Friends of Bill W.

[LeftWriteFemme]

November 17

TIMELY





Spend a minute to rub the sleep gently from your eyes.
Spend an hour smoothing lotion from one end to the other.
Spend a day in tribute to the gifts you give and gifts given you.
Spend a week researching your goals, dreams and hopes.
Spend a month routing energy to a viable flow.
Spend a year studying truth.
Spend a life living it.
Your life is worth all the time you have.
Take it.


Balance doubt and dreams.
*

Human Sacrifice


How much does it have to cost me
in order for you to feel better?
Why is it that my suffering improves your mood?

Does it confirm for you that you are not alone
when you are feeling scared?
Or does it give you the sense
that at least you’re not as pitiful as me?

Is it pleading that strikes a chord,
is it the animal pain which stirs your compassion?
What about this scenario completes the cycle for you
to be able to move back to your comfort zone?

What happens if I don’t fall to pieces?
If I hold my emotions to my chest,
take them to my sponsor,
in some way keep them from your hungry eyes?

Will you move on and leave me behind?
Will you climb over the hurdle
which currently stands between us?
Or will you store away this bitter thing
like a rotten nut hidden by a Secret Squirrel?

[LeftWriteFemme]

November 18

MAIL FRAUD



The open envelope betrays the tampering I suspect. Too bad my critics are snooping, not my supporters. When they are finished tearing open my mail, they tear me apart as well. Shredded, I feel unable to handle further correspondence. I shut down communications. There is no channel for benefactors to travel. My champions are at a loss to defend me from my opponents; the struggle flounders. Misunderstanding the meaning of messages, I have been mocked and enslaved. I would love to vanquish my foes, but you see I am opening my own mail.


Ask often all the questions.
*

The Story as a Stowaway

I want to tell you a story,
but I want to tell it to you quickly,
so I can give it to you and then you can carry it
on your way, for what good is my story to you
if you must leave it where it lay?

Your need to be elsewhere presses on us both
and I wish to give you what you can take rather than
to try to stall you here for an epic you might never lift
and certainly not dream of dragging along.

I want you to be on your way
and take a part of me with you.
I wish to sew myself in your mind;
tether my tale to your soul.

I believe in forward motion and the need to carry on.
Where you’re going I can’t go on my own
but I know that if I am funny, quick and lite,
part of me goes even to the end of your world
and my hope is to help you make it bright.

[LeftWriteFemme]

November 19

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.


Ride a horse to a pony show.
*


Blanda


I know how good a quarterback you are
on Monday, safely at home.
What were you like on the field, game day?

You act as if seeing your mistakes in retrospect
is the same as not having made them,
but the game is lost and a rematch is not a do-over.

The score is final, whether you accept the stats or not.
Defeat does not deter my love of the game
and doesn’t diminish my affection for you,

But history has been made
and I don’t wish to repeat it.

[LeftWriteFemme]

November 20

NUZZLE’S OFFERING


Like a vegan kitten who wrestles long tailed leaves and twigs, subduing them and dragging these prizes to the feet of human parents, I fight paper tigers and bring the tatters as tribute to my Higher Power. These bloodless battles are pure practice; future wars may not be as clean. I can not enlist my God to fight these skirmishes; I would never believe in one that I could. I accept Deus as creator and cheerleader, but champion, no. Foliage and foes are mine to fight. The spoils, I bring back for pats on the head and bragging.


Talk to things other than people.
*


Triumph


God and I are experience junkies;
part of why I am here is so God can take me for a ride,
but also for the treat of God tucking into the sidecar
and letting me take us out for a spin.

I am God’s audience and God is mine;
though we are not peers we are comrades.
Life is a serious business I am sure and
profit and loss are always there to be considered.

I can barely describe to you
how much being in love with my creator is a joy,
but even better is being the apple of my creator’s eye.

[LeftWriteFemme]

November 21

FLORAL TROPHIES


Captured pet plants grow in my window. Why these specimens are given such regal care I suspect, but can’t explain. Delicate shoots pile out of sturdy stalks; roots force the confines of my decorative pots. How many neighborly blooming faces stare into my kitchen, greeting me mornings? I am amazed what good company my leafy friends can be when I am loving myself. Advantageous to my mental health, I breathe their exhaust and they breathe mine. Symbiotic, we live. I grow and flower; grateful these plants keep me.


Allow also small dreams that fit in your hand.
*

Jet Lagging


Baby’s feet kick in the isle
and we are all cocooned in our seats.
The movies play and earphones dangle in our ears.

We are jetting across the country in our own little worlds.
Landing can not happen soon enough for me,
not that I want to foreshorten the flight.

I just know I have a stack of lives waiting for me
and I would like to get back to living them.
I have been a week away, a vacation for sure and true
but I have my keep to earn, my obligations are many.

I hope to have done myself proud when I am through,
but until then there is much to do.

[LeftWriteFemme]

November 22

JELLYFISH AND PEANUT BUTTER CARDS



Jellyfish and peanut butter cards make for busy days and cheerful nights, sunlit at the beach and lantern light filled with double-decker solitaire. Camping as a way of life suits some as they run from their lives. For the more balanced, camp is a temporary retreat. To the overly invested, camping is an aberration, a threat to the foundations of civilization as we know it. I can take a bit of sand in my hair, smoke in the air. Though I do dread the feeling of coming back to the life I love and feeling like a stranger. Temporary disengagement estranges me from the place, the things, the dog. I need time away, variety of experience, expanded horizons. I need my entrenched home life. I need it all and must accept the clock never stops running anyplace on the planet even if I am enjoying a good game with sticky camp cards, regaling tales of man-of-war.


Don’t break your wishbone.
*

One and One


The person who has nothing is vague.
The person who has too much alludes.
And these people may falsely mistake one another
for kindred when what you draw your conclusions from
are the poems and sweet words,
which flow out of these divergent folk.

A paper house is built, but the living is impossible.
Tying strings to dreams doesn’t permit you
to fly away to fairylands it just leaves you prone
to lightening strikes and long wet wicks.

What could be the truth unfolded;
spread broadly for all to see?
Where could the roads so very far apart
lead to a home, a hearth, a life?

Or is this just a field of fantasy flowers blooming in our minds?
Mist is vapor pretending at a marriage
to a world it will soon evaporate and leave.
You and I are passing ships on a short sad night.

[LeftWriteFemme]

November 23

PRIDE GOETH BEFORE A FALL


In truth, pride goes wherever it wants, it’s pride. Pride wanders alone, for no one enjoys its company. Pride travels far but gets nowhere. Pride rises above reality and seeps beneath the surface. When pride wears out, love and honesty poke holes in it until it is grounded and transforms to humility. Pride’s past is remembered with flush and embarrassment. Recounting yesterday is pride’s unenviable task. Keeping it from recreation is mine.


Dress yourself with love.

*
No Mickey Mouse


The Wonderful World of Disney
belonged to normal children;
kids with Sunday nights
and not the tear filled screaming
which punctuated my weekends.

I had no time for the creative melodrama
built to add interest into the dull little lives
of safe little ones, there is no Disney for me;
no clean pasteled figures frolicking.

I know only the freshened wit of the wizened rabbit
and the frenetic slamming of that distorted duck;
these are there for me.
Teaching me the dark humor of the life I lead;

Preparing me to laugh at M*A*S*H,
yet still never cluing me to the fact
that Carroll O’Connor was only teasing,
so still I cried to hear his rants,

But the dry irony of Hawkeye,
war and blood, those I got.
I was carefully led there by the Merry Melodies.