Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Recovery Verses I - XV

I

On rabbit-trail paths
through scarring brier
thought's value seems diminished,
it's office grudgingly performed,
and actions deliberately chosen
lead to fells impassable.
I turn home now
no stranger to trials,
endurance now enabled,
not contented to lie still.
What ugly feast my foe celebrates,
he will not have me today;
Rapacious creditor?  Indeed!


II

Born to flirt
and write light verse
he grew more gray
each passing day.
Ever adroit with words
and quick to pursue
some bohemian triumph
that would never have occurred
of women to value,
his self just didn't fit, exactly,
as a shadow across broken ground
in late afternoon seems a caricature
of it's caster.
Nimble with objects, less so with lives,
those areas he found wanting
his God began to heal
in a most merciful act of Love,
deeming him complete,

a man.


III

Being as a mirror answers,
yet still a chimera
in the dense companion
that is my mind,
getting to know my character
for its more pleasant side,
I can forget, momentarily,
a season when I hurt me badly.

Totally forgiving?
Would that I were.
I plague me still
but no longer call me bonehead.


IV

Who, now seeing her so happy,
can imagine her so lost,
so confined within disquietude?
And as for him?
Why, he goes on, too,
relatively unfettered.
The brute of epic nightmare,
having paid homage
to convention and law
can think himself humanistic
and see, again,
the natural poetry
of every relationship.


V

In Retreat from Reason
more correctly thought as
full flight from reality
he sees the world populated
by grinning black dogs
and sensible white sheep.
Still, in that unending waste of delirium,
so long ago in the language of the wounded,
even there can lucidity make a place
and come to call
as a small, blue bird.


VI

The film of my mind's eye
records human behavior.
But my vision allows for
interpretation of motive.
So judge not,
not that you avoid judgment,
rather that we never look
at two people
or one person twice
in the same way.


VII

The body weakens with age
but the soul grows stronger
and while the viper bite of alcohol
may kill a man, survived
the experience may imbue his spirit

with wisdom, too.




VIII

This passion of our kind
For the process of finding out
Is a fact one can hardly doubt,
But I would rejoice in it more
If I knew more clearly what
We wanted the knowledge for,
Felt certain still that the mind
Is free to know or not.


IX

He abdicated life with relative ease,
dismissed friends, rejected loves,
and on return questions,
"Why no celebration?"


X

Dispassionately taking in everything
the eye behind my eyes
does not weep
          yet registers pain
does not judge
          while acknowledging evil
does not forget
          and fights to forgive.

XI

The addict does what addicts can,
things improbable for Man.
But one thing well beyond his reach,
the addict cannot master speech.
And on a subjugated plain,
among the desperate and slain,
he stalks his prize with hands on hips,
while drivel gushes from his lips.

XII

Through an upturned bottle
past the crystal ellipse,
the sky bloomed blood-red fire
while thundering in my skull
like screams in a dream
as the wind shreds trees.
Caught up in disease
I demanded of God,
"Burn me incandescent
right where I stand!"
He chose mercy and healing
instead.

XIII

Had you known me once
you might still know me now
though in a different light and life.
And this place is not
          where you know me from
though it should not surprise you
          to find me here, un-concealed.
I feel no longer guilt,
nor shame, unable to hate,
freely choosing now love.


XIV

I don't know, one day
          to the next
from where it will come
learning how to make it happen
          day by day, 24 hour increments
each period an emergency replete
          with its own urgency.
Powerlessness. I can't make it happen
learning now how to allow
life to unfold.

XV

Here am I
destroying my liver
and you walk about
as if nothing has happened?
This kombucha I keep
in a refrigerated heart
and sip from whenever
the compulsion fails to start
is nothing more than
an imagined hurt
a resentment no more delicious
than the dirt
I choose to feed it.

2 comments:

  1. Beautiful, Haunting Joyful funny heartbreaking and warm

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    Replies
    1. Thank you. It has truly been a worthwhile journey

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