Loneliness Eats My Lunch

January 11

LONELINESS EATS MY LUNCH

There are days loneliness eats my lunch and I can’t fight back.  How can I stand it?  How can it still be this bad?  I pull out the old chestnuts:  If I’m not happy with what I have, how could I be happier with more?   And, Even tickets on the fifty yard line don’t interest me; I came to play!  I roll them around.  I think of the other slogans, the tidbits, the smiles and hugs.  Still, there are days my lunch is gulped down and I sit with my plate empty.  Pickle juice, coleslaw drool is small comfort.  Actually, it’s a jeer.  I stare at my empty plate.  I turn it and twist it.  I stick out my tongue at it.

“You're good company,” says my sponsor.

Then why am I alone?  If I’m so good, if my company is worthwhile, why do I sit here hungry and desperate?

“Are you sure you are?”

It sure feels that way.

“Well it might be true.”

And it might not.  I get it.  I am unhooked from myself; I’m ignoring the multitude at my elbow, looking for someone in my lap.  I’m holding out for old terms from a new contract.  I am loved by people who aren’t trying to consume me and I am letting my expectations dine for free.

Imagine who the wind visited before you and who it is on its way to visit now.

*

Pepo

My father used to destroy a perfectly good watermelon

by cutting a triangle in the top

and pouring a bottle of vodka into it.

I used to destroy my perfectly good melon the same way.

Emulating bad ideas in new ways

was a onetime pastime of mine.

Giving it up was harder than I had expected.

Flawed thinking blends so freely with my mental landscape

I have trouble distinguishing it.

Condemning the action and not the man

is not usually my preferred method.

I would rather condemn the man.

But this leaves me with the actions in place

and him long gone and though I prefer him gone

I will recreate him within myself

if I don’t flush his actions as well.

I have a good pumpkin on my shoulders

but it is my job to keep it intact.

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

I'm not Brian

June 1

I’m not Brian

I thought life was based on a system of ‘I will suffer and that will exempt you’.  Then I would be horrified when you suffered, after I had already done so ahead of you.  In an attempt to ease my dismay I would look to see who had broken the pact, you or me.  Had I not endured sufficiently to protect you?  Had you left the safety of the umbrella of sanctuary?  Panic gives birth to blame and blame of course births nasty biting things that run loose and bury in all the tender spots.  Now, the goals I tend are to end the breeding of those sharp and painful beasties, stop laying my neck upon the alter and start telling better jokes.

Scramble cracked perceptions

*

DANCE OF DEATH

Honeyed words pour from lips

Shades of doubt color my mind

Stained glass eyes look to blank walls

And picture the gallery of imagination

Attempting to sell it for hard currency

Sirens sing from the throats of mute men

The screams which rise in me fall on deaf ears

Paradox feeds controversy but it needn’t

Evolution from a cesspool is repugnant

Though process is steady made

Inertia is violent if that is from whence it came

Afterbirth is always bloody and humans not always nice

I must live and heal as others climb up and slide down

I must keep the beat and forget the dance of death.