Friends of Bill W.

[LeftWriteFemme]

August 16

I AM


I am my own hope.
The spring of willingness flows within me and makes everything possible.

I am my own dream.
Colors and sprinkles fly in my mind and mix with a sprite's laugh and make me enchanted.

I am my own joy.
Filled with wonder and delight, my quick turns and ready mind warm my heart and pink my cheeks.

I am my own prize.
New and exciting, every day that I am myself,
I win.


Pith is dry and dead, be marrow.
*


Dewy, Cheatum & Howe


I must radically sever the close connection I have
with self-seeking, self-pity and dishonesty.
What will I use to pay the retainer
for the representation I will need to pursue this divorce?

Willingness is the earnest money,
which will start the ball rolling,
hard work pitches in its share
and faith pays the note each day I apply it.

All this and more is what it takes to divide
the endless stream of my compulsive thought
into a survivable day’s worth of life.

I have the prospect of being happy as a divorcee
or I could be a miserable widow
if I stay wed to my disease.

[LeftWriteFemme]

August 17

IN THE PRAIRIE

In the prairie, there are small fenced cemeteries, family plots. The flat expanse of land opens to the eye; hand carved monuments stand in testimony to love and service. In these places grow the wild flowers… bluebells, paintbrush, lupines, and all manner of reedy grasses… these places cordoned off from mechanization and Agra-business. Held in trust are the bones of loved ones and the soul of nature. Deep inside me is a place like this. The place I have buried my young---the little ones who died of shame, neglect, and hurt. And I must return, not to exhume the dead, but to pay tribute. To return with honor and love, harvest the daisies and buttercups, grow them in the garden of my heart. I can tend the flowers that spring from destruction. I can mingle them with the growth of my sober life; restore my prairie to a splendor it has never known. I can enjoy the bounty of saving the seeds worth saving, and planting my Higher Power’s will for me.


Make a list of decoys.
*

Endlessly Moving Maps


I try to survive by memorizing the chaos.
I do well up to five layers deep
and then lose it, as the details become too great.

I am staking my life on my ability to track the patterns
in a storm while at the same time treading water.
I think this skill kept life and breathe in me for many years.

Now I fear I’ll drown in this roiling mass.
I must touch down my tender toes
and learn to walk this twisting path
and keep a pace with this spinning world.

Everything moves and I am overwhelmed.
I have forgotten my flesh and blood nature;
have mistaken myself for a stone, one which dare not roll,
one which has no part in this endlessly moving map.

[LeftWriteFemme]

August 18

DON’T BE


Don’t be stupid.
Don’t be crazy.
Don’t be anything out of the ordinary.
Don’t be angry.
Don’t be hateful.
Just don’t be that way.
Don’t be sad.
Don’t be mopey.
Smile for the camera.
And pretend for everyone.
I wondered often why I felt like dying and it took me years to understand why.
Don’t be equals death.
Don’t feel.
Don’t cry.
Don’t love.
Life is about action, presence and content. You’re wrong if you break the rules and dead if you keep them. So, please be you and don’t be them. Look back when you have to but step out of the grave.


Learn followership too.
*


Single Serving Sterling


When the menu of life feels vast
I must focus on my teaspoon;
a simple tool that fits well in my hand,
whose use I well understand.

The possibilities conceived
when I ponder the intangibles
conspire to suck me down the rabbit-hole
where all that’s left to me is a drug.

When I come back to stir my tea
and lick the spoon clean
the world revolves around me
and without need of my completed unified theory.

Need looms, loss stacks,
salvation keeps a steady distance,
my only hope is to drink my tea,
I shan’t even sharpen my spoon;

I can and need to stay out of my fear built prison
and off the streets of hell.
My task is at hand and the size of the scoop
is a reminder to take all of life in small doses.

[LeftWriteFemme]

August 19

COMFORT AND WILLINGNESS



Closer than comfort is willingness. Comfort is at the skin but willingness is under it. I can live without comfort but not without willingness. Both are unseen but felt deeply. Willingness drives to the destination and comfort settles me in once there. Comfort is a gift like warmth; willingness is a gift like breath. I have been tempted to let go of willingness to hold on to comfort. True willingness brings true comfort; never the other way around. No matter where I have to go, willingness will take me there; I hope comfort will follow.


Draw satisfaction on the wall of your brain.
*

Go Where it’s Warm

The intangible rightness of cohesion is difficult to explain.
What is it that makes a group congregating into a congregation?
What makes a rag tag tousle into a home group?

It is the thing I yearn for, but dare not chase.
I know this too makes a grub into a butterfly,
yet private transformation seems necessary,
where the change of masses is gratuitous.

A thousand geese fly overhead;
arrows of individual miracles,
pointing the way to the meaning of it all.

[LeftWriteFemme]

August 20

THE SEDUCTION OF SOBRIETY



I was seduced away from my duties as an alcoholic by the promise of sobriety. Allegiance to my disease was sidelined. Alluring stability and beguiling integrity curried favor with my desperate heart, pulling me from the arranged marriage of addiction. How could I cling to the corpse of dependence when sanity shimmered just out of reach, then not out of reach but within my grasp? I couldn’t resist the golden flicker of life. I had been bound to death, unable to see an alternative. My loyalty to loss and grief slipped from me and I limped into the daylight like the widow of the night. I have been lured to my senses by a love like no other, the love of life.


Raise the ceiling on optimism.
*


Blind Man’s Bluff

Turning your head to see
doesn’t help when you have a blind eye.
All the rotation in the world won’t restore your sight.

Addressing life problems with a solution
involving spin is counter productive
and sometimes counter clockwise to boot.

If I find I just can’t see, then maybe
it’s time to listen better and compensate
for my shortcoming through some other action.

Turning away doesn’t help and walking away is worse.
When I am blind in one eye and can’t see out of the other
stepping up to the plate may not be an option,
but I still need to find a way to stay in the game.

[LeftWriteFemme]

August 21

HOW EVER YOU CAN


I heard, “let go with love.”
“You know how to do that?” asked my sponsor.
“No, that’s why I’m here to see you, but it sure sounds like something I should do.”
“Well, in a perfect world maybe we can all do it that way, but for now let go with a mean look in your eye. Let go with rage in your heart. Let go with words boiling on your tongue. Let go with the butter knife up to its hilt in the jelly jar. Let go standing at the sink wishing for some other life. Let go as a reflex. Let go as an anthem, as a prayer, as a declaration. Let go even when you don’t feel you are holding on any more. At the same time hold on to what’s important: your recovery, your Higher Power and your sense of humor."


Fly in your dreams.
*


Hang on or Dance


Because I felt ‘outcomes’ slipping through my fingertips
I dug in with my nails, I schemed, plotted, worried, whined.
Lack of power was my problem I thought,
but what it came down to was, failure to acknowledge… accept…
failure to surrender to the reality of powerlessness.

The only thing I learned from resistance
was an intimate knowledge of futility.
When I embraced truth… the facts…
when I live with the gravity of masses not fight against it;

I began to enjoy the weather,
knowing I did not pull the clouds or push the storm.
I’m back in the dance of people moving about me,
all keeping with the time, it is not mine to keep.

[LeftWriteFemme]

August 22

FOREVER IS NOT AS LONG AS IT USED TO BE


What time gives in permanence it takes in fluctuation. The relationships I stand on to reach, with tippy-toed grasp, the light of heaven flutter like flounder disturbed from their sandy bed. My mind probes the past looking for the shroud lines to hold up the sails of hope. Togetherness, the banner of life, bonds to strength, protection from outside and within. I yearn for a life of love, unbending and calm. I am met with the tug of war, which ends in mud. Days stretch into years but years are no protection from terminus. Forever rings in my head. Promises I have made to myself, promises I have made to others, promises made to me are nothing in the face of the promise of tomorrow. Time flows like air over a row of seedlings, fresh and challenging, sustaining life and carrying away familiarity. Forever is not as long as it used to be. I can live with that, have to live with it. I can shake my fist to the sky but it won’t make love last. It will not keep my heart from loving again. Sails, which have filled before, will fill again.


Love yourself green or blue or pink.
*


Up to Date

The future is a prison I escape by staying in today.
The tiny windows which open to strange foreknowledge
have barbs rather than bars and inflict painful wounds
when I attempt too close examination.

My business is here and now; the currency like manna,
good only for the duration of the day and nothing further.
Pretty dreams and colossal disaster float as baubles on the horizon
but I need to take down my focus from such far off vistas;
adjusting the optics for a clear view of where I am standing.

Circumscription is what the destiny becomes
when I try to live in it too soon.
Novelty is what it is to be living in the very moment
I am currently breathing in.