Don’t Say What You’re Thinking

Anger was the topic of our Tuesday meeting, and I heard good stuff, from people whose thought processes I can understand. I share more commonality with the Vietnam-vet biker who says, “Rage is the wind that blows out the candle in my mind,” than I do with the average 50-something I meet on the street. One of the things I love about AA is the wonderful cross-section of purposeful, thoughtful, flawed, and honest humanity I’ve come to know because of meetings.

I got to share that last year I took on the F’d Be I, the Dept. of There-Is-No-Justice, the U.S. Secret-ary of Health and Inhuman Services, the Attorney Generality, and the health-care-not industry over the moral and civil-rights outrage perpetrated on my defenseless 79-year-old demented mother [is that bitterness I hear?], and nine months of misery later, this caped crusader for Truth, Justice, and Human Rights for Alzheimer’s Victims was a sad piece of a work, drowning in her outrage, and my mother was dead, free at last. I got very ill last winter, and by early spring it was clear that my outrage over injustice was harming only me, and I was going to have to change myself so I could live in an unjust world.

Resentment, says the book Alcoholics Anonymous, is poison to the person who nurtures it. How are we to make peace in a life where people and institutions do wrong and suffer no consequences? How are we to live serenely in a world where sh*t happens to innocent people? The fellowship of AA has devised many brilliant means of doing just that.

Mostly, they all boil down to what Gandhi said: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Start with giving grace, unearned forgiveness, to people who wrong you, as you have received grace from the loving God in your own imperfect life. Practice restraint of tongue and pen. Do not retaliate, argue, fume, or chew on arguments in your head. Instead, go do good work, own your own part in the shit, and be grateful for the ordinary miracles in your daily life. Work with a mentor. Wash your floors. Reach out a friendly hand to someone in need, and in general, learn to stay out of the bad neighborhood that is your own selfish head.

I am ceaselessly surprised that these things work. They work, in that they build a level of inner peace with the ebb and flow of life. Even if you choke on what you know is hypocrisy as you pray for the person who has offended you, doing it on your knees with your teeth gritted every day for two damn weeks, just because your sponsor suggested you try it, by God, it works! The one who changes is you, not the world, not your neighbor, just the one you live with day in and day out ~ that person becomes someone kinder, calmer, thankful, and a little more honest.

An aging ex-gangster at the meeting said his morning prayer is simple: “Hi, God, I’m awake, good luck.” Laughter is like tapping anger in the back of its knees: down it goes, toppling over like the great pretender that it is, mostly smoke and mirrors, self-justification and often fear masquerading as righteousness. Laughter heals a lot of wrongs, including our own. I’m grateful to be part of a community that laughs at itself and goes to sometimes great lengths to help others.

These days, I practice a lot of not saying the judgmental things I think about others. To a trusted few, I say whatever I think and laugh at it. My head, says one friend, is for entertainment purposes only. When the serious stuff that warrants deep thought crops up, I go to someone who has the kind of faith and wisdom I want, and I sound it out.

A line in a humble little book changed me this year. I found it in AA’s “12 Steps and 12 Traditions” under the discussion of the tenth step, in which we make a practice of honest self-examination and prompt admission of wrongs done. In a paragraph advocating a more merciful view of others, the writer says, “it is pointless to become angry or to get hurt by people who, like us, are suffering from the pains of growing up.” The italics are mine.

If I can recognize that my life is a series of adventures in growing up to be the person I want to become someday, if I am in the process of becoming and haven’t yet arrived there, how can I not grant you the grace of your own suffering?

You too are on a journey. I might enjoy thinking, in the private entertainment center of my mind, that you’re damned far behind me thanks to your stupid behavior ~ enjoy thinking that privately for, say, ten minutes max. Okay, twenty, AND I get to tell a trusted friend. Anything more than that is a resentment, otherwise known as beating myself with a hammer and hoping you are the one it hurts: a habit to avoid.

Damn the Leaf Blower

I left for the hospital on an ordinary day. I have returned to extraordinary autumn scenery. But the damn leaf blower has just begun howling in my yard. I was peaceful. Now I am mad. Leave my leaves alone!!!!! I holler this in my head only. The leaf-blowing fool would not take kindly to my criticism. So I write to him a poem full of wrath. He will never see this. Ha! It feels so good.


You May Not Have All of Me

Luscious red berries wait for the cedar waxwings
to swoop down and gobble them up
to strip the branches bare of berries
like I wait for you to swoop down and gulp
me up like a lukewarm latte, not delicious
perhaps but finished off, the cup stripped bare

Yellow sycamore leaves fall like a congregation
of large butterflies fluttering from the sky
one after another tumbling down in its last dance
before landing on the grass in final rest
The lawn wears a yellow blanket of leaves
and I wait for you to tire of them, to roar
your several engines designed to suck up
dead butterflies because you cannot stand the mess

The red berries are safe from you bushwhacker,
waiting for the cedar waxwings who are late
this year, because the fence protects the shrubs
from your finishing touch, your need for order
and finality. I love you but the wild things
tumbling in my heart cry out against you,
you finisher of things blind to butterflies

You take me lukewarm and swallow the last
drop, not to waste a moment or a latte,
tolerant of my imperfections, loving me
despite the wild things making messes
in our house, our yard, my private places
I wait for you to tire of me as surely you must
when your desire for order overcomes your lust
for the red berries in my heart, untouchable
beyond the fence and safe until the waxwings
come

Pardon Me While I Scream

This is what happens to people like Ed.

We had a good rain last night for the first time since last spring. All is wet and happy this morning. From my glass office I watch my neighbors decorate their homes for Halloween as the broken clouds overhead play tag with the possibility of more rain.

When my daughter was young, I loved walking the neighborhoods with her. Then we moved here, to a housing tract on the edge of a tiny rural town, and we learned that every family in the countryside drives here for trick-or-treating. Said daughter didn’t want Mom to tag along anymore. I have been stuck for the past 12 years answering the insistent doorbell to hordes of ghouls and the occasional cute ballerina. It drives my dogs batty. And for some reason, it drives me batty too. My husband likes it, so he’s the greeter while I hang with the dogs in the bedroom and eat my own Halloween candy.

To ride the Totalfeckineegit’s internationally-famous Poetry Bus this week, we must deliver something ghoulish. I would like to deliver the hundreds of greedy children who will descend on us Halloween night. I would like to frighten them away from my house. But all I can do is howl. So I shall howl, and you may investigate other howlers on the Poetry Bus at devious Liz’s place.

Ed, You Talk Too Much

“Women of 20 are as mature as a man of 40,” Ed declares
perched on the edge of my couch in his gray running suit.
His hands play imaginary piano on his knees. The right leg
twitches. “But I wonder,” he says, “when she says, ‘Ed,
you're just not mature enough’—What does that mean?”
I stare at him, feeling the pen like a sword in my hand.
“I don't want to talk about that,” I say, taking a long puff
off the fake cigarette I have made from a shortened straw,
a bit of tissue for drag and a bright red painted tip.

When I ignore him, Ed crosses the patio and stares out
the barred open windows at Santa Barbara, then leaps
on the stationary bike for a furious ride. Schizophrenic,
he has spent the better part of the afternoon wailing
in his room, two doors down from mine. He returns
to my couch and stares at me, as I puff on my straw
cigarette and write about him. A girl wanders in
to start a load of laundry, tears puffing up her face
like they have mine, a soul sister of the broken mind.
Not a word is spoken. Ed watches her and I watch Ed,
and when she leaves, he smiles. “Alex is sure cute,
isn’t she?” he asks. “I wonder how old she is. Do you
think she’s 20?” The drugs have kicked in, and I feel
the cool, sweet Santa Barbara air, a hint of salt from
the sea to the west. I rest my puffy eyes on cypress
trees beyond the window, a procession of palms
running through them, and I admire the red flowers
on some exotic shrub I don't know, a rich blood red
amid the green. Ed’s mindless chatter splits the peace
of this place like a buzz saw tearing at the bushes,
and my pen becomes a sword in my hand lashing
at his mouth, writing my hatred on his face. Red
flowers bloom in his eyes when he understands
finally that silence is everything, silence is better
than contact with humanity, even his, even mine.

Not Such a Pretty Face Anymore, Is It?

Once upon a time, not too long ago, either, a nice girl got in trouble. She fooled around with something dangerous, and she got caught. A terrible fate then befell her: bad dreadlocks.

The ancient poet Ovid says she, that is, Medusa, was a pretty serving girl of the big-cheese goddess Athena. Lots of dudes wanted a piece of her action, but she just said no, like she should... until the big-cheese god Poseiden came along, in which case, Medusa was won over, or overcome, we don't know which exactly. Athena got wind of it and turned Medusa into a monster with snakes in place of her beautiful hair and with a face so horrible, people turned into stone at the sight of it.

But my story is different. In keeping with my recent theme of death by addiction, this is what happened to Medusa: She was a nice girl who got hooked on opium. Everything was fine until her supply ran out. In 55 succinct words, here is her lament:

Oh, nectar of poppy, whose long fingers
squeeze so sweetly, you drift to death, now
Oh, wretched need. Oh, snakes in your head.
No matter how you claw at them, they writhe there,
belonging to you, who let the darkness in.
You plead for release but the price is your head,
and it is squirming.

*************************************************

Not very pretty, is it? In honor of Halloween, please check out other souls who played with 55 words here. Thank you, Mr. Knowitall.

Painting, "Medusa" by Arnold Böcklin, circa 1878

Unleash the Beast

Wind on the Hills


The wind flows through the tall grass
like a hand ruffling the green fur
of a large benevolent beast.

She sails along the edge of the field
in her little red car, furious
with him, furious with the savagery
abroad on the earth, furious
with the job that leaches her energy
and feeds her nothing but a paycheck.

At first she doesn’t see the tall grass
and the wind flowing through it
like a hand stroking fur.

Then she sees the benevolent beast
and she stops the car
she gets out of the car
and she gives herself to its power



Today the subject is anger. There's righteous anger, helpless anger, blind anger. There are lots of ways to be mad.

Yesterday I was in a cold fury. Someone who is in the habit of insulting me took one step too far. My boundary cracked.

One of the habits I was taught in sobriety is restraint of tongue and pen. Live and let live, let go and let God.

But that doesn't make me a doormat for someone's grubby shoes. I'm encouraged to speak my truth and stand up for my beliefs.

So I took a while to pray. I consulted a trusted mentor. And then I began to write.

As if it were a beast, I unleashed my anger.

As both a Christian and a recovering alcoholic, I know that anger is the wind that snuffs out the candle in the mind.

And so, when it was all said and done to my satisfaction, I went back and erased, by choice removing the excess, leaving only the cold bare skeleton.

I said what I had to say and no more. There's freedom in that kind of restraint.

Then I consulted my mentor once more.

And I sent that anger out. It has flown out of my mind to the one who inspired it.

I live in a valley among these hills. Today I have peace.