Friends of Bill W.

[LeftWriteFemme]

January 25



Responding to Response

Thankfully I’m not in charge of what is so freely given in this program. I want it to be available, but I want gratitude to be the universal response. At first I thought I couldn’t understand how anyone could hold this gift in their hands and not feel grateful, truth is I know exactly how that’s done and I don’t want to look at that ugly thing. “Cunning, Baffling, Powerful” But they left out how repulsive it is, maybe they didn’t want to see it either, or thought it was self-explanatory.
No matter which, I’m glad I am not the arbiter of the flowing fount that is recovery, I might have been tempted to cap and meter it, killing all the beauty and wild randomness that makes it real and true. I despair that others don’t recover as I recover and yet I am relieved that I didn’t have to drink as they drank.
I have to see those around me well enough to stay out of their traps or follow their leads, whichever is appropriate, but I don’t have to adjudicate their reply.

Pick up sticks and put downs stones

*

THE BUTTON BOX

I go to my button box
To sort out my life.
I lay out the matching sets
The various sizes, shapes and colors.

Coat buttons are commanding
But unsuitable for delicate places.
The tiny pearl buttons with shanks pull my attention
But work well only on silks.

The metal, shell and horn buttons
Come from such far off places
And all end up crossing my table
As I try to see clearly how to stick with the winners.

I know the people represented in this box.
The strong, the loud, the beautiful.
I know the weak and the unique,
The ones of special circumstances and occasions.

I come to the realization the simple ones,
The buttons sewn on the inside,
The ones who silently give strength
And support to the large and the small alike.

The ones which come in every shade and size,
Who match their ability
To service they render others,
These are my favorites.

They make secure all the things I love and trust
Flat and unobtrusive these buttons
Hold fast the fabric of my life.

[LeftWriteFemme]

January 26


A Living Love




What I love about the program is that it is a living thing, like me.
It is not perfect, it is growing and changing, adapting and correcting for each experience and need. AA is a life into life process and saves me because life begets life, no matter what I was told. The answer to life is living and I get to see that being done by everyone from newcomer to old-timer each at his or her personal ability. I am allowed to dangle my feet, wade, tread-water and swim, all under the watchful eye of loving support and critical pretender. Difficulty is not removed nor is the way made smooth, but I am no longer without a thread to hold. I love the web I help weave myself into and feel protected from the spider of my addiction because together we are living proof.


Bear Grace


*

DEEP IN THE SEA

Under the mirror
There is life
Under what I reflect to the world
I am a world apart.


I smile sweetly, political in my response
To confrontation and conflict
Deep, deep in the sea, is a current of sadness
I can't always shake.

Pain is the past
But it's there like a moray
Lurking to strike aimlessly, pointlessly
At the passersby.

The ripping teeth
And the cold stare
My terror
No way to escape it.

I focus on the topside
The reflective part of me.
I keep as clean
And free as can be.

I stick to my business
List my goals and make plans
The water runs cold
Then hot beneath.

I carry the steps to this underwater grave
Trying to inflate the rubber skin of god
But No
There is no life in the god of my understanding

Or maybe there is no life.
For the character the drowned balloon represents
The sea is bigger than me.
The life stronger and more abundant.

The sky it reflects as vast as liquid
I swim
There is a Power
And it doesn't need that comic book face.

Safety is not the requirement
That can be granted.
Lack of safety does not end my life
It does not end God

[LeftWriteFemme]

January 27


Simplicity Itself

My life runs at a Gilbert and Sullivan pace, with about as much sense and comic relief. You say 'keep it simple' and my disease says 'why ruin a good play?’ The truth is this is not play at all but a work that consumes my life from me and doesn't thank me for my time. Simplicity for me requires respect, a gift I selectively give myself; a gift that I often use only as a shield during battle. My past method of increased self-respect is life in a war zone. This is no solution. Release of grief, this is the onerous path I avoid taking. Purging the wrong thinking and action of others from my blood, my eyes, my skin, allows me to lift my chin and square my soul to plumb and level living, don self-respect as a birth right and set a calendar fit for plausible life, a simple life.



If you are not a hero in your own home you are not a hero


*

HIDE AND SEEK

I have sought You
High and Low
But like the rain
You have always found me.

I like a cold, wet cat on a winters day
Peer into warm lit windows
Hoping
You will be home.

I seek to keep moving
You find me for some unknown reason.
I have given up
Naming You.

I trust You know who you are In spite of the fact I do not.
You are places I don't know
Doing things I think better of.

Citing the list of errands I daily make for You,
Not to beleaguer You
But the unfinished list of history
Trails out of my pocket.

I worry I may possess
Your only copy
Of this Injustice List.

There have been days of peace
Days I don't think too much.
Days I turn away from
My history lessons and future projections.

My ultimate problem is with the equal sign
I run the numbers and it figures inequity.
I check my calculations and shake
The calculator of my mind.

Deeply, I fear
You're a one god
And do not comprehend
The implications of zero.

If you multiply with only things above naught
You may be unaware of nothingness.
The empty things I feel
When I can't seem to find you.

Self-possessed - insensitive of the cipher
Your dimensions stay positive.
Bring me into Your realm or join me in the void.

I seek You
But You have found me.

[LeftWriteFemme]

January 28


Sponsorship




Right now, as I think of sponsorship, I think of all the things I have done wrong. Times when I was not understanding enough and times when I was too understanding and enabling. Sponsors I chose for ulterior motives and the ones I didn't challenge when they wandered away. I search my mind for the ingredients that were in the mix when things went well and the dominant component was willingness, mine and theirs. Whether I was sponsor or sponsee, willingness overrode ability, determination and love. We had to come to the table willing, this was never something we were able to cook up or construct. Nor is it something I can always hold onto, sometimes willingness evaporates or slips away like sand in a clenched fist. The permanence and impermanence of sponsorship awes and frightens me. Like a guidewire twisted from many strands none of which reaches from end to end I worry about the unraveling but depend on the strength.


Expectations are incubating resentments

*

THREE TOYS FLOATING

I bat the ducks across the surface of my bath.
Soaking is supposed to calm me,
I'm waiting.
I assure you, my impatience is no help to this process.

These yellow, tub-bound misfits, grinning at me
Don't fill me with the joy of living either.
I have blown bubbles until I'm blue
I smell like a French elevator from the bath oil.

My hair is stiff with conditioner
My face packed with mud.
"Do the right thing." Said my sponsor
She is such a pain.

Here I am, bubble bath to my arm pits
And not a hint of peace
Her question rings,
"What do you want?"

But isn't it obvious, if I knew that
What would I be doing
Wrinkling in this swilling vat?
I wouldn't.

I would be out doing my thing.
Whatever, that thing is.
How I'm going to figure myself out I don't know
And, She, is no help (you know who She is, She is the sponsor lady)

So what do I want?
World peace, a clue, maybe just a hint
But I know part of it
I know more than I admit.

I want Sobriety and Happiness,
Dignity and Respect
Enough time to do these things
And Love.

"Well" says she, those things are easy
Work the steps, then the traditions,
Practice them, do service
And take the advice you give your own sponsees"

I stick out my tongue in her general direction.

[LeftWriteFemme]

January 29


Inertia

in•er•tia
n.
1. Physics. The tendency of a body to resist acceleration; the tendency of a body at rest to remain at rest or of a body in straight line motion to stay in motion in a straight line unless acted on by an outside force.
2. Resistance or disinclination to motion, action, or change
This force is real; the laws that govern it act on me for well and ill. When I’m on a roll it’s hard to guide me and like the girl with the curl; when I’m stuck, I’m very, very stuck and it’s awful.
I am bound by this reality and go or stay according to what is set in motion or stopped, but what about ‘the outside force’? Am I in charge of summoning ‘it’ or is ‘it’ summonable at all? Will ‘it’ obey like the dog, or obey like the cat? Or is ‘it’ more random than the rain? Can ‘it’ be lured or tempted or does ‘it lure and tempt me? And the biggest questions on my mind: Is ‘the outside force’ also subject to inertia? Are we in this together? What is ‘its’ outside force? Might it have something to do with me?



Wash one pain at a time


*

NURSE

What if the word God is like the word nurse?
What if the person is only the simple meaning?
The actor doing the service
The plain act, uncontrollable from my end.

What if my active part of God,
Is the same as my active part of nurse?
What I draw down, how I schedule myself
To be ready when the milk arrives.

How I pull and am satisfied
Digest and draw again.
Like the sea laps at the shore,
The moon tugging it all the while.

What if God is about my hunger,
Satisfaction dependent on finding a suitable teat?
Maybe this is why, when it comes to God
Much of what I do, is cry.

When faced with my need, I open my mouth
Finding only two possible responses,
Suck or Scream.
My aching consumes me and I don't know how to calm myself.

I look for the caretaker, the person, the deed.
I need sucker but never look for the breast.
I am the child of God.
I must learn to draw God in

[LeftWriteFemme]

January 30


The Was and the Is


The Silent Scream that existed as a placeholder for my G-d was incomprehensible to me. I entered AA and was informed that understanding my Higher Power was required not just some far distant goal. In true alcoholic form my first move was to shun G-d. This made room for my rage which was in much need of the space. After a few fine years of dissipation I lost interest in incendiary devices no matter how large their detonation capacity. Having cleared the room I brought in G-d as potted plant. I talked to it occasionally, watered and fed it, mostly ignored it. Growing in spite of lacking ministrations G-d was an unobtrusive force living in the corner changing gas into air and demanding nothing. As I quelled my apprehension and lived with the Presence I looked, listened, probed and questioned the subtle Force sharing the room. “Add it up,” chanted the children in my ear, “run the numbers, settle the accounts.” I calculated proofs and discarded the faulty and inaccurate. What was left, the whole, not the remainder was mine to keep, but it was not everything. I haven’t an everything G-d, because I am not a nothing person. I am something and G-d is something too. We are complimentary, like pairs of angles who come full circle.



Show the sun the souls of your feet


*

TRUST

You can trust people to be who they are.
I am a different being in relationship to different people.
To some I am the center of their constellation,
The sun burning bright, I 'm all they can see.

To others I am the moon,
Orbiting them, silent and dedicated.
With another group, I am a comet streaking through the sky,
Seldom seen but well remembered.

For many I am a distant star.
One among the multitude, blending in the night with the other signs.
Then there are the folks who see me in a more down to earth way,
I am the dirt beneath their feet.

The farmer sees me as a plant to be tended.
The cowboys view me as a horse to be broken.
To fisherman I'm a catch.
I am what people want to see.

So what can I trust them to be?
Wrapped in their own worlds
Yes, mostly I guess,
None of my business in the end.

I watch them and learn what I want to do, who I want to be.
In large part by avoiding what I see them do.
I do trust people to serve as bad examples, often
And good ones infrequently.

[LeftWriteFemme]

January 31

Principles before Personalities............and gratitude!


As with everything I have to be careful of how I infer meaning. You say ‘Principles before Personalities’ and I hear, Their principles and Their personalities, immediately I’m on a tear. How different if I think of ‘my’ principles and ‘my’ personality. When I face it this way it is reflexive; I embrace my principles and my personality falls into step. I am safe and sane therefore gratitude follows just as the topic suggests. Good orderly direction is elegant when I don’t reverse direction. There is an obvious way to pet the cat when I accept that we get along fine, when I don’t………well, need I say more?




Books open minds, music opens hearts


*

WHEN I WAS YOUNG

I'm sure it will come soon
A time I can be carefree, innocent.
Worn and weary, I slog through the painful
Over awareness of what was considered my childhood.
What can I do but hope things will get simpler as I age.

My sobriety takes years from my face.
Lines slip from me and I feel the weight lift from my shoulders.
My tender branches twisted with the constant force of wind
Bud and flower in the shelter of recovery
Holding them in their own embrace.

Colors seep to the windows of my mind
Forming pictures and carrying me to a new world.
Limpid pools, a place I dive, as I look to the mirror.
Serenity a rebounding of life fills me
And I am the gentle girl I missed so long.

Longing for my loveliness, I cry at the sight of my baby one.
I have not yet taken my place on the swing
But I have been down to the edge of the playground
And run barefoot in the sand.
I will be who I was to be, it's late but it's better.

I know well enough
To enjoy it as it comes
Treasure it for every sweetness.
I will come into my youth