Friends of Bill W.

[LeftWriteFemme]

February 19

Jenny


Though ignorance may be bliss, living in the shadow of someone else’s ignorance is sheer hell. The confusion is bad, but the lies are worse. Want to cripple a child for life give it to a well meaning fool who has the rule book to the wrong board game, that child will grow to need crutches they don’t make and medicine they can’t brew. Dependant on misguided insanity the child will require a miracle cure and may lack the ability to ingest it. Best case scenario the kid makes a brave escape into a world she can barely comprehend, worse case she turns the rule book upside down and reads it backwards to her own unfortunate brood. Ignorance is always a twilight proposition, half agreement the other half handcuffed nightmare. Full consent is by necessity impossible while blameless innocents is similarly unachievable. The only suggestion I can make from this side of the looking glass is to pick your poison and plan your getaway.



Rain encouragement down in your dreams


*

TIME IS HERE TO STAY

I have passed my days emptying them.
Like bread crumbs on a trail of rescue
Expecting them to facilitate redemption
And if not that at least retreat.

I release an audible sigh
As I let each evening slip to the path behind me
The future I view as a cliff I am nearing
I hope to be ransomed before the edge.

I plan carefully how to stay in sync with revision
Things must be resolved and revert
But this is not the way.
The past is there to be mined.

Inert gold as well as land mines linger beneath the surface
The days stream on.
I am not nearing the limit
I am shrinking from hope.

I turn my eyes from expectancy with a shutter
Deeply, I realize I must leave my fairytale life
And walk away with my days in my pocket
A treasure------mine to spend.

[LeftWriteFemme]

February 20

Katie’s Wish


Does G-d arrange for my parking spot, foil the Colts opponents, release the stains from my dry-cleaning? Can I ask for the petty and pedantic? All One G-d Faith, reads the side of the soap bottle, but really is there only one? Like Santa? The Tooth Fairy? OZ? Is my life better or worse for the whimsy? How would I know? Why would I care? As long as I live with what I get most times, it truly is okay to ask for what I want sometimes, I mean hell, the Superbowl is only once a year. I’m allowed to be unreasonable and happy.



Open your mind more often than seems necessary



*

FOREVER IS NOT AS LONG AS IT USED TO BE

What time gives in permanence it takes in fluctuation
The relationships I stand on to reach with tippy toed grasp
The light of heaven
Flutter by like flounder disturbed from their sandy bed.

My mind probes the past looking for the shroud lines
To hold up the sail of hope.
Togetherness the banner of life,
Bonds to strength, protection, from outside and within.

I yearn for a life of love, unbending and calm
I am met with a tug of war
Which ends in the mud.
Days stretch into years but years are no protection from terminus.

Forever rings in my head.
Promises I have made to myself
Promises I have made to others
Promises made to me are nothing in the face of the promise of tomorrow.

Time flows like air over a row of seedlings, fresh and challenging
Sustaining life and carrying away familiarity.
Forever is not as long as it used to be.
I can live with that, have to live with that.

I shake my fist at the sky
But it won't make love last.
It will not keep my heart from loving again.
Sails which have filled before will fill again.

[LeftWriteFemme]

February 21


Word Comprehension


There were scads and scores of words that I had at my command. I could command them that was a fact; comprehend them that was an illusion. My sponsor had every confidence in me and started my word comprehension lessons with the tough ones first: “No,” she would ask, “What don’t you understand the Nnnnnn part or the OHhhhhh part?” Took me sometime to catch on to words deep as that. Serenity that I learned through living Braille. Learned it like any hungry child, by taste. Learned it like learning the ocean as you swim in it. Serenity is my ballast and my bail, as for peace, all I can say is: No comprehension, no peace; Know comprehension, know peace.


Re-pattern fear



*

SEAM ALLOWANCES

The space, given and taken.
The space used to bind and sew us fast.
The permission for humanness
And the need for seams to make us whole.

The narrow margin is a shoulder on which I lean.
Slender strip, a place of refuge.
Darts are shaped to hug the curves,
I bend to fit to life.

Our nearness, being my own part and part of more,
Planning and a pattern, cut to order,
With allowances made for fraying and fragility,
Allow me to feel woven into a web of what is
And still hope for more

The unfinished garment taking shape
Easing and stretching
And before my eyes
Pins held between the teeth of God.

[Tommi]

Originally Posted by LeftWriteFemme

February 21

Re-pattern fear


SEAM ALLOWANCES

The space, given and taken.
The space used to bind and sew us fast.
The permission for humanness
And the need for seams to make us whole.

The narrow margin is a shoulder on which I lean.
Slender strip, a place of refuge.
Darts are shaped to hug the curves,
I bend to fit to life.

Our nearness, being my own part and part of more,
Planning and a pattern, cut to order,
With allowances made for fraying and fragility,
Allow me to feel woven into a web of what is
And still hope for more

The unfinished garment taking shape
Easing and stretching
And before my eyes
Pins held between the teeth of God.

Nice writing* Nice time * Nice family* Nicest Nicest Y-O-U.

[LeftWriteFemme]

Originally Posted by Tommi

Nice writing* Nice time * Nice family* Nicest Nicest Y-O-U.

It was soooooo nice to be there with you!!!

[LeftWriteFemme]

February 22


Ace

Like an ace in my pocket step one is the beginning and end of my step work. This step carries the high and low count; its rise is so near to the ground I didn’t have to lift my chin to clear it as I crawled my way in here, it is appeal so exalted that it is all I hear when I finish the twelfth and am on my way back around. The high and low of any hand plus the card I keep up my sleeve for emergencies. The greatest blessing is I don’t need four of a kind, not even a pair; as long as I have step one I am guaranteed a full house, full heart, full life and between you and me that’s just how I like it.


Lick your lips then smile



*

SHAME

I push shame around my plate like a chunk of spoiled meat.
The toxins leaching to every interface and cavity
With an inverse half-life, the lethal substance grows
Reinforcing and sending runners and tendrils
To worlds known and those yet undiscovered.
I wage my war on this shapehifting plaque.
Thrust and parry, I step back from the unsurmountable walls
And set my sights on tearing down the bunkers
In my personal city.
Like lead plumbing
The danger eludes the observation of my fellow citizens
I am labeled a lunatic
And no attention is paid to my evaluation of water quality.
I search for similarly crazed friends
Variants within a theme.
I depend on the poisoned sanity of my wounded compatriots.
We shovel the plate loads of spoiled meat and detritus.
The foreshortened mountain of shame
Allows tiny strands of light to glimmer across the surface
But the shamed devotees turn their heads.
We, the few, face the glowering mass.
I worry like a petulant child.
What if we cannot prevail?
Is shame stronger then recovery?
Have we traveled this far to miss the glaciers edge?
As it slides away from us
I console myself with the sure knowledge that,
This life of sobriety is better than any other offering
Healing the world, What a lovely thought.
Living free from shame today, What a necessity.

[LeftWriteFemme]

February 23

Over Troubled Water


Though G-d might be everything, for a long time G-d 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 G-d wasn’t and nothing of who G-d 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 apposing 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, G-d 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 G-d 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 guests. All the days are not happy ones but we are always happy to be together and more than that I will not ask.

Quarantine reluctance


*

DOMINOES

What happens to the dominoes that do not fall?
The show cut short by my sobriety.
The tiles stand front to back
The 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 cannot occupy this ground.
I must not upset the arrangement.
I cannot 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 laying 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.