Mortification

August 10

MORTIFICATION

Lime with envy, I built a wall around.  Love and hate are enclosed, brick and stone.  Rigor of extremities, the discipline of ages falls so short.  I make no in-depth connections; I coat externals with glue, stack reactions and let the bombs fly.  I mix and crush old habits and bad ideas, make a paste.  I am setting myself up again.  Abstinence becomes the pestle of bludgeoning and abasement.  I am hard and I am hollow; with wounded pride, I subjugate my soul.  My life is reduced to a powder.  I am mortified.

Spread oil from your navel out.

*

Michal Rovner

I have numbered all the blocks in my ancestral walls.

This has enabled me to recreate them

stone by stone everywhere I go.

It all fits to create the tomb I now have to learn to leave.

I must change the equation and reorder the numbers

allowing these rocks to be recycled

and find a wonderful useful life

as a stairway out of this pit of despair.

What was once an edifice to lives unlived

is now able to facilitate elevation,

a restoration of a level playing field.

It was not wrong for me to catalog the stone

and there was no way for me to leave them behind,

but nothing matches the satisfaction of using them to build a life,

except for the ability to live in it.

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

No Stone Left Behind

May 14

No Stone Left Behind

An anchor attaches at the lower extremities stabilizing me, an albatross is the thing weighing me down from the top, it tips me, throws me to the ground.  I must remember to choose ferrous instruments over long necked birds.  Often it’s not the amount of drag, but where it’s affixed.  There are so many variables, so much to think through, yet I often react and pick up what seems as harmless as a flock of sea gulls and turns out to be worse than an iron maiden. Leaving no tern unstoned is bad, but do I really have the time to do it the other way around?

Visualize the vapor trails from your words as they fly away from you

*

CLOCKS

When the clock stops

I wind it up or replace the battery

I have to-----time doesn’t end

Because the arms grow slow.

The device wears down

But the day is not over

Even if my internal metronome is bollixed

The planets keep revolving.

I can’t step off the world

It doesn’t stop turning for me

I don’t always have to keep my head up

But I must always go on.

There is no going back

I can only remember yesterday

I can’t return to it though it’s so close

The flowers are still fresh.

Sometimes I struggle

To keep my hands off the past

Those are the days I secure my future

And wind the clocks

Michal Rovner

August 10

Michal Rovner

I have numbered all the blocks in my ancestral walls. This has enabled me to recreate them stone by stone everywhere I go. It all fits to create the tomb I now have to learn to leave. I must change the equation and reorder the numbers allowing these rocks to be recycled and find a wonderful useful life as a stairway out of this pit of despair. What was once an edifice to lives unlived is now able to facilitate elevation, a restoration of a level playing field. It was not wrong for me to catalog the stones and there was no way for me to leave them behind, but nothing matches the satisfaction of using them to build a life, except for the ability to live in it.

Take a look at yourself from a distance

*

THE SEDUCTION OF SOBRIETY

I was seduced away from my duties

As an alcoholic by the promise of sobriety,

Allegiance to my disease was sidelined.

Alluring stability and beguiling integrity

Curried favor with my desperate heart,

Pulling me from the arranged marriage of addiction.

How could I cling to the corpse of dependence

When sanity shimmered just out of reach,

Then not out of reach but within my grasp.

I couldn’t resist the golden flicker of life.

I had been bound to death

Unable to see an alternative.

My loyalty to loss and grief slipped from me

And I limped into the daylight,

Like the widow of the night.

I have been lured to my senses

By a love like no other,

The love of life.