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Dear Alcohol, Its time to say goodbye you

Thoughts at 3:46am near light rail station on dobson and main

at 3:46am near light rail station on main & dobson

none of us has much of a past anymore
for that matter not much of a future
the streets are not something that you are ever on the streets are on you
they mark your dirty skinny
needing a shower
just always a little something missing
in the way you are dressed
the way your eyes move around the room
and of course there is always something missing from your story
why you have a college education
and don’t have a job why you don’t have a credit card or a number to be called back at
why are you a ghost
you don’t have an answer for why you are checking in to this hotel at 3am
and your ID says you are from the same city
you don’t have an answer for why you aren’t tired
for why you aren’t hungry in the morning
for the why you are so pretty and still single
why don’t you have any children
why are you a ghost
the streets are alive at least
they are always pushing you herding you
they keep you moving all the time
no place to rest
where someone isn’t staring at you
maybe to call the cops maybe to steal from you
maybe because you aren’t supposed to be here
the streets are the only home you will ever have where you will never ever belong.

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at 3:46am near light rail station on

Remember me?

Remember me?
We met at a party.
When I was much younger:
You were my best friends.
Always there to lift my up.
Always there to make me laugh.
Always there to help me not care, Nor to cry.
I was always the life of the party.
You numbed me from reality.
From the hurt, and pain inside.
You made me forget the bad, and only think of you.
You and the good you came with.
Or so I thought.
Because at the end.
You took more than everything away.you took… me

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Remember me? We met at a party. When I

Personal Journeys

S.O.S

He has a big heart, He will get through.
I loved and prayed As I hung to my crew.
Alanon meetings
As blind as a bat, Stories we heard
A stench of a dead rat.
21 came, fireworks blasted
Handcuffed, DUI, as I pleaded for him to stop, He landed with yet another DUI drop.
The fear surged through my teeth, Hard to explain
The more I became withered in pain.
Flying him off to Florida, The experts advice
A sense of accomplishment, Money is no compromise.
Little did we know
He was drugged and hallucinating, He jumped off a bridge
In fear while escaping.
Our son is missing
Still rings in my ear
Begging the police with our worst fear.
In the parking garage,
Under a car,
He was rescued with a shattered leg, Sent to a hospital afar.

Another rehab began, Please help my son
Teach him not to use, Show him the 12 step plan.
Meanwhile, my parents overseas Knowing nothing of out trauma, Sailed to heaven with ease.
7 years flew by never expecting anything other, Addiction got his brother.
Couldn’t be
Where did we go astray? Have I sinned in my life? Do I have debt to pay?
Psychiatrists, therapists, here we go again, I honestly can’t recall the details today.
A jumble of fear, hope, incense to pray.
My boys are in rehab
My daughter is my soul
She got caught in the eye of a storm, That swallowed her whole.
Tell me to detach
I tell you ,I can’t
I’ll give them my life
In a moment without a rant.
Our hearts have been sickened, As we hold to each other tight, The future is a mystery
With the end a dim light.

I beg my lord
As I lay to sleep
Take me first
Before my boys leap.
Selfish? Maybe
Love too much? Yes
You can judge me as you wish, I grew scales like a fish.
Addiction is a disease that swallowed us whole
My wish is to strangle it
Leave life in peace,
faith,
With my children around my shoulders, Like a prayer Shawl.
2 years have gone by
I knitted my shawl, Fooling my brain
To think of nothing at all.
I heard of a meeting where parents of addicts attend, I’m not like them, they won’t understand, I can no longer pretend.
I gave it a try
And as some members remember, I cried my heart out
Not wanting to be a member.
I can do this alone
I don’t need a hand
No more shame to share
I come from a different land.

More rehabs for my boys
My brain is unclear and can’t remember Who? What? When? Where?
No hope for surrender.
Tuesday’s came and went As I ached for another, Who do I worry about?
My first born, or his brother
Little did I know
I was being equipped with strength and knowledge, That my addicts feared
As I learned to let go
And watch them grow.
I am a mother of addicts
I have yet to understand
Why god gave me these issues
Does he not know I hear his command?
With the 12 step plan
Life becomes more divine

The nectar of life become sweeter than ripened grapes on a vine.
So my friends
Life is hard whether you’re a parent of an addict or not Take it as a blessing
Find peace, love, purpose
That your life struggles are suppressing.
My boys are fighting
For their life and future
As I go to my Tuesday meetings
Listen, learn, and knit another prayer shawl For a family needing.

Personal Journeys, Poetry

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He has a big heart, He will

An alternative to guns

An alternative to guns.

A shiny marble stole my heart as it landed into a shrapnel crater
The joy it brought me as I huddled over its target was greater.
Just another day escaping our daily ritual
Hoping our name escapes the obitual.

An alarm went off as we scurried our muddy bodies home
A scolding we expected my mother to erase
As she hurried to warm the gas tank
washing away the trace
Of a shattered land.

Our home is unstable but with all due respect
We bowed to our homeland
That shed tears of survival
In the prospect of Jesus
Crossing to Cana with his arrival.

As shadows covered the valleys
Weary of what’s to come
Fed with pita bread Sandwiched with full bellies
we drifted to sleep feeling numb

Childhood?
My brain recalls it With images of popcorn
Keeping our mouths busy
For little bodies that shrapnels haven’t torn.

Those memories live through me
As an American I became
To pass down to my children
A new home I proclaimed.

That river that flowed in a bloody land
Connected with a flowery creek
that my children had at hand
Knowing little of that world
Where children are fed pita
Savory, not bland

Peace is granted in more ways than one
As danger crept upon us
In trophies to all or some
Privileged are our children
Escaping the physical shrapnels
Indifferent to none

It is the land of plenty
Opportunity, self confidence
Slow to acknowledge
It’s poisonous substance
Lurking our sons
Into a peaceful opulence
With a gloomy blanket for pain
An alternative to guns.

Rivers flow with good and evil
To the land of forgiveness
Or the medieval upheaval.

Those shiny marbles are our children
Sent forth through life
Juggling between villain and villain.

Poetry, Spiritual Recovery

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An alternative to guns. A shiny marble stole

Burn

Author: Danielle B.

See, these days I occupy my minutes

with, the uniquely rich cancer sticks,

to make THAT part of me die –

over and over like a blister in the sun.

Burn.

You see, I am stuck

B E T W E E N

the lines that haunt me,

the way that anger and pride kindle the hurt

the ebb and flow of wasting time,

of rising anxiety – which is automatically lingering these days.

People once told me that, that, it’s good, “it’s good to be seen”.

Behind these walls — this is why I hate to cry –

because, it DOESN’T MAKE YOU STRONGER

because, I’ve been told to let go, to compromise.

I’ve learned how to calm the ego, down

to taste freedom, but ATTACK – the silence surrounds me.

I just might, push the breakdown

In terms, like lines, and boundaries –

How can I describe … the darkness, the isolation, and the self-loathing?

Like a breathless papercut,

Let me lick these wounds into ashes, but …

Wounds into conversations, and inflections –

Healing has this way where moving forwards becomes a place,

where dialogue shapeshifts into the kind of happiness that still chooses to wear a mask.

Hope moves like legs and fingers that try to find others like themselves …

Intertwining like subversion, like hollowed voices beckoning darkness.

And Time, it wraps around old thoughts slowly,

the way a cigarette burns down

down

filter.

The pain and trauma

from the past,

from today

from tomorrow —

like smoke signals, cylinders of stories

which construct, and influx, the way my mind clauses –

complicated little niches – :: INHALE ::

Deep, just so I can collapse these mother fucking lungs of feeling.

Because my mind is a crowded space

These questions, like fears, little disarmed monsters –

This is why I choose to light up these contexts, to keep old demons down

with sand and grit, smoke like a chain between the filter and me,

down

I make room for the healing. But, don’t worry about me.

This is why I choose

to let these cinders burn.

— Sometimes, I miss the girl who used to stand

in the dark corners

of bars

of alleys

who was waiting to die

every night.

Sometimes, I miss the

black and blues

the cuts and scars.

The storefronts

The light poles

The burning smell of rubber

and red and white and blue lights.

I can still feel the cold concrete

floor of Central Bookings beneath my fingertips.

She at least, knew herself.

I, still haven’t found

what I’m looking for.

October 27, 2023

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Author: Danielle B. See, these days I occupy

Family Traits Packed in a Bottle

Author: Kristen C.

When her father was drunk, he’d say ‘I used to have a brother, you know’,
He got faraway look in his eyes, a memory forming in the clouds,
His hands would open and close, tightening as his breath grew swallow,
Cruel thoughts manifesting at the bottom of his scotch,
But he’d smile again a minute later and the memory was gone,
Along with the uncle she wish she never knew she had.
When her mother was drunk, she would stumble and fall,
Tripping over more than her words, but,
Her smile was never as bright as when she was half way through the bottle of wine,
And her eyes held a shine that would never see the light of day,
But morning would always come, and with it the shameful dissonance.
Her mother always hides the bruises and broken glasses well.
She had never known the effects of the drink until later in her life,
For she had seen what could happen when a pain that deep ran in the family,
But she has come to understand the appeal of a drunken stupor,
Reality always made much more sense when her world was spinning.
When she drinks, she drinks to remember, to forget
It depends on the night in question,
Sometimes it’s to remember her mothers smile, or forget the haunted look in her eyes in the morning rays,
Or she drinks to forget the secrets she wished her father never spilled,
Drinks to forget the reality she helped create.
She knows the harmful effects of addiction to the bottle,
But she knows she cannot function without it; family traits and all,
Yet there is power every time she spills the bottle down the sink,
But she clings to the drops as though they hold a dying prayer,
She hates living on a silent scream, but she still she prays
Asking those above to save her from the same path as those before her.

October 27, 2023

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Author: Kristen C. When her father was drunk,

Valium

To swallow
Without the hint of bitterness Relief
After all these winters
Relief.
Round
A tiny moon
Blue
A savior pinched between finger tips, Careful to drop it
Careful to lose it.
It rests on the tongue Dissolved
A hint of bitterness
Is the hero coming? Soon…
The train begins to slow
A cape handed on exit
The hero
He likes this version of himself. Is this real?
Soon…
A pill this bitter
Easy to swallow
Noone likes this person Villain…
Salvation
Magpie
What is inside this silver treasure? Pop!
Pill
Pop!
Another
He likes this version
Peace…
The train is broken
The tunnel imploded
Nobody liked this journey anyway Black…
Blue moon
An answer beacons. Another
The hero is stranded Villain…
The sun has risen
A hero and a villain Departed.
A version everybody likes How he will be missed. Peace.
It is over.
Black
And Blue…

January 12, 2023

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To swallow Without the hint of bitterness Relief After

The Man She Loved

– [ ] He stumbles about as if he’s lost in the dark set out in search for an ointment to heal his broken and beaten heart. Pill by pill hit by hit just more more drink until he’s lit. Slowly dies the man he was. The man she knew the man she loved. Nothing of him she remembers to be the same. Only this man carries his name. His body brittle fragile weak. His eyes empty hollow blank. The smile he used to wear turned to an evil smirk, under the pain continues to lurk. Only if he could set his past free, a beautiful life awaits him she prayed for him to see. Instead she sits waiting for him to come home. Knowing that day will never come. She thought for sure she could save him with the love that filled her heart, but now she is left torn apart…

November 7, 2022