The Worm

June 12

THE WORM

Because there is never enough punishment for those who inflict hurt, I punish myself.  Only I can tell if the depth of the pain is a match; only I can judge when  enough is enough.  This is the turn of the drunken worm who lives in my brain.  The belief that what began in pain must end there, too.  Even now in recovery, I persist in hurting myself a thousand tiny ways. setting trap after trap to catch the perpetrators,  I make my heart a mine field, a place unfit for me to live.  I must sober the worm and let myself off the hook.

Dip intentions into action and let them firm up.

*

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.

Bottle the Acid

June 11

BOTTLE THE ACID

My sponsor said to bottle the acid and so I did.  I sat back in smug reflection until the plumbing backed up.  I grabbed the fast solution and poured it down the drain.  My sponsor smiled as I learned the baser things will eat my life away, too.  I can never just decant power and expect it to sweep clean the clogged pathways in my recovery.  Sloshing caustic medicine into open orifices brought me here.  I long for the ease of a liquid resolution.  In the end, I must clean the pipes myself.  The traps are simpler to cleanse the less I’ve lied.  Telling myself I don’t have to get my hands or heart dirty is the biggest lie of all.

Eat lunch with relish.

*

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 dependent 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.

Dance of Death

June 10

DANCE OF DEATH

Honeyed words pour from painted 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 progress is steadily 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.

Float your expectations and check for daggers underneath.

*

Dido

Either I can have a bad relationship that I never wanted

or no relationship and the painful isolation of having been lied to,

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

Gulping

June 9

GULPING

The plug that lodges in my throat from too much, too fast, causes the anxiety to rise in me.  The panic fulls my contracting muscles into rock solid revolt.  'I can’t live' is the predictable result.  Gulping attention, acclaim, excitement, sex does the same thing.  My heart clots and my personality stops in mid flow.  Everything, in carefully chosen well-chewed bites, makes the process proceed.  My life works along workable paths if I stay away from oversized freight.  I can never swallow myself whole; why would I keep trying to imbibe giants like desire?

Tumble your heart like a stone then warm it.

*

Prize Catch

There is a reason that fish flap and twist

when they are caught,

why even though they are in the air

they fight for the life that once was theirs

Only martyrs go without a fight,

it is good to know that at least this vice is not mine.

When I did not love my life its loss was not an actual change,

there was nothing to hold onto, nothing to struggle for.

Now I thrash at the feel of my loved life slipping from me.

It is good to know I have passion enough to rally a defense.

My life can be taken from me, but I haven’t lost my will to fight.

Three Roosters

June 8

THREE ROOSTERS

The three roosters come to the meeting to hear themselves crow.  The membership purely spectators in the longest, lowest, loudest sobriety competition.  Those of us in the fray are like picked-on-puppies who learn slowly not to put our heads up to spare our eyes and hearts.  The same noise comes repeatedly.  Suspicion is never aroused; the heads nod at all the right places, orchestrated for ego and nothing else.  The meeting is closed with a momentary prayer for the still suffering in and out of the room.  I pray that will be enough.

Tour your past but leave at closing time.

*

Abraxas

I was waiting for a magic person

and then you appeared.

I was dazzled;

I was under your spell.

In an attempt to prove myself

your natural assistant I sawed me in two.

Then I stepped into the vanishing cabinet

and promptly disappeared.

I was not wrong to see the miraculous in you,

but I never looked from your visage once you arrived.

The world around me melted at your entrance

and I flowed down the drain along with it.

I somehow expected a response from you,

but why respond to an empty room?

So, I will plug back into myself and power up.

Power draws power

and I will see if I can draw you once again.

Hostage Doll

June 7

HOSTAGE DOLL

A doll stands wedged between two mailboxes, naked and exposed, the edge of the road passing her by.  She is there to pay for my self-loathing.  I throw my treasures in the air as skeet to be shot and shattered.  Hate is the obnoxious microbe, which sours my digestion and rids me of nutrition and affection.  I purge love and tenderness.  I rip the covers from my playthings and leave them to bleed.  I hide in my self-destruction.  I put garish displays street-side and cry my tears alone.  I can not ransom innocence to pay the price of fear.  I must bring in the broken babies and put hate out on the curb.

Tickle wit with realism.

*

Weight Problem

I have trouble raising my 50 pound hand in meetings.

In between meetings I have the problem

of trying to dial the 500 pound phone.

Which leaves me with this 2,000 pound weight

on my chest and no air to breathe, no life to lead.

There is the difficulty of the relentless tyrant,

my would be sponsor, the person I fail to ask.

Plus the home group that does not support me,

since they do not know my name.

All the while folks laugh and talk and have a good time,

I can see none of them have suffered from my weight problem

The One I Bought

June 6

THE ONE I BOUGHT

There are fairy tales I never gave credence to.  Multiple bear stories don’t move me.  Cats with footwear have not warranted a second thought.  True love-----now that one I still buy hook, line and sinker.  Work hard and true love will fix the rest; that is what I have always believed.  The evil spell I have walked under during my sad little life will be broken only by the durable and all-fulfilling love of my betrothed.  Each time this plan fell through, the blame was leveled at the wrongness of the match but not the wrongness of the plot.  Anytime I work to be restored to sanity by one person, I have displaced a rightful power and thrown myself to the sea.

Let a whisker width of optimism carry your day.

*

Enclosed Space

In the echo chamber it is the cymbals

which cause the most pain.

The drums resound, deep and loud,

but it is the crashing of brass that drives me wild.

Cotton, wool and sealing wax

cannot put my head at ease.

Resonate walls with their hollow effects

create the feedback loops of hurt.

Like the endless reflection of parallel mirrors

the sounds come back to me with relentless repetition.

Aural illusion might have been the idea,

but chaos is the result.

Leaving the space between these ears

will be, will allow, the band to play on

without the benefit of my torment.