Friends of Bill W.

[LeftWriteFemme]

June 3



Soul Chiggers


If you can seed apprehension deeply in a generation, you can reap disillusionment for a hundred years. Bent foresight twists hindsight. Admiring ignorance, signs death’s warrant. Evil splintered to a thousand slivers burrows under the skin without killing their host. Death delayed spreads destruction along with melancholy; a septic contagion if ever there was one. And how do we fight this systemic blight? It is embedded in the water, the air, the mind, and try what I might; I can’t seem to live without any of these. Chiggers of the soul feed and breed no matter how I scratch and chew. I am raw, but still infested. How do I kill what is in me without killing the me?




Step up to indecision



*

THE WORM

Because there is never enough punishment
For those who inflict pain, 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
In a thousand tiny ways, setting trap after trap,
To catch the perpetrators, making my heart a mine field
A place unfit for me to live

I must sober the worm
And let myself off the hook.