Friends of Bill W.

[LeftWriteFemme]

September 29


Kicks


New balance is more than a brand of sneakers. New balance is a joyful revelation made possible through constant vigilance. I am tap dancing into a vision, no more soft shoed wishfulness. I can lift my feet knowing I can keep my up right posture; my musculature robust from climbing the steps and accepting direction. This bright tempo delights me; I feel stretched, supple, able bodied. Life off the balance beam offers me the world in which to embrace my equilibrium.






Pick up your toys, pick up your chin and move on


*
CATCH

How can my sensibility catch my intellect
Or find a map with enough information
To get my heart to the current location of my mind?

What are the common markers recognized by soul and brain?
I know the pulse of my wrist
Is counter pointing the firing of my synapses.

My life signs run their course
And I struggle to find the intersections
I long for more than signposts and curbing.

I would like parallels, paradigms and conclusions
There must be a place of common home and hearth.
I am looking for the depot of my life
I hope I hit it before I hit the coast.

[LeftWriteFemme]

September 30



Moniker


The Hurt carry on the tradition, would never think to give it up, don’t even know there is that option, strap on their weapons without a second thought. How can there be a second thought when there never was a first. Hurt is a reflex and it moves its way through the world like dominoes tumbling; everything’s knocked down before you ever saw it standing. So, what’s the use anyway? So, I fall down and in that action push you forward and we are all together in the mud, but it is so hard to recognize anyone in the mud, including myself and especially you. If I hurt you that makes it hard for me to see anything about you except my wish for your departure, which I subconsciously hope will take away the guilt I can’t afford to feel. If I make it out of the mud I can’t afford anything, but if I don’t pay up I’ll be in new mud soon, so I must break tradition and the first step toward that is seeing it and the second is calling it by its name.





Open up your secret vault and unload

*

BATTLESHIP

If the first is a guess, what is the second?
Paranoia or worse.?
Action is a blessing, reaction a debilitation
And to twist from reaction to self-doubt
Sinks the battle and the battleship.

When I can’t make sense, the gift is stepping back,
Better to put my hand down than to lose the farm.
When I find myself in a minefield I can walk gingerly
Or wait for aid to come from above, air rescue or other.

The option of rethinking every step sets me dancing
The tune which begins this hurky jerky polka of death which
Stems from the metronome of criticism playing in my ear.

When I am overwhelmed with critique
I give up acceptance of chance or joy of spontaneity
Throwing myself into a pit of apprehension.
I am safer being wrong occasionally
Then unsure forever

[LeftWriteFemme]

October 1




No Substitute for Fire

I wanted alcohol to do better for me than burning did. I was constantly disappointed, yet I kept trying. I was not to find pleasure in that bottle though I had no problem finding addiction there. This is how I came to believe that there is not an upside to everything. Booze took me to surprising destinations, but never the ones I desired. I sought release, the release I got from a wildfire spreading across my skin and this might have been mine had I poured the liquor on rather than in. But in me it did no good, it never let me exhale the way that the “right” kind of pain did. What I got from alcohol drove me though; fear rode me roughshod and I found my way home, it was a bumpy road, but once there we doused the flames and I live the upside I had come to doubt, because fire is no substitute for life.






Randomize the alphabet, then write

*



MY MOON

I anticipate the crowning of your face
As you birth the sky.
Your rhythmic visitation sates me.
The gravity of my need keeps you close.
The tide of my heart pulls you from shore to shore.

We live in the sweet ecstasy of tethered love
Our souls slingshoting across the open palm of heaven
Your empathy for me transforms these shards of ice
To a tender heart satelliteing

I orbit you
Empowered by your kindness
You are my moon.

[LeftWriteFemme]

October 2




Saltbox House


Refusing to make reasonable demands is quite as dysfunctional as making unreasonable demands. The opposite of an extreme is often twice as crazy and harder to explain. I open my mouth and dry toast is the reply. Nothing should be said when nothing can be done and to do nothing is harder than one might think. I fold my hands but my lap rejects them; I quiet my mind but my soul objects. I must let my heart sing and trust you enough to ask for help.






Check your speed and direction

*

REJECTION

Rejection as a game of endurance,
A boundary enhancing process
A test of survival
Rejection sought or unsought is a challenge.

Sometimes rejection is a flare
Lighting the need for change of tactics or direction.
Though it is hard to view rejection as a beacon
Rather than condemnation.

Rejection is also the counterbalance for acceptance.
Risk is nothing if rejection is not part of the equation
I cannot value yes if you could not say NO.

Rejection is the safety valve
For putting myself in situations where I don’t belong.
I get sent back to the world of possibilities when the kindness of rejection
Ejects me from wrong choice.

[LeftWriteFemme]

October 3



Sackcloth


Tragedy is a tale unfinished. Life is far longer than calamity can endure. I will not give up, not even when hope is lost, for life carries forward; more is filled with optimism. Threads break, but the fabric is woven still, flowing off the living loom waiting to be used. I will cut my swath and fashion a garment to wear and if sometimes it is filled with ashes I will sit and grieve all the while knowing that this is never the stories end.






See through your own shades


*
AMENDS

Amends is about truth and change.
The relationships of my past
Were places of little truth
And even less change.

I tried to be nice----not honest
I tried to keep things going
Even when they needed to die.

Making amends has ended
Most of my relationships from the past.
A quick 10th step keeps me
From starting too many new ones.

Good healthy relationships
Require time and attention
So this necessitates a short list.

Sometimes I wish for more quantity
But I realize in sobriety
I cannot accept less quality.

[LeftWriteFemme]

October 4



Have Faith




Strange and wonderful tragedy takes you away from me and I don’t know how it is that you return, but you do and I thank G-d, but I’m not sure it was G-d’s idea that you went away or that you came back, though, I am sure, He missed you every bit as much as I did. I revolve the freshness of you in my mouth like candy; I swirl, but don’t want to crack it open. Honeymoons are for people who live comprehendible lives; we fly to each other and cling like raptors plummeting to the ground. You leave your mark upon me I do the same for you; we are none the worse for the wear. I stand in the gush from the hydrant, soaked in the pleasure, forgoing the safety. The world may burn down again tomorrow, I remember that it has before, but I am wiser for the singeing and weathered with soot in my eyes and charcoal piled roundabout my legs, yet I’m still standing and you are back from the dead and I think of you as Lazarus. And now we will live the comedy for life is what lay ahead, we took the hit of death before its time and so must be off the hook for the rest.




Try not to long for Santa

*

FISHING FOR CONTENTMENT

Fishing for contentment
Is a wonderful past time.
But what is used for bait?

Is there a delicacy
To dangle before contentment
To lure it into my life?

Can I crumble the best biscotti
And leave a trail to my door?
I don’t believe contentment
Swims around waiting to be caught.

I think it’s more like the wild yeast
That finds its way to my starter.
If I put the ingredients in my life
Contentment will rise to the occasion.

[LeftWriteFemme]

October 5



Jeopardy



Today I tore down the isolation booth. I didn’t live in there exactly; sometimes I stuffed G-d in there and went out for a ride. I left that shack stand for far, too long; a testimony to ill conceived, ham-handed, control freaks everywhere. I said all I wanted was some peace, but a vacuum is not tranquility and escape won’t substitute either. Since the live studio audience has gone home and the house lights are dimmed, I feel pretty foolish for playing round after round on my own. This game was never any fun and the sponsors were death merchants and scavengers whose interest lay in destruction and nothing else. I must not cast aspersions, I didn’t care that the contest was merely an upright pit with a lethal pendulum, I used it as a hideout and a lair, a place whose walls I could keep between me and my Higher Power and an activity I could depend on to keep me free from living a life. It all came to the ground today; I walk over the splinters and shards, I know there has to be a better game and I’m ready to play.





Picture trouble floating away like bubbles on a river

*
MY HEROINE

The corpse that is my childhood
Is mine to protect from the wolves
And rats of denial and collusion.

The infant who commits suicide
In self-defense is my heroine.
The pure thinking of an uncluttered mind
Seizes on the only possible way for me to survive.

Her death at her own hand is my rescue
If the bad had killed her
I would have died with her.

In her plan I was left as the seed
She ejected in her assent
She is gone from this place
I feel her only as the wisp of memory.

The tiny body laid flat on the carpet
Her pressed pinafore somehow more alive than she is
the unfinished business of prevention.

As long as I see her there and do not walk away
From my responsibility and never forget
She protected me with the life she never lived
I am free to live this life.