Posts Tagged Alcoholism
Memories That Terrify Beyond Their Aged Powers
A brief instant, coming back
frequently, but not more than a
spark, a tight frame, when I surely killed
my son and a dear friend, one of those
lashes where there is no possibility
of survival barring some god
which flowered sympathy for the
tragic follies of men so deleterious to
themselves as I, and that maroon
truck which should have flown through
unforgiving skies, which would have
fallen so far, it would have bled its
own gallons of life as that same
merciful god, merciful if it had allowed
us to die instantly, would have used
our own gallons of blood for lessons
for people who were meant to be
frightened by the terrific powers of
those named follies, this increasingly
swamped unconsciousness which
seems to alleviate years of agony, of
empty purposelessness, but only
prolongs the blankets of pain,
as the stadium grows larger and
larger, our wiring blurs in tornadic
waves, sounds fuller than a stadium
should allow, having dreamt of the
massiveness of the musicians we
longed to see cranked my drive to
a state beyond intoxication into an
evil blob of emotionally stormy
empty, evil for it was to murder
us but for that sympathetic god,
and when this flash comes back,
I long to know that god for one
moment or more and thank it
for that night,
ask it how it chose
such worthless, mostly
in my case,
candidates for rescue, but the truth
seems to be I’ve been saved
from the nothing of the end
millions of times, despite
thousands of desires for the end
from a defeated spirit, it seems
this impossible prevention of the
end was either done to save only
my son and my friend, or more
frighteningly, done to prove to me
that something loves me despite
my follies, that something needed
to show me my powerless receipt
of a gift too large to imagine.
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I’ll Never Be Cured
My brain leaks,
just like my mother’s did,
my brain hurts,
I’ll never be cured.
They throw it back,
they give me shit,
my brain leaks,
I’ll never be cured.
My brain hurts,
just like my mother’s did,
she threw the black pans,
hailed our personal failures,
told us we’d never be good,
but I’ll never be her,
I’ll never ruin your psyche
My brain hurts,
just like my mother’s did,
my brain leaks,
I’ll never be cured.
The world hates,
It foams in my head,
with no smile,
I know I’m no good,
just like my mother said,
just like my mother said.
My brain hurts,
I’m scared of you all,
‘fraid I might crash,
you’ll see my soul crushed,
for my brain’s dead,
excepting total despair,
yeah, my brain hurts,
just like my mother’s did.
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Brain Broke
A day late again, but here is my piece for PAD day 12 which was to be a piece about the word broke.
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Brain Broke
Not as broke as I was
in the early days. Broke
is what we use for a bank
account or a car, but for me,
broke was my brain.
There are days, nothing
but broke, and when I’m
broke all the way, I cry
hard, and the blubbery
actions help relieve me.
.
Seven Minutes of Healing
Today’s challenge for PAD 2013 was to write a “sevenling,” which is a poem with two tercets, which may be unrelated followed by a single punch line.
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Seven Minutes of Healing
Soft colors and faces warm the room,
and plunked, I’m in a corner, swamped
by sympathetic but foreign personalities.
Linda held the room to a low energy,
allowing our insides to come outside,
making our hot souls melt the evils.
I cried, and I wasted gobs of Kleenex.
.
Brahms, Revisited without Tears for Today
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Brahms, Revisited without Tears for Today
Brahms has the twitchy fuse,
lighting me in acidic
flames and the arguments inherited
from old elephants, between piano and orchestra,
are trudging – me, I verses the world,
and I’m losing
but I’m pounding the keyboard
until I get a break, a breath, a sigh,
and I show this grace
that is un-Brahms
but is
Brahms at his greatest,
and when the horns arrive
in red army coats, you know
victory is grasped with dirty,
dry, crisp finger nails, but it
never happens, never consummates.
I am finished, a heaping
pile of slippery dung
when Brahms is done.
And as a practicing drunk, the tears
would wilt tarnished cheeks and create heat
emanating around thorny eye sockets,
but these days are desert dry, pain layered
and hidden and only Brahms, only the
master knows, knows the truth, and now,
at least I rest, I stop, I pray, lost.
.
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p.s. – Embedded below is the referenced piece, performed by my favorite conductor and one of my favorite pianists. The exposition of the first movement lasts 3:45, so patience is needed in waiting for the arguments between piano and orchestra. The climax/recapitulation of the first movement at about 13:20 is one of the most intense sections of music I know along with the ending of the first movement. It is immense music. The third movement is a kick ass jam if you make it that far…
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Right-Sizing Traps Part III
After the meeting, I shrink to the screamer.
My brain withers against a firm spiritual
admonition. “Who are you to claim
you know,” I choreograph psychotically and
I grip tightly and label this a reverse form
of pride, a pride where I buffer myself
in a pocket of air, claiming my knowledge
as being on a higher mountain top, knowing
I’ve never been to the mountain top, knowing
I’m inadequate to the test, knowing that I have
no clue, acting as if I give the clues, but
the screamer is the ass, and I must work
on not hating, knowing that the unknowing
are fine because I’m with them. My pride
must shrink and I must mix like water
allowing the silt of the meeting to settle,
vowing to be compassionate for all
regardless of the their states of knowing,
not hating myself for my comprehensive
lack of knowing, my fear of hell.
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The Day He Began to Change for Real
He parked his too-large automobile
in front of craft shops, wondering
who was watching him, who was judging
his journey, looking up slightly
at the seventy-three hundred
addresses, thinking about West and East,
thinking about which way was going
up so he could find the place. He knew
going in was a chore commanded of him
through a very brief moment of self-discipline
while knowing that this is the last place
he would ever want to go.
These people
are not the people
he would ever choose to be with.
The daily commute had been tortuous
for years. It had been part of his insanity
incubator, his car had become the prison
that had fostered the growth
of the most severe anger at the most
inconsequential things, not a violent anger,
but a fearful one, an anger that starts
with being born, an anger that starts
with his parents, but not an anger at them,
an anger at what they had given him,
all of those disgusting genetic defects.
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Where Did My Friends Go?
I hide from my friends.
They circle like airplanes
in the fog of Pearl Harbor
battles and the radar
is fucked, so they’re
sharks, and I’m in
the tower, but they’ve
tossed me in the basement,
or I’ve tossed myself,
and I’m cargo like
destroyed Buddhas
rolling off runways
into dense thickets
of barbed wire from
camps where when
we’ve lost our purpose
we’re carted off to die,
and I feel my face,
screaming at the fear,
as I’m chewed up by a
G.E. engine, splatting
and splashing droplets
falling near my scattered
friends.
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Most Days Should be Thanksgiving, Designed for Gratitude
Lessons, strangling the deathly stillness of sobriety,
as we are forced to write our lists, and why the fuck
does it require ten? Because otherwise,
we’d stop at two, and the first is always sobriety.
I’m clean. My breathing does not gurgle in large pools
of muddy water, and my family, and the love, and
this is because vodka was never a match for love,
but it sure beat the pulpy slime out of love for long periods,
as the brain’s diseased mind circled in several strands,
like perverted green sharks, ripping pieces of compulsion,
drilling the hiding games, the dark gardens of shame
covered with ill seaweed craving an unconsciousness.
I can read! I can write! Look at me; I can see,
and today’s mind seeks some sort of warmth or
brightness which seems to bury the mildew of pebbles
rolling from dreary nights spent waiting to die, and though
not one of us knows god, we’re all glad we know
god again, that he holds us in large hands, but mostly,
our gratitude comes loudly knocking every single morning,
caressing those massive gaps in life when we know who we are,
where we are and what we are. We do. We know.
.
Today with the Doctor
I sent her stuff from my hero,
for the example of the truth
of drunks – it’s more authentic
when coming from real drunks,
and I say, It’s always scary looking
at this side from that side – so many stay
on that side.
The elevator smells like fresh diaper.
My brain surfs the grainy side of the home folks art,
art that I wish I could do, especially the green door
with the three windows
reflecting the honest and scary
world, failingly attempting
to block the bad spirits.
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