National Poetry Month 5….maybe 6….

Denial

Denial isn’t
A river in Eypgt if
you’re swimming it….

The Zombie Apocalypse Came

You and I were not supposed to be friends
It was through our broken we stitched up bandages
made of marijuana, alcohol, methamphatamine and anything
else someone could offer us in exchange for things
teen-aged girls shouldn’t be selling.

After intolerable, I started to get out
you had two birds in your nest born from neglect of the world
not giving their mother refuge from the horror she was born into
but you finally found your way out
and back to nesting
but it would not last.

Before I left for sunnier pastures
you started telling the truth again
letting the sweat and the shakes pour out
in my spare bedroom
I encouraged you to keep coming back
it isn’t easy but it is the only way
but you chose your own option.

You’ve had a few last words:
“Your sister wasn’t very tough, she couldn’t handle the drugs.”
“I heard her youngest was adopted by foster parents.”

Then your picture
Identical to your mother at the age we met:
Dead, vacant eyes,
Swollen alcholic skin
Nothing left of the beauty once there
Just a mimographed copy of a woman
whose choices led to your abuse
who never got different
who never left you better
so you watched it all happen
her stumble-down drunk dance
with the poison which eventually took everything
and in spite of the breadcrumbs and interventions
chose to put on her shoes and walk right in them
Until you’ve stopped walking
consciously
anymore.

Urban Yogi series – Take Two

I watched this video interview with Moby on his relationship with yoga.

I started to perk up around his discussion of panic attacks.  There wasn’t a name or a diagnosis or someone who ever recognized the anxiety and disorders I was suffering from in my early teens.  I would have had to been taken to a doctor or someone in a professional setting in order to diagnose them.  I would have also had to have professionals step in and do something in my immediate family and living situations.   In my twenties, the term was given to me as “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.” 

While this might have been a ‘oh he suffers from these things too and I relate’ kind of post, it was when Eddie Stern asked the question, ‘what was your life like pre-yoga and then after yoga’ that I turned that question inward.  My life before yoga was being in a relationship with a man who was bi-polar, in a job that I hated and wanted desperately out of but didn’t know what else to do, unhappy with my current lifestyle, overweight, smoking cigarettes, in recovery programs for addiction, just generally unhappy.  I’m not saying yoga made me happy.  Or that these behaviors changed overnight.  But with the yoga practice came shifts in my thinking and behavior.  I let the relationship go.  I had been going to school and took a theatre class, and became open to hearing the teacher say “I think you have some talent here and I hope you continue to develop it” and letting that be the mantra for my new career.  I started running, ran and trained for a marathon.  My life didn’t get hunky-dory overnight.  Nor did I make the best decisions.  But yoga has helped me slow down enough to shift my thinking that something else could happen. 

One of Moby’s gems in this video “There isn’t an aggressively right way of doing things…” which pertains to his yoga practice and his outlook on life. Ahhh.  Thank you.  My practice and my life has evolved, during times of intense practice I’ve gotten injured, sometimes I need to slow down, back away, not do the things I used to be able to do.  It works with people too, intense relationships, slow down, back away, I can’t be friends with people who tear me down or require too much of my time and energy to maintain.  It’s a work in progress, this life.  It’s a practice not a perfect. 

25/26 April is National Poetry Month

25
Twenty-five:
When I decided to move down here to be with you.
Never having left my birthplace, family, friends, loved ones
and took a risk and jumped.
Best decision I ever made.
You just happened to be involved
It would take me a few more years to leave you.

And even after all that water,
all the therapy, and all the time
wasted
waiting for you to get sober/clean/sane/happy.
Being civil until we could be friends, still
finally having to say enough
finally having to say good-bye
even though you haven’t really gone anyplace.

I wish that things were different for you
and that you didn’t have a mind that told you that
the work you do drunk is better than what most people can do at all.
But lies are the only truth you tell yourself,
and the shredded family that has been holding hopes for decades now,
doesn’t need my phone call one more time reminding them of your fall.
Because you never really ever got back on that wagon
and you never really fell.
You just put on costume fairy wings and pretended that it was Halloween
in December, January, February, March
of 1992, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2002, 2008, 2009, 2011
but it’s time to take the costume off
and if you’re not willing by this time
God help you.

Maybe that gray haired wizard will grant you some wishes
cause there aren’t any Red Cross stations left
no rest areas
no more free coffee
no more shelter.

As some one wise said
‘it’s time to open your chest, take out your spine
and ride it out of here’
because this town wants you gone
there’s no costume party you’re invited to
No one wants to hear the story of how you shot them down one more time
because the blood on your costume fairy wings is your own
stained with the tears your family has shed
and there isn’t a fucking sunset at the end of this story
so put down your pinted pistol
shave off that forty-five year stubble
and be that human being you were meant to be
complete
whole
unique
spectacular
breathtaking
inspiring
That is your happy ending
Go ahead and have it.

26. a haiku

Alcoholism:
A fucked up place to live
So don’t live there