Usually when I hit a milestone, I have something to say, something to blog about. Each day is the miracle, waking to midnight. Hell, usually I'm in bed by ten, so it's less than one day at a time. So tonight at midnight, on a lazy Sunday it'll be seven years sober. It's such a lazy Sunday I don't want to find the links related to my story but you can either go to the search box on the top right and type in "sober" "alcoholic" "recovery" etc. and get the results.
To celebrate...here are some previously published work, written during recovery about recovery. I always worried that I couldn't write anything of any worth sober. There is a solution and I'm always willing to help.
The
Shutting Door
We are
solid oak doors that shut
on our
past, close on dead mothers,
sons,
daughters. These doors swell
often,
won’t open. One midnight
we walked
towards woods, the moss
cold
under our toes, as we were,
caught
in the light for a moment;
a
glimpse of half full. We are dim
lights
on dark nights, sending out calls
to the
wolves howling at the sun
because
the moon hanging there,
yet
never seems to hear them.
If I
should need to step back to see
how
you glow in this light,
illumination,
I can be at one with that,
us,
growing like violets in the dark
1. The Shutting Door-Written in 2011 during year one. Originally published in Red Fez Issue 43 as "All the Days And Nights". Also the titicular poem in my book of recovery poems (mostly) published by Ibbetson St. Press 2013.
HEAR IT/SEE IT READ
Missteps
When I
raised my hand
told a
gray room the reasons
I
started drinking, I wanted
to start again immediately.
Told
people, whose faces looked like
The
End of the World, the truth.
Then I
told them I would pour a girl
I’d
lusted after, down like whiskey,
her
lovely legs spread
until
they snapped,
so I
could feel like I used
her,
an orgasm, I gulped,
running
down my neck
like
streams of veins.
Oh, I
said I never used dope,
when I
asked her for it, nicely,
she
said, No, she would never
give
it up, just got up, waltzed
out of
my life. So I begged:
Please,
God, stay with me tonight,
here
in this church basement.
Please,
I can't picture heaven.
2. Missteps, written very early in sobriety, published March 2012 in Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. Also appears in The Shutting Door. A favorite of my friend Christy Marx. RIP .
Sobriety
It can
exist
drink
coffee
milk,
three sugars,
stirred
with a straw.
Sit on
the sofa,
legs
curled under
view
the oil paintings
hung
boats and fields
thousands
of brush strokes
thousands
3. Sobriety. Written in 2017-published in Chief Jay Strongbow is Real, 2017, Big Table Publishing
But you forgot, To remember
It
rains cats and dogs
and
images of baby animals
made
the blues go away
Billie
Holiday scratched
to the
end, the needle dragged
never
piercing her center, which
was
glued on, nevertheless,
I
related. Her story intrigued,
I
never understood the song’s
connotation,
why the singer’s depths
of
despair, strung me along with
desperate
notes, desperate measures.
Lady-you
once spoke to me,
but
never knew me, all the times
I
slipped this record into the sleeve
Keep
sending me stars and the sea
distant
is not an obstacle,
for
what I believe.
4. But you Forgot to Remember-written in 2013. Published on the Mass Poetry webpage in 2015. Also published in Chief Jay Strongbow is Real, 2017, Big Table Publishing. Metaphors are badass.
Coffee maker
Al took the job as the coffee
maker as the last one person holding that job died. It helped to bolster Al’s
sobriety by giving him responsibility. He’d lost more important jobs in his
life, but he wasn’t about to lose this one. It was a very important job.
Al would show up at 6:30 in
the morning and reconstruct the percolator. Fill the pot up three-quarters of
the way with water, then place the stem, basket, canned coffee in, then cover
and plug the cord into the socket. The outcome was that the brew was watery and
bitter, so most people brought their own to the meeting anyway.
“Hey, old-timer,” Al said to
one with a Dunkin’ Donuts cup. “Why not try some of mine. I take this job very
seriously.”
“The coffee is terrible here,”
he said. “It’s been terrible for years.”
The old-timer was one of the
nicer ones. Many of the others that came in drooping would just swear at him or
his coffee and Al would internalize it. It made him want to drink vodka instead
of coffee, and Al realized how bad it would be if he let that happen.
Al used to own his own
business in the real world. It was a moving company where he would supply the
truck and help the client out with half the labor. He called his business “Al
Co-Haul: Rate Negotiable” and he never realized how his love of booze ended up
ruining his business. He found he was drinking more than he was working, which
led to his truck being repossessed and him having no income. It was time to
turn his life around, but failing at his new job of coffee maker wasn’t
helping.
So, as his head cleared up he
thought about replacing the crappy brand of coffee. The group’s kitty did not
have enough money to pay for the pounds of ground Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks,
so he looked into ways to roast his own beans. He chose a three step method.
Step 1: Choose a roasting method
Al picked a radiant drum
roaster for large amounts of beans. It was symbolic. His life used to simmer
and slowly everything would turn and the voices he heard in his head were
echoing like sounds in a drum—telling him to drink…drink. The company that made
the roaster offered to sponsor Al as long as he mentioned their name once a day
during the meeting. He accepted them as a sponsor.
Step 2: Choose green coffee
Al used to wake up green in
color. He loved that the beans to roast were the exact same color. He asked the
company for help in selecting the type of bean, and that was a good step for
him to take as well—asking for help.
Step 3: The
Roasting Process
He wanted a dark, rich
finished cup of brew, something that went from nothing to a wonderful finished
product. He called an expert to help him perfect his beans, and he was open to
suggestions.
* * *
Al’s addiction ruined his
family life. He thought that recovery would fix everything, but instead his
wife now resented the fact that all his time was being taken up in his bean
roasting job. They would fight about it. “You don’t understand,” he said. “My recovery
has to be the most important thing in my life and without that, I can’t be any
good at anything else.” His wife was able to let go and walk to another room.
She’d been through worse with Al.
Instantly Al’s coffee became a
big hit. The early morning meeting was running out of chairs, and no one
brought in any outside cups anymore. The word was spreading as more and more
people were coming in to get help. Some only needed a small amount of help,
such as fixing their inferior types of coffee by drinking Al’s. Many of the
folks that came weren’t even alcoholics either.
They were there for the best coffee in town.
The old-timers from the group
started to get angry. When the coffee people raised their hands to share their
story there was never anything about drinking alcohol, it was more about coffee
drinking The former beer and whiskey drinkers were getting out numbered. When
they voiced their objections they were told that the fellowship was not there
to judge and categorize others. The old-timers began to attend different
meetings that they could relate to more and Al began to modestly charge for his
drinks and found someone to print fancy designs on the cups. It was remarkable
that everyone said he was a changed man.
At Al’s one year celebration,
he stood up in front of a packed house. He told them how he succeeded in the
coffee business by attending meetings, asking for help, and getting sponsors.
Al’s wife presented him with a silver bean, mounted on a chain for him to wear
around his neck. He accepted with gratitude and closed by suggesting that every
morning begins another day and if ever the job of coffee maker opened up, it
would improve someone’s life the same way it had improved his.
5. Coffee Maker. Written on my one year anniversary and published in trnsfer magazine Issue 5-on the 500th day of being sober. Also will appear in the upcoming Every Day There is Something About Elephants, a book of 108 flash fictions. In sobriety it's ok to poke fun at things, as long as you're not taking your recovery for granted. Here I satirized the job of coffee maker in AA and what if the coffee was so damn good, people came to the meetings just for that.
Tell us a little bit about your new collection: what's the significance of the title? are there over-arching themes? what was the process of assembling it? was it a project book? etc.
