as us, are we still us if we don’t feel like us to me?  If I don’t know us in the landscape of hordes are we still we?  Isolation is an attempt at preservation, how can we best be preserved without being pressed in a book or jarred or jammed?  You say let us be, and I say that’s how I got us; are you sure that’s how I keep us? And you hug me tight.

Bloom with or without a garden

*

THE WALL OF PLEASANT

How quickly I am protected by a sweet smile
A disarming countenance and gentle phrase
Save my skin and psyche.

No longer do I defend my reputation as a wit or critic
I let it all flow by.
The simpler I appear the more effective the facade.

The energy I conserve not fighting loosing battles
Is well spent in the company of like minded sober friends
In the pursuit of sober lives.

I stay out of the fray and behind this partition
It's insides are posted with announcements proclaiming my opinions
And the lunacy of the person on the other side.

The reading of these notices
Does not persuade me to dismantle the enclosure 

Good Samaritan Pie

December 16

GOOD SAMARITAN PIE

The meal prepared from my cognition, the bread and jam of humility, salad of expectation, roast of determination and Good Samaritan pie, wait on the table to be devoured.  The courses pass and come dessert my kindly intentions are cut to wedges and pushed from setting to setting.  I can, with dollop after dollop, cover the requisite desires of this tart in an attempt to deny my addiction to fixing or I can serve up the plain truth.  I help and help and wander down roads looking for lost puppies to return to their homes.  I must admit my longing to lend support is sometimes half-baked, and if kept to home and hearth it might serve me better and make a sweeter dish.  Assistance is best in proportion to the meal.  I must live my life and save my pie till last.

Hold each other's hands but explore.

*

Touch Your Toes

Funny how we deal with feet.

I have seen a woman cradle hers

and treat it like the dearest babe.

I know some folks who shun their feet;

can barely stand to think of them,

let alone to touch them.

There are the Mani-Pedi people

who leave it in the hands of others.

I met a guy who soaks them soft

and tucks little bits of cotton

under the corners of his nails.

I know too,

the woman with the snarling crusty dogs

that serve to others as a warning.

My grandma warns me

not complain about my shoes

lest I meet the man who has no feet,

but I doubt I would fit in his.

Electric Connections

December 10

ELECTRIC CONNECTIONS

I step into a room and take its currency.  Is the flow good?  Steady?  The pulse even and strong?  Where are the power brokers and are they sharing the time or using their magnetic personalities to draw the current off others? I check the complement of resisters, examine their stripes and assess the possibilities. I pump in energy when I can and take when it is available. I keep in mind we are all transformers and change is possible for everyone as long as we make the connections.

Rich mistakes make good batter.

*

What’s that in the Pool?

Parts of the Rocky Mountains look like

algae bloom out in the Indian Ocean.

Parts of me look like parts of you

and here we go with oneness

being nothing more than

pattern recognition and optical illusion;

though I hope there is more to it than that.

My hurt might not be your hurt,

but I have a sense of it.

Likewise your hope may not resemble mine,

but it cheers you just the same

and we are all the better for it.

We needn’t replicate each other

or attempt imitation,

but recognition is a kind thing

and art is what we all have to share.