Friends of Bill W.

[LeftWriteFemme]

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.