Sobriety I

 My soul is a well that draws deep from the waters of time. My body is a circle of stones that houses it from wondering passerby's. My essence is simplicity and inconvenience in a land of singular valves and pipes. I think maybe I am an antiquated relic .
Water is cool, and smooth. I like to press my fingers against it to feel the slightest degrees of tension. I like to immerse my face within the chilled sensation, holding my breath and counting seconds as they pass. I am in that moment. I am feeling connected with the world that is loud, in a quiet soft moment. With my face in the waters, I can feel the breath caged within me start to pound in a way of peace.

I am a vessel, spilling time around me. It swishes and swashes, swirling about. My memory is a canteen, pouring out distilled thoughts.  Drops of anguish, and drips of solitude linger snf run like condensation.  Still-frames are frozen in my recollections. 

August 26 was the day my father stopped drinking. August 26th is the day he died. August 27th the river rose and flooded me with scars. I think of God and the two loves that left in August. I used to miss them so terribly from a time that I was drunk on their affection.  I would drink in the minutes spent together, and I’d watch time disappear as I swallowed it. 

 But I’m sober now.

 I’m not drunk off affection, or whiskey colored eyes, or the pain of a broken promise of a future spent together. I’m not sipping on “what could have beens” because I’ve come into an understanding. We weren’t in love, we were just in fun together.  Truth is a Monday morning wake up call, and I know we were wrong for each other.  

 I’m sober now. 

Sobriety II

Driving down a dark road lit by bar lights I see  a woman with unnatural eye lashes pawing at a man who is consumed in a vampiric embrace. People focus inwardly on craving, And outwardly on critique. Its easy for friends to be drunk on my laughter, its when i pour my problems they're bitter to the taste. I stand like a sober man among bartenders and drunks and wave back and forth between being a blur and just another faceless customer. They take what they want but they don't want what you give. "Everyone's got their own problems, don't kill the vibe" What selfish thing to say to a friend. Your suffering is secondary to my pleasure.
I keep trying to speak in stone cold sobriety of reality and depth. Goldfish only hear this moment and have no memory of moments beyond liquid.  How do I pour the sobriety of my mind into a worthy vessel like pure cold water in a clean glass. Why should I toss the keys to my understanding to those in no condition to drive, To those who are unskilled in how to operate heavy reasoning.  They swerve into accusations,  pit right into blame, and tout their innocence while staggering from the wreckage. Im driving down this same dark lit road now strobed in reds and blues. There is no party here any longer. Just a great disturbance of the peace.

Cradle me away

 This heart of mine is barely pushing the air in my lungs because I'm dying darlin. 
I'm coughing on all the old words and unfulfilled dreams. I'm suffocating in the loneliness.  
I can't sleep but i'm still dreaming of you. 

When they lay me to rest once and final, I will dream no more. All the the unspoken things will rise from my ashes in the form of wishes and they, not I will caress you.  My empty and unfulfilled ambitions will trace your skin like a chill in the night, having never accompanied the warmth of your bed while I was living. 

I'm drowning in my own shallow breaths and my thoughts pull me out to the abyss. 

Drink

 The smell of the open bottle was lingering from the table. He had never been all that much of a drinker before, however he has found that the alcohol appeared to be growing stronger as he was growing weaker. "I'll never become that man" He had always said in his mind, while passing down judgment on those who struggled with the very issues he was facing now.  The seconds slowly ticked away from the clock he had hanging on the far wall as he glared at the dark brown bottle. He caught the reflection of his fixed gaze on the glass. His eyes stared into what he saw as a stranger, what he didn't want to believe was himself, a reflection of what he has become. He took a long deep breath and reached for a glass. It was a cold night, like many other nights. He was alone that night like most other nights. Lately, however, He was feeling quite more cold and alone than usual. With the pain of feeling nothing stinging strong, he poured the whiskey. He watched as each splash and drop washed over the silvery white polish of the ice. The drink wasn't judgmental. It didn't stare at him with overwhelming disapproval at his wasting potential. It didn't ask him for money or demand unrealistic expectations of him. In many ways, he felt that it was a better friend than half the friends he's known in his days. In an attempt to dull the awareness, the glass was tipped. Each ounce that poured past his lips was a problem without a solution washing away. Each sip carried a burden away.

Fat lip

I keep saying stuff. 

I'll be relating in the course of conversation and share something that stems from my personal history of being choked out on thanksgiving or my brother running away or being poor or living in a condemned building or a number of messed up things that are uncomfortable in conversation 

and then I'll make a joke about kissing or something innocuous  and that's where people are like "Oh my stars, oh golly, oh no thats so out of pocket" and I'll be standing on the outside of it feeling judged, and I know that I'm probably most definitely feeling sensitive about it on account of therapy throwing explosives into the stillness of my emotional waters... 

But I just feel that distance between where I'm from and where all you are from.

I think about the worlds we know. The evils we've overcome and the things that try to destroy us.  I wouldn't fully know how to unmake myself to fit in the places I'd hope to be, to belong. It's made me strong, how many times I've been destroyed over and over again. I've grown from each thing I've overcome. Yet, I understand that there are ways of a grown man of which I see that not all see.  

 I am aware of how much space I fill in a room, and I try to be smaller out of love to give space and freedom for those to express themselves. 

These confessions are laced with opportunities for the love those of God may bring.  

I look outside myself  and see you say I'm welcome here... 
But if I am here, I will break your illusions 

I don't mean to be a loaded gun in the sandbox. Just some fat lip spilling blood while the kids play. 

When Demons smell blood

Demons smell blood
They've drawn it from my lips
The stones in my soul are heavy  and as I set them aside, 
I've been struck with them.  
Demons smell blood and they seethe
and delight in the pain inflicted 
My tongue is swallowed and my tears are damned.
I hold contempt through fingers of ash and water.
I expel the disgust at the demons drunk on their own sense of victory, 
and it flows as curses. 

and I am further alone than the silence where I began. 

The demon shouts sins that I didn't commit. 
It laughs stewing in the stench of its own smugness and it drives ME back

Demons smell blood and they cup their gnarled hands to drink it. 

Those Dark Deep Woods

 Some days I'm running through a forest fire longing for the cool waters of the peaceful creek. With the thundering of each foot I can feel the dirt's depression beneath my feet. The clean forest air battles against the smokes is thickness.  In my mind the daylight and the night war against each in the sky where the orange sun contends with the red moon for supremacy. Branches and twigs gouge for my eyes but momentum and resolve forces their joints to give way. I can hear the crackles and pops as the trees themselves cry out from the flames dancing across their skin, and I am longing for the serenity of the open meadow. 

Other days I'm lost in the darkness thick and black. Searching for a scent I'm howling into the abyss waiting for an echo. The scavenging of owls and other hawkish is all I hear, creatures feeding upon the blindness of the unsuspecting. Serpents spit their tongues, tasting the confusion and opportunism of the provided darkness . A warning growl rumbles past my snarling lips because I know it is in the nature of the snake to be a snake. The night is heavy, pushing my senses to compensate for the lacking sight. I can feel the enemy. I can smell his intentions. I can hear the shifting of each body scale as he raises his copper head from the ground.  I howl a warning loudly out into the deep woods, but the only enemy they can hear is me. 

Yet still other days I've got an ax to grind as I scrape its head against the rock. I'm shouldering through the thicket leaving a slashed set of logs behind me. On those days i've got no time for the wind. On those days i'm a man screaming at the top of my lungs.  Roaring like a bear long awake past his season, Charging through the forest. 

However among many times in my mind I find myself also as a tree . In seasons of growth, and death, Life and shadows and the internalized stillness in the presence of the wind. The rain nurturing my soul. Basking in the light, oblivious to tired cliches or absurd personifications, My sunken roots a little deeper dig into life. And with each year adding another ring of depth and strength I watch with curious pause at the frantic pace of the world around me.