Friends of Bill W.

[LeftWriteFemme]

May 8



A Good Ship



Recently my life has taken on a surreal quality. I stand in front of myself as if I were a business to be run or a project to be undertaken. The intensity, uncertainty and drama seem to be on the wane. There are choices to be made and outcomes to be determined, but this is all work and numbers, nothing at risk below the skin. My heart is secure, true love its protector, faith its inborn light. I am docked in safety harbor; the waves may rock me, but my anchor holds me fast.







Follow your lead

*

ALL- BETTER NOW

Mother kissed the booboo
And I wait for the admonition to take effect
Waiting, I count the problems
Like telephone poles on a long journey

What will it be like
The world all- better?
The anticipation nearly breaks me for awhile
Until waiting turns to disbelief.

A chill fills the space
And all- better becomes the cry
My sponsor calls for moderation
And lowering my expectation

The child’s ears ring with the promise to be fulfilled
She cannot give herself over to a world
Where band -aids are not a cure-all
But only a cover for the slow work of internal healing, scars and all.

Sheer survival is not sufficient for the screaming toddler
Heartbreak from injustice calls for more than endurance
But alas, a kiss is all we have.

[LeftWriteFemme]

May 9


The Little Black Dress


The holes in my pockets cause me to feel naked. Though it is an inside pocket and no one can see through I feel exposed, my thinking changed and for that matter chained, one link looped through the next. I start with a hole in my pocket so I know I can’t stay in this dress all day. I know I will need the storage later as time wears on but I can’t change now and I don’t want to waste time putting on my tights. My legs are cold. I fly from room to room. I gather my keys, but forget my phone. I am bare legged and unreachable, overexposed due to a hole in my pocket.








Keep in mind that love doesn’t conform to opinion, even well meaning opinion


*

SLAYING OLD DRAGONS

Your roar is Doppler-low
And I can feel my steps move the earth
As I go forward.

Former dominator
Scary from every angle
I come for you today

The scales are falling, I don’t rip them but they fall
I can breathe at the heights of you lair
I am not shrinking

The booming voice you had is gone
The power spilling away from you
I don’t fly from you

Gone is the tremble you once instilled
The curtain has parted
And you are revealed

[LeftWriteFemme]

May 10


More Than a Fedora



I have no explanations only expletives, I wish I had something to say that you wished to hear, but that is not current events; foul humored broadcasts are what fill the air this day. Bad temper is tempting, but I can no longer be satisfied in this way nor is this a performance that you care to witness. I will play FCC to my ruminations curtailing this colorful darkness for my benefit and the clearing of the air. I have never shied from dramatic vocabulary and I do not now, but throwing out words is waste and I am learning to conserve. I don’t have to leak my power I can cover my head and close my mouth.









Know what you are holding on to

*

URBAN LANDSCAPE

I am taking this giraffe to the penthouse,
Do you suggest the elevator or the stairs?
Why do you chose these complicated tasks
To fill your days asked my sponsor?

You think this is beyond my abilities?
I didn’t say that, I do believe either you or the giraffe
Are likely to get bent out of shape
But that is 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 a cathedral ceiling
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.

[LeftWriteFemme]

May 11



Out Standing in My Field



Trying to remove expectations is like trying to unseed a field; it is damn near impossible until something crops up, though when it does I must act swiftly lest things take root. Tedious as it is weeding the fields of unreasonable expectancy saves me from so much frustration later on. I don’t recognize it, but expectations are like little dictators forever ruling me; leaving no room for G-d or direction, not to mention flexibility or change. Tap roots dive for the vein and my life depends on fleet elimination of unsuitable desire. I can want. I can strive. I can not leave expectations to grow in my garden.





Screen your comments when you can


*

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 finger tips
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 life is destroyed
I lean forward but I go nowhere.

[StillettoDoll]

Gray's First Sober Year

by William Notter




This new life is better
than a dozen beer-joint romances
or a hundred drunks at fishing camp.
My habit now is not drinking,
and waking up where I belong.
I can see colors again,
and I don't feel like a turd in the punchbowl
whenever I go around people.

I'll mow the weeds for Sharon
and almost enjoy it. She's even given up
checking my breath whenever I come home.
I went shopping for our anniversary
and wound up crying in the store,
but not the kind of tears you cry
when your wife catches you lying in the shed
with your pistol jabbed up in your mouth
and vodka running out your nose.

The only thing she could think to do
was check me into another detox,
and this time it finally took.
This year has made me different—
vodka could never do that for long.
Some days when I wake up early
and listen to Sharon lying there breathing,
it feels like somebody snuck in while we slept
and changed our sheets.

[LeftWriteFemme]

May 12



Box-a-week Tao


I am going through so many changes surrounding the cleaning out and getting rid of process. The flat sided panic that I experience while even attempting the smallest disposal seems impossible. I would deny it if I didn't have the repetition of this experiment to prove it as fact. I have now moved into the part of the illness where I compulsively clean the things that I have emptied in order to avoid facing the next step, the next box, the next mess. This is a two part trap: part 1. If cleaning can absorb all the time I will not be able to do anything else. Part 2. If I can't keep it clean enough then I have an excuse to give up and not empty the next space. I am trying to keep moving without being mean to myself. Because mean is worse than mess.







Try not to lose things you never had


*

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 give wide birth to people who claim their Higher Power did
My bottom may have been an inducement to start
But choice keeps me coming back.

[LeftWriteFemme]

May 13




Be That Girl


I have tried to protect the investment I made in the past by selling the soul of my future. I arrived self-possessed, a winning girl, but I slid the self from the scene leaving me simply possessed. I gained everything then lost it a piece at a time starting with the parts nearest my heart. I must draw the shards together once more and mend this lovely crystal. The art of living is insured by my action not by grasping at slivers in terror of what slips from my fingers. I am what I have inviolate and all else comes to fruition when I am pleased; when I am myself.







Be aware which pens are poison


*

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 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 methods I once used to keep sane, is shot
All because I wanted to go joyriding in my thoughts
Suspended reality sounds so good but always burst into flame
Leaving me with soot removal as a hobby

[LeftWriteFemme]

May 14



No Stone Left Behind



An anchor attaches at the lower extremities stabilizing me, an albatross is the thing weighing me down from the top, it tips me, throws me to the ground. I must remember to choose ferrous instruments over long necked birds. Often it’s not the amount of drag, but where it’s affixed. There are so many variables, so much to think through, yet I often react and pick up what seems as harmless as a flock of sea gulls and turns out to be worse than an iron maiden. Leaving no tern unstoned is bad, but do I really have the time to do it the other way around?





Visualize the vapor trails from your words as they fly away from you


*

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 the past
Those are the days I secure my future
And wind the clocks

[LeftWriteFemme]

May 15



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 so well, that even 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.






Make a suggestion box for your heart


*


CELEBRATIONS

You wore a wrist corsage to the dump?
You said to celebrate every activity
I retorted to my sponsor
Yes, by doing them with purpose.

Not everything needs to be a production number
Sometimes just showing up is enough
Putting to much energy into preparation
Can leave you without resources

It’s okay to make an appearance
Do the simple act and move on
That is a celebration in its own way
Don’t squander your vitality on the mundane.

Do you know what I mean, asks my sponsor?
Don’t waste flowers on trash heaps, I answer
Yes, and don’t wipe your bottom with poetry
I mention this in case you get any ideas!

[LeftWriteFemme]

May 16


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.




Allow your imagination to put on a slideshow for your resistance

*

THREE ROOSTERS

The three roosters came to the meeting
To hear themselves crow.
The membership purely spectators
In the longest, lowest, loudest sobriety competition.

Those of us in the fray, we 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.

[LeftWriteFemme]

May 17


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.






Be kind when you win; be kind when you lose


*

PIROUETTES

I turn and spin, the world flashes as I go.
I am erect, proud of my self-possession.
I can stand the forces of vector rotation
Public opinion and gravity.

Sobriety has made a dancer out of me.
I sprint the stage and take my place.
I know the moves and trust, as best I can
The choreographer and choreography

I feel the wind move on my body as I revolve
The blur of existence spreads out before me
I can let it pass

To spot myself and keep my upright posture
The only place that requires my clear and unobstructed view
Is the line of sight from my sponsors eyes to mine.

[LeftWriteFemme]

May 18



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 G-d 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.





If you take the cake don’t take it far



*

DRIVEWAY TIME

Layer after layer of blue stack the sky
The moon risen and the sun dipping away
I wait for the twin lights, the constellation of headlights
My ride to the meeting.

It will be the entry vehicle to a world of population
Leaving behind the galaxy of me, the single star
I stand silent and the feeling of fellowship carries the miles

Laughter flies the winds of memory
And all the old jokes of truth and tribute are fresh
And abide with me until the car arrives
And we make it all new again.

[LeftWriteFemme]

May 19


Who Rang?




Examine the instillation of your buttons as a process of discovery for disabling them. Pay attention to the wiring but also to the hardware. Sometimes the advertising is the thing which keeps alive something better off put to rest. Many things are rooted in other pots and have a lifeline from outside of the current host. All the connections and housing should be explored as well as what work the mechanism does once pressed. Is there a gong, tinkling bells? Does it release the wolves from their den or tiger from his lair? Information is a tool which never fails to help me in disassembling the traps and their triggers I must not shy from the gathering.






If you reframe the past don’t crop reality


*

NETWORKS

Testing my sponsor when I’m hurt
Is like probing for gas with a lit cigar in my mouth
If I can’t find a way to douse the cheroot before posing my questions
It’s guaranteed I will get an explosive response

I need a network
They follow me with sand
Snatch from me my burning pacifier
And save me from sticking my smoldering end where it doesn’t belong

We all need a little excitement in our lives
But don’t have to become an incendiary device to fill the need
I forget that boring isn’t the same as death
It just feels that way

Some days distance prevents disaster
A good support system carries me away
To face it on another day.

[LeftWriteFemme]

May 20



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!”






Check your mileage so you know how far you’ve come


*

POWER

When power arrives
It comes complete with a blindfold
Mask and lullaby

I am blinded to what effect I have
Others can not see me
Only the unchanging masquerade covering my face

All my fears and apprehensions are soothed
By the melody singing in my ear
I am possessed

The hard thump of the bottom reaching up to get me
Is my sole hope of release
I can’t reason my way back from a trip with power

The isolation is too far reaching
My senses numbed
My thinking biased

Salvation as a cold smack is the jolt required
Fire takes fire
Power takes the same

[LeftWriteFemme]

May 21



NaCl


I work arithmetic instead of telling you to stop. I make a light remark, 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 they’re 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.








Bang the drum, expect a sound


*

FROZEN STRAWBERRIES

I have them in the freezer, I tell my sponsor
I’m sure you do, when are you going to take them out
And reenact spring, she retorts.

I don’t want to take them out before I’m ready
I don’t want them to go to waste.
Oh the Excuse Maker, the Staller

Are you going to drag all the old chestnuts out of the closet?
I thought you were going to defrost the strawberries.
Fear, you’re saying, Fear of strawberries is not a sign of stability I ask her?

Eat the strawberries or not
But it seems to me you didn’t get sober
To avoid the sweeter things in life

Keeping all your goodness locked up
In the deep freeze
Destined for frost bite.

[LeftWriteFemme]

May 22




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 trough.





Personal knowledge is not the same as group knowledge

*

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.

[LeftWriteFemme]

May 23




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 and 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.






Bend with the tracks or don’t take the train

*

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 scrapper, the autumn 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
And 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;

[LeftWriteFemme]

May 24



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.




Inscribe your heart’s values on your mind


*

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 which moves the wheel
The power that generates this ongoing play.

Hamlet is dead, yet I reprise the past 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?

[Tommi]

Originally Posted by StillettoDoll

Gray's First Sober Year

by William Notter




This new life is better
than a dozen beer-joint romances
or a hundred drunks at fishing camp.
My habit now is not drinking,
and waking up where I belong.
I can see colors again,
and I don't feel like a turd in the punchbowl
whenever I go around people.

I'll mow the weeds for Sharon
and almost enjoy it. She's even given up
checking my breath whenever I come home.
I went shopping for our anniversary
and wound up crying in the store,
but not the kind of tears you cry
when your wife catches you lying in the shed
with your pistol jabbed up in your mouth
and vodka running out your nose.

The only thing she could think to do
was check me into another detox,
and this time it finally took.
This year has made me different—
vodka could never do that for long.
Some days when I wake up early
and listen to Sharon lying there breathing,
it feels like somebody snuck in while we slept
and changed our sheets.

Great poem..and hello. I saw this on TV last week, and cried, and laughed and cried. Our stories may be different, our sobriety and relationships too, but damn, that One Day at a Time, is oh so true for those of us on either side of the bottle, medicine chest, etc. . i saw my Mom in it, and I saw the little me, and the Big me.


[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7lP_wxoSmY"]YouTube - ‪When a man loves a woman trailer‬‏[/nomedia]. If you haven't seen it I hope you do. IT reminded me of so many things. My addictive personality STILL rages on after so many years of being clean and sober.
Thanks for keeping the light on.

[StillettoDoll]

Sober Song

by Barton Sutter

Farewell to the starlight in whiskey,
So long to the sunshine in beer.
The booze made me cocky and frisky
But worried the man in the mirror.

Good night to the moonlight in brandy,
Adieu to the warmth of the wine.
I think I can finally stand me
Without a glass or a stein.

Bye-bye to the balm in the vodka,
Ta-ta to the menthol in gin.
I'm trying to do what I ought to,
Rejecting that snake medicine.

I won't miss the blackouts and vomit,
The accidents and regret.
If I can stay off the rotgut,
There might be a chance for me yet.

So so long to God in a bottle,
To the lies of rum and vermouth.
Let me slake my thirst with water
And the sweet, transparent truth.

"Sober Song" by Barton Sutter, from Farewell to the Starlight in Whiskey.