Friends of Bill W.

[Canela]

Thank you for posting this everyday. I don't always read it but then I wonder why not? I am a 12 stepper, and tonight I got home from my candlelight meeting so happy to be sober. I am grateful to be able to say that. Everytime I go to my home group I feel reenergized and strengthened up. Tonight was no different.

Thank you for posting the daily reflections. I am glad to be here.

[LeftWriteFemme]

May 13



QUEEN’S COUNTENANCE


I know the 7 P’s of preparation. I set the table for those I know. The unexpected arrive clothed in time and tradition. They seat themselves at the table with the naked. They become mute. We prattle and pose, rarely glimpsing the goals sitting at the unset seats. What we need to become is far from what we are. I can not even call it other. It is within when we make room and ether when we won’t. I can wait and try but the juice is deep with the pulp. I get myself in line for the future and wait for the clothes offered by my guests. I sit the emperor and rise the queen.


Hear the sweetness in your own voice; taste the salt in your own tears.
*

Madame Alexander


I am, too naïve;
if you show me kindness I will believe you,
follow you, obey you, so, I have rules.

These rules do not protect me,
but they do make a box for me to seal myself inside.
Where I will ship myself, stack myself, hide myself,
well, that I do not know.

I pull the flaps down
and pray not to have to make any real decisions.
I fold my arms and close my mind

Believing I could never adequately open it enough
to safely live in the world outside of this closet.
Here I sit wondering what to write on this label
in order to be left alone

All the while longing for true love
a thing never given to a quivering china doll
shut up in a carton at the bottom of a wardrobe.



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[LeftWriteFemme]

May 14



THE LONG VIEW

The long view requires an enduring embrace of the past. It requires a great love of people, the race and individuals. I cannot see what we do and flee. I can own what happened, what happens and what is to come if only so I can ratchet improvement into my own behavior. I can see and feel and change, cringe if I must, but go on. The horizon is there to set the stage. It hangs there long and low. It stands guard for the life there is to live. I will view it and use it as my gauge. Keeping perspective is the key. I know it for what it is and that makes me, me. The short sight and the long view. My open arms hold it all; my sight brings it all into my heart.


Floss between the permanent ideas in your mind.


*
Life Events in Burlap

Two left feet in a gunnysack allows no forward motion
and creates only a windmill that screws us into the ground.
There is more perspective, front and back, more view,
but nothing to do with it, nowhere to go.

We are better off as book ends than this awkward foolish pairing.
You go your way and I go mine works fine if we are cut lose,
if any one person can be free of any other.

You offer to change your perspective if I change mine.
I smile, almost laugh at the idea of two right feet in a gunnysack
and no improvement in sight.

This is not grade school, not field day,
I must turn to you or you to me and nothing else,
no fair is fair, no turn taking.

Because my past is not your future
and your future is not my past.
Face forward on both accounts and then we run the race.




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[LeftWriteFemme]

May 15



BRATZLAV


If all the world is a narrow bridge, I must broaden my mind. If all the doors close to the passage of a hallway, I must exit through the window. Never again can I stay and shelter in a small and confining refuge. A womb is a place to come out of; it is never a place of return. I am not to seek over- exposure but I must ever widen the gate. The brave face I show is the gift of a tight world owning me for far too long. Fear is never meant to be larger than life and the world should never collapse around the sweetness of a smile. Today carries us. Tomorrow draws us. The world is a bridge.


Carpet the memories that echo shame in your mind.
*



Underoos



Why is it that I store undies I never wear
in my panty drawer and leave no room for my favorites?
Why is it that I have things in cupboards
that have not seen the light of day in years,
but they are kept as sacred?

I don’t use my storage for me
it is saved for obligation to inherited obsession.
I live on the fringes of the only life I have;

I didn’t question this.
didn’t see it for what it really is.
I don’t live in my skin only my head.
I don’t enjoy today only plan for tomorrow.

After years at this address it is time for me to move in.
The mortgage is more than paid;
it is time to spend my inheritance.



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[LeftWriteFemme]

May 16

MAIL

I form my query, fold my mind and mail it off to God with a stamp of approval from my sponsor. The questions sent are of no great interest but the responses are a spellbinding group. What is returned unopened is a wide array. The circuitous route taken by some is a charm of elucidation. I rub my fingertip over the intact seals and marvel at the travels of the wax. I mourn over the defunked gods and their public relations organizations. Slow is my resolve to pore over the replies. I get easily caught in lackings and shy from true contact. The equations embedded in my heart read the letters and sing the notes; these songs are just for me. I know them like my name. I turn the envelope and see how old the postmark is.


Remember your comfort needs a life of its own.
*

Pearly Whites

Reaction is a separation, a polarization;
it cuts you from me and God from we.

Response is a connection, an inclusion;
threading a line from you to me
and stitching God into our pockets.

I realize now that any positive connection
is an instantaneous link to my Higher Power
and can’t help but bring us closer.

Tiny feet carry beauty and kindness;
tiny teeth tear the fabric of the world to bits.

I must let my footwork conduct my life’s work
and seal my lips and reserve the dentistry.

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[LeftWriteFemme]

May 18



STRONG WORDS

Serious language, deep language, real language helps me by grounding me. I don’t have to be nice for company when I can just tell the truth. I needn’t have guests with virgin ears or unrealistic expectations, and I no longer pander to such foolishness. I know the layered meanings of my words and value the intensity of a large vocabulary. I am not intimidated by prudish co-conspirators who stare down pointed noses at powerful utterances. Weak words make poor boundaries and breed victims. I will not be trapped by niceties; I will speak clearly out of necessity.


Allow your integrity to increase the value of your truth.

*
Martinizing


The price of upkeep scares me, it daunts me even.
I pay the initial cost, I have bitten that bullet
of required outlay; the continued charges for maintenance
push my face in the mud until my ears clog.

Avoiding the need of perpetual responsibility
to things, relationships, life, doesn’t change the reality,
rather it embeds in my skin a slick denial and an indignant retort
to the drycleaners and shoe-shiners of the world.

Waste and want play tag inside a misunderstanding
of what is required of me; of what life requires in general.
I must make quietude, draw a map
and find my way to this psychic change;

Unfortunately all the little voices scream
“Yes, you paid the price to see the show,
but you don’t make enough to stay!”


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[LeftWriteFemme]

May 19



URBAN LANDSCAPE


“I am taking this giraffe to the penthouse. Do you suggest the elevator or the stairs?”
“Why do you choose these complicated tasks to fill your days?” asks my sponsor.
“You think this is beyond my abilities?”
“I didn’t say that. I do believe either you or the giraffe is likely to get bent out of shape. But that is only the most obvious of observations.”
“What if I told you being disproportionate is both of our natural states?" I asked.
“I know that, too. My darling little lamb, you may be a contrast to the multitude, but why make it harder? Why not a ranch with cathedral ceilings? Bay doors even?”
“You are taking out the spirit of adventure,” I say.
“Baby, you may have confused frustration with excitement,” says my sponsor.
“Yes, but you have forgotten the view.”


Put three buttons on a shelf.
*


NaCl


I work arithmetic instead of telling you to stop.
I make a light remark and never take a stand
until I have worked the numbers
and believe that the weight of suffering is on my side.

I store in the cellar the salt I found in my wounds
and label it, with names, dates and corresponding critique,
all waiting, hoping, I will never need to disclose them,
but keeping them accounted for just in case things go badly.

I believe there is no chance for error with silence
and no wrong when I have backup in the basement,
but I need to table the salt and risk my reality.

You can’t hurt me worse than I do
when I pour old salt and create new wounds.



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[LeftWriteFemme]

May 20


STRETCHING

Stretching is not equivalent to change. Limbering is nice and warms the muscles, body and soul. Over-reaching, over-compensation is trauma; it distorts the symmetry and breeds erroneous thinking. Extension beyond the bounds sets me up for a fall. I misinterpret touching with fingertips with a firm and able grasp. I don’t step forward because I believe I have a hand on things, failing to see how this is different from an embrace. The sinew tears and the fabric of my life is destroyed. I lean forward but I go nowhere.


Open an old letter and read it with a fresh mind.

*
Inspection

My disease paid a discourtesy call on my bourgeoning sobriety.
Peeked in to look for cracks in my foundation,
weaknesses to exploit.

I recognized the patch job I had toyed with
would have made the easiest of targets for this eroding thug.
I am ever so grateful that I cleaned off all the bricks
and made new mortar.

Built on bedrock my re-laid block
will withstand the indignity of the pounding prodding sickness
which used to inhabit this once dilapidated space.

I can keep the villain at bay
and live my cozy life thanks to a true level
and the handsome turn of my trowel.


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[LeftWriteFemme]

May 21


CHOICE

Growth is my decision. I don’t need conflict or catastrophe to bring me to change. I choose each day come what may, to roll out the refuse. I am not tempted to leave it in to rot just because the sun is shining. Good days are good times to improve. How could integrity be retarded by joy? I am not punished into recovery. I will never accept a Higher Power who set up a system like that and I give wide berth to people who claim their Higher Power did. My bottom may have been an inducement to start but choice keeps me coming back.


Smile in the mirror and look into your eyes.


*
Balustrade

Just because you appeared from the dark
doesn’t make you a wizard.
Just because you make the world safe for mankind
doesn’t make you Hercules,
nor does your power and foresight make you his father.

Your resourcefulness and guile doesn’t make you Ulysses.
And just because you spend so much time
strapped upon that cross doesn’t make you,
well, we all know the rest of that refrain.

Human is what you are whether I see that in you or not.
Human is a blessing even if it feels to me a curse.
I need the superhuman strength you seem to offer
but I must live in the world of what is real.

I want to be stolen away to the safety of your lair
and not live on my feet and fight for my life.
I have to stop wishing to be your captive
and work harder at simply being your friend.

If I can let you down off your pedestal perhaps
I could then climb down off mine.




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[LeftWriteFemme]

May 22



SOOT


I diligently work to remove the soot, the residue from the last time I tried to hot wire my brain. When I attempted the short circuit of my safety-thinking, I caught my life on fire and the flames, though brief, were spectacular. Electric fires are very jarring, the burning insulation toxic. It leaves bare, stuttering lines crossing and recrossing. My stable base, the method I once used to keep sane, is shot. All because I wanted to go joy riding in my thoughts. Suspended reality sounds so good but always bursts into flame, leaving me with soot removal as a hobby.


Add all the numbers of your phone number.

*
The Delano’s


Indifference is the backbone of power.
It is a state of faithlessness,
not infidelity but rank apathy,
saving every ounce of ardor for the prize you seek.

I thought I was the prize and I am;
I’m just no longer yours.
Cast aside for the leviathan and the miscreants
I wonder what I could have done to hold your attention

The answer is nothing.
Nothing could be done.
Blinded by the ambition of heroism
the struggle is the goal

No gem no matter its brilliance
can check your drive toward a place in the epic narrative.
Tis the hero’s lament to save every life except your own.




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[LeftWriteFemme]

May 24



CLOCKS


When the clock stops, I wind it up or replace the battery. I have to; time doesn’t end because the arms grow slow. The device wears down but the day is not over. Even if my internal metronome is bollixed, the planets keep revolving. I can’t step off the world; it doesn’t stop turning for me. I don’t always have to keep my head up but I must always go on. There is no going back. I can only remember yesterday. I can’t return to it though it’s so close the flowers are still fresh. Sometimes I struggle to keep my hands off of the past. Those are the days I secure my future and wind the clocks.


Create a map to your own happiness.
*


Princess No More

Decent is less obvious than accent
and so it is with dethroning;
those who put you upon the gilt alter with much aplomb
feel no qualm in taking you down
with not as much as a word or a grunt.

The wind has changed and your reign is over,
the poor startled girl is suddenly in the street.
For a scepter is not a club and why fight for a throne,
which is proven to be nothing more than a straight backed chair
once separated from its right relationships.

The horror of unexpected common status
is for the young bride an issue of safety and trust
not of ego or presumption.
Who is she without the Prince, the Knight,
she is Princess No More.




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[LeftWriteFemme]

May 25



TROJAN PERSON


I feel confused by the difference between love and war. The intensity and rush are too much for my frazzled and betrayed emotions to sort out. I feel like a Trojan person. I have all these children holed up inside and they are waiting for peace and safety so they can come out and sleep. For a time I allowed them to leave for bathroom breaks, one at a time. This was not a workable solution. When these tykes would have a look around, they started to set fires and break hearts. Each child makes life a battleground, fights and claws her way across the living landscape. I must heal my insides from the center of my thoughts, not send fragments of me to blend with the unfamiliar and hostile world. Only when I can stand together with my mind and heart safe within my being will I see a way to make love on my own and leave war alone.


Shuffle your vocabulary.
*


ROUSs

Time passes, I clock it and count it
and use its passage to construct a defense
or accusation depending on my need.

I use the calendar to condemn you
because my feelings do not have sufficient leverage
for my mental calculations.

To prize disappointment from this scene
I watch the water-clock waiting for adequate drops
to lift the flood gate and free me
from your unfulfilled promise and my unrealized hope.

How long is too long to stand in a quagmire?
Why do I feel the need for permission
to leave the quicksand?


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[LeftWriteFemme]

May 31



SPACE


I stand behind the podium and talk about the event horizon, which brought me into these rooms. My audience: other unwitting astronauts whose lives, like mine, were deconstructed by the Black Hole of addiction. Though the time and place may be different, the physics of compulsion and allergy are precise and repetitive. Nodding heads affirm my calculations to be accurate with the vectors and trajectories of their own experience. I conclude, with the gratitude of a reassembled life, and pray, with gravity, for my feet to stay on the ground.


Toast your bread with satisfaction.
*





The Attention Tax


Paying attention is the price exacted for living in this society.
A taxation which is like a leach;
it takes the life force, diverts my brain waves,
claims the water rights to my river of thought.

What is left I use to wash off what I can,
never quite managing to feel clean or clear.
I sit in the mud puddle
still unsure if I understand what just happened;
harboring a dark fear of the wave to come.


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[LeftWriteFemme]

June 1

SEASONAL EXPECTATIONS

If I am out of sync with the way the world turns, I can be nothing but disappointed. I arrive with ice skates on the hottest summer day and grieve the loss of spring. I shiver in my sandals and ponder the need for a windshield scraper, the autumn leaves so long past. I must orchestrate my moods and movements with the evolution and revolution about me. I will learn to sing with the doves in the morning and the coyotes, come the moon. I can spin with the stars. I can grow with the grass. I don’t need to counter- balance life. If I learn to bend with the tides, it all comes around again.


If moles can make hills you can move mountains

*
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.
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?



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[LeftWriteFemme]

June 2

MYTHIC ADULT


My mythic adult is seen by the crowds around me; never is the charade exposed. Close inspection has been suspended so we can keep each other’s secrets. Circulating through the crowd, these children are impoverished from carrying this load of pretense. Dropping this burden is a risk far too great. Exposure invites attack. Stand tall; act brave. Unreasonable expectations are the water that moves the wheel, the power that generates this ongoing play. Hamlet is dead, yet I reprise the part daily. Daily I watch my fellows do the same. I mimic a ghost I never knew in life. Did it ever live? Or is it only a mythic adult?


Plant some things for their flower and others for their fruit.
*

Head Wringing

I have my say, though my fear is
that I constantly repeat myself;
very much the way a crow calls the same thing endlessly,
but it all has different meanings to the crow.

I would offer code keys to my readers
if I could lay my hands on one.
My mind whispers that the soothing
people get from my work is like the calm
induced by chanting monks.

Possibly it is more the actor’s trick of reading repetitive lines
each time putting the emphasis on a different word;
a way of squeezing all the juice from nonsense.

I jot ideas swearing these lines are to be found somewhere
in my previous work, perhaps whole pages are redundant.
Finally I stop this fight reminding myself I have but one voice
and what I accuse myself of as similarity might merely be my style.






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[LeftWriteFemme]

June 3

NO GOLD STARS

I look at my chart, then my chest; there are no gold stars. I long for the affirmation of my great and seemingly endless struggle. I watch the movements of those with shiny shoes and hope to be awarded with the gummed insignia. When I hang by a thread, I desire the corroboration of foil cutouts to assure me I have done right; I have stayed alive. Punishment I fear less than lack of consolation. But, no one truly knows my bravery and if I want these paper emblems, I can just go and buy my own.

Count unhatched chickens but don’t place them on the menu.


*
The Hope Diamond

My guess is
the same god that wants me stupid
also wants me to suffer.
I ask myself what could be all powerful about that?

I wonder is God like a friend or a lover?
I carefully chose my friends
whereas my lover found me
against my greatest plans and well thought rules.

And if this is to be like marriage,
may I file for divorce if things go astray?
Or am I stuck with this match,
like I am stuck with my deformed ear
there underneath hat or fringe of hair?

I never thought of my relationship with God
like a necklace I could take on and off at will,
though the more I study it seems this beautiful thing
enhances my beauty if all is right
and will strangle me if it gets hung up.


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[LeftWriteFemme]

June 4



FREQUENTLY


When my daydream gets so threadbare I no longer use it, I must turn to other sources. When I cannot conjure on my own and elucidation makes me cross eyed, I must turn to HP. I have puttered and prolonged the way to naming this legendary and fabulous enigma. I drew out even longer any desire for close association with the same. I have milled with the millstone and surfed in the whirlpool, dragged my feet and thrown a fit, but this only stalled the inevitable result. Naming and interaction is the need and now is the time. I have a Higher Power and I choose to call it Frequently.



Dreams grow wings if you let them.
*



Eggshells and Bethlehem

A stable is a place to keep a horse
and in fairytales a place to birth a baby,
but stable is the story I told myself about you.

Solid, a model of strength
and here you are a tripod,
upright only if the pressure is evenly applied.

I blame myself for lopsided need
and try to find a way to keep this coupling standing.
Stripped down to minor contact
I wonder if you actually remember me
and then I wonder if I remember myself.

This is what is at stake, this is the trophy I lose
when I fall for you and you fall down.
Where is the girl I worked so hard to create?

Broken eggshells litter the nest
and I look for the chick I used to be.
I fear losing you,
I cry at the thought of losing us,
I die at the loss of me.



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[LeftWriteFemme]

June 5

DOLL

“Why is your face all red?” asked my sponsor.
“I didn’t get my way,” I responded.
“And this crimson appearance is the result?”
“You see that it is. I was very careful about what I wanted and worked hard to be reasonable.”
“And Baby, you were. You did nothing wrong. Your ego was in check and you kept your expectations in proportion.” said my sponsor.
“Then why didn’t it work out my way?”
“I only have a sad and simple answer for you. The result had nothing to do with you, your wants, expectations or desires. The whole experience boils down to only one thing: It was not that type of party, Doll.”
“Oh.”



Promise yourself tears like rain and smiles like sunshine.

*




Discussions with my Disease


“You’re not the girl I used to know.”
“Not the girl you used to love is what you mean?”

“You’re different is all I mean to say.”
“The rest you leave there to rot, unsaid?”

“Something has happened to you.”
“Is it something that you do not like?”

“I don’t know who you are anymore.”
“Or is it that you never knew?”

“One false move could break us up.”
“All your moves are false
why will one more cause such change?”



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[LeftWriteFemme]

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.


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[LeftWriteFemme]

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

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