How is it that I have returned to this road?
Time and again;
no matter the pain;
no matter the consequence; no matter the damage.

How could I
let this happen?
And wait -- wait a minute;
before I smash myself in the face; before I smash
a desk, a table, or a wall.

Because of the pain; because of the consequence; because of the damage.

That is why.
Like the snake eating its tail.
Like Escher's ants
marching the double twisted ribbon of double elliptic infinity.

I remember
being so hung over,
so dry,
in a firetrap apartment on a dusty second floor; smelling cat shit; smelling mold; smelling piss.

And I remember a blasé telephone, and my father's voice,
from the road,
telling me

it was a bad one to be on.

It seemed like a terrible thing, but some good came out of it.

I thought it was difficult and uncomfortable and upsetting - setting boundaries and telling the truth. 

I put it off. I was afraid. I did not want to feel the probable anger and hurt that would follow. And the rejection that would surely be.  

Fear of rejection, in so many ways, kept me quiet for so many years. 

But I have learned,  I have learned. 

In the end, something good came out of it. 

I was able to stand on the line, my line. I did not fall off on one side or the other. The other person did not die, nor did I. 

Their ability to be awake, to hear, did not define my ability to speak.

My mom once gave me some good advice: "It can always be good in bed, but it's when your feet hit the floor that really matters." 

Of course for me, sometimes it was mediocre, even bad, in and out of bed and I still stayed. Why? Now that's the question isn't it!! Because he was someone instead of no one, or maybe because I felt loved once upon a time... I really don't have a definite answer. But what I do know is what I don't want today, and I hope that that helps with my next choice. If there is a next choice. Because I kind of like being with me and only me sometimes. A lot of the time actually.

If there is another choice on the horizon than great, and if not, I think I'll be OK☺

When it comes time there will be no fanfare,
no second line New Orleans send-off
trailing children and yapping dogs in its wake.
He’ll be cordially stuffed into a stout black bag,
ready for that slow ride--sans lights or sirens,
these thin-lipped jail staff perpetually dream of.

At unforseen moments, algebraically brief and crystalline, John
restores the Weimar, though layered deep in faltering gray matter:
such lurid stories, rich with glottal stops, umlauts and barking consonants.
His polestaff father was born in 1892, sometimes 1880,
any belle epoque instant inconvenient to the fatherland’s greatness.
Midsentence, a vast pause, eyes clouding with crematoria smoke.
The scream, avalanche-like, cannot wait for nightfall.

What has he gifted them with during
those twoo’clockthreeo’clockfouro’clock nights,
delivering his staccato message padiddle bomb boom,
banging that green steel door eight
to the bar quick as Old John Henry’s hammer?
Only this calamitous ululating shiva
battering the wings of sleep.

Remember the words to that song? I’m free?
     I can’t even remember who sang it—

Richard will know…

I’m free with music
     The guitar, the drums, the beat

It makes me move
     The rhythm is a part of me

I love it when I can sing the words
     But they don’t always matter

But certain lines of a song can just reach out to me
     I remember those lines again & again

I’m free…

Goddam.  Stumble to the kitchen, down those friggin' stairs.
Find the ½ pint for mornings
Puke
Drink water.
Get sorta right, put on pants, shirt
It's 7:45.

Walk to the Center, get a pint at 8:00
And start walking home, drinking, in public.
No shame, no cares.

All of Hartford going to work.
Shit.
I gotta get to work-not till 10:00.
Have a drink boys-your loving bride awaits you!

Yeah-right, she awaits something.

Fuck, I'm tired. Get some blow on the way in.

I wish I was back on heroin.

Gotta puke again.

Mom calls, says I'm drinking again.
How does she know?

I haven't talked to anyone today.

I AM FROM my mother, who is from her mother, who was hidden with her mother in an attic when she was learning what it was to be in this world. I wonder how much of that DNA passed to my mother and then to my sister and my brother and finally to me. I’ve felt a visceral fear of abandonment since I was a baby, but I was always well cared for, too much so sometimes, due to how ill and tiny and sensitive I was. Is this DNA where it comes from?

I am from a house with quiet murmurs and secrets that I don’t really understand yet. A family that looked and still looks lovely and loving from outside, but uses over-sharing and personal traumas as weapons in conversation.

I am from the ether.

I am from lonely winter days and endless summer ones where we played hide and seek and green eyed ghost as a neighborhood.

I am from Billy Martin’s cologne and the sweetness of Southern Comfort burning my throat as I flirted with anyone who was interested in a girl with a hole somewhere deep in her ribs that she could never fill, no matter how much she poured in. I am from parties where we drank too much and smoked too much and made “bad decisions” that are now remembered as assaults and crimes.

I am from people that no longer talk to me because my sobriety makes them uneasy, makes them look at their never-ending glasses of red, wondering why I stopped when everything was just fine.

It was almost dark before the rain began. Usually Roberto would sleep in his tent but not tonight. Big Red got mad when Roberto gulped the last of the Thunderbird and he made long cuts to the top of the tent. Now whenever Roberto sees Big Red on the street he looks for something hard or sharp in case he wants to talk about the Thunderbird again. 

Roberto hurries to the Salvation Army. His friend Billy works there and even though he is a little late Billy will let him in.

It used to bother Roberto the way Billy forced him to say the Lords Prayer with the other men. But one night when Roberto was alone looking up at the stars through the rips in his tent the Lord’s Prayer rolled round and round in his head; Our Father, which art in heaven, hollowed be thy name;” and also the part about forgiving trespasses, well, it felt okay that night. Then he began to think of the men at the Salvation Army like a sort of primitive tribe gathered around a camp-fire, each of the men looking up at the far-away stars just like he was doing in the tent and together they’d be praying and hoping that their sad, hard lives might begin to change for the better. Hollowed be thy name, meant to Roberto that there was something so big and so strange that to name it would surely make it smaller than it was. And these men, and him, they were all a part of this gigantic swirling thing. Prayer was just a way to acknowledge the enormity of it all. After that night he began to pray with the other men and not feel bad about it.

Tonight, Roberto is grateful to be out of the rain. He’s not thinking of Big Red, and it invigorates him when Billy leads the prayer. Later he helps Billy clean up the kitchen, after that he plays some cards. Something about tonight feels like a big green pasture set before him. He begins to think maybe, maybe tomorrow morning he’ll go to the Early Risers AA meeting.

After a hot shower Roberto falls asleep. In his dream he is twelve or so, he was with his parents on a street corner but then they were gone. He wants to leave the corner and look for them but he’s afraid. He begins to float away, and he doesn’t want to go, he swims in the air trying to get back, but the wind is pulling him away. He wakes up and the room is crowded with sleeping men. He misses seeing the stars through the roof of his tent. 

The moment I knew something had to change, I

knew it was sink or swim. I had to take

charge and press a forward control to the

track and let the rage out of me. Fear is

useless here. The only way to leave is to

end the flow of emotions and pull the trigger.

The moment I knew something had to change,

I had a choice. But I let myself down

and I continued to drown. The fear of

never knowing isn’t comparable to the fear

of never breathing again. Will the next time

be the last time?

(Click on image to navigate through slide show.)

Lee Larson graciously invited us to read at the State House as part of Recovery Day. The event was fantastic, and included recognition of some of the biggest contributors to the Vermont recovery movement, including Lee, who received a lifetime achievement award for her many years of work. We also heard updates on issues such as housing for those in recovery, a proclamation from Governor Scott, live music, and more. 

Six members of WFR read their own work, and Bess and Gary read work from three other WFR participants. The Burlington, Barre, and St. Johnsbury groups were all represented. It's just another way of getting our work out there, sharing our stories, and reducing the stigma of addiction. Great work, everybody!

He found the photograph under the seat of the car, it broke his heart. The dam burst and he was swept away by the memories so wonderfully, brilliantly colored, splashed with Love and Joy and Warmth and Fulfillment and so deeply shadowed with Conflict and Sadness and Pain and Anger and Cold Aloneness and Anguish and Desperation and he was drowned in Regret and Sorrow and reborn for discovering it. Sadly pleased to possess it, he knew he could never look at it again.

A few months ago a good friend of mine died of a heroin overdose.  He was a good kid—too young to die, too stubborn to live.

Today I saw a woman passed out on the sidewalk.
Shaking.
Drooling.
She looked sick.

Two firemen stood peeling her off the pavement.  One woman stood by, watching the firemen work.  Who was this woman?

A Friend?
A Concerned Citizen?
Somebody.
Nobody.
Anybody????

A few months ago a good friend of mine died of a heroin overdose.  He had just gotten home.  Back from the road.  I saw him at the bus stop before I boarded a bus to Montreal for my cousin’s wedding.

He was gonna stay with me for a bit when I got back to Rutland, VT.  No using drugs when you’re with me this time around, I said.  (He stayed with me before he had left.)  I mean it, I scolded.  Okay, he told me.  Okay, I won’t.

A few months ago a good friend of mine died of a heroin overdose.  He was a good kid—too young to die, too stubborn to live….

Released

I would
let go
Anxiety, planning,
obsessional thoughts about my stomach,
my whole
body,
my work,
free time,
life

I would not allow these to pull me away from myself,
to control my confidence,
the words I speak or leave unspoken

I would give my body a thousand kisses
I would dance almost every moment
My body;
a piece of the sky above me
I’d move like the clouds

I would ,
somehow,
let go…

No more tension about not being good enough,
thin enough,
sick enough

There would be no more punishment or shame,
no more sickening knots of anxiety and fear in my stomach

I would treat myself as a monarch butterfly;
with love, with awe
I would believe you when you say
“You are beautiful”

Go, Kurtis!

Yes, that's Kurtis Thompson of our Barre WFR group looking stylish in the 2016 Vermont Arts Council Annual Report. In the right-hand corner below, you'll see the gang who read at our last Barre reading. You can read the annual report here.

We'd like to thank the Arts Council for generously providing funding to help keep WFR moving forward. We are grateful for this and proud to be featured. Thanks, Arts Council! 

I find it so easy to complain, I often forget why I should be grateful. Where would I be if I were not here right here, right now?

I would be dead!!!

I have cheated death at least 3 times, probably even more than that.

There may have been a time that I’d rather have died, but today I am grateful to be alive.

I have a new outlook on life and I am grateful for that, too.

I’m no longer selfish as I once was.

I have learned to love others.

I am grateful to my father, my mother, my sisters, and my brother.

I witnessed the miracle of birth three times.

First was March 27th, 2003 when Ryley Ann Smith was born.

Again January 14th, 2005 when Ayden Jay Smith was born.

Last, but certainly not least, February 27th, 2012 when my baby girl Jocelynn Leigh Smith arrived on Earth.

All 3 children share my name.

Not only am I grateful, I am also proud.

What I am truly grateful for is this opportunity for a second chance. This time I won’t take life for granted.

It occurs to me
that I don't know how to love;
I don't know how to love me,
and I don't know how to love you, too.

I am lost
in the dark.
It is such a lonely place in which to be.

Yet now I have this truth,
like a black and garish idol, square-toothed and rectangle-grinning, like a floating compass stone
suddenly unspinning.

Am I really lost,
at the center of a terrible truth? Can there be a terrible truth? Am I really gone,
caught in the darkest spiral?
Is the dark really dark,
inside the golden angle?
And am I really alone
with this new truth, this totem?

The idol is made to gold.
Yes;
once grisly slick and monkey-grinning, the grime now rimes a glow.
The truth
is made
of gold,
and so my time
is spun to gold --
teased,
gathered,
and worsted bright
from the blackness
in my soul.

And so the dark

becomes the light; the cloudy ink illuminates.

Maybe it always could.
Coming from nothing except ourselves, the color is of the mind.

That is what is meant,
when describing the philosopher's stone; the sinker becomes a sponge
when turning lead to gold;
the alchemy is of the mind.

And St. John said,

". . . the truth
shall make you free."

Yet what shall come of me? What shall I become,
now I see
the world anew?

For still I am alone.
Still I can not love me,
and still I can not love you, too.

All this golden truth,
all this painted color,
and still must I move from one place to another.

With sinker turned to compass stone, and spiral turned to mountain slope, to love myself
I must move toward love.

I must trust that movement to be enough;
to be a dream ascension unto itself;

my love for all of us
will be met in that same motion. 

THE PLACE I REMEMBER BEST IS the old apple tree next to the long driveway of my old childhood home. My dad had nailed three boards across a flat fork in the tree where the branches split off, rising in two different directions. I would climb up in my tree to the haven of my own special place. I felt like I never belonged and didn't really fit in with the neighborhood kids. I played with them, at their homes and mine, but I had that deep seated feeling that I wasn't one of them. So, I'd get a good book and climb up into my platform spot in the tree, back against an upright limb and READ.

This place that I remember best is the safe spot where I would launch my mind into new places of acceptance where I was privy to all that was happening. The shipwreck: Alex Ramsey cast overboard and the Black Stallion swimming by him. I grabbed that halter line along with Alex and ended up stranded on a desert island trying to figure out how to feed myself and a horse. On another day I'd be following Nancy Drew searching for clues that would solve The Mystery of Larkspur Lane.

In my place that I remember best I was never alone, did not feel shy nor unaccepted nor did I incur the wrath of my mother or big brother or sister. I would read and read and couldn't wait to turn the pages. My special place offered me safety, excitement, wonder and amazement that I could travel so far seated in that one spot. One summer I tried to read 100 books and win a coveted certificate. Then I would travel while seated. Now my multitude of friends join me on an IPOD so that I can garden, hike, paint, make pottery or drive.

I still think with longing of my old apple tree, in the yard of my first home that has now not been mine for over 50 years, the place that I remember best: my first safe spot.

Late on a Wednesday night in this fortress of deprivation known as prison, I read a novel titled Darkness Visible by William Styron. This novel finally gave words to the wordless and stood up for the tragic mute on matters of describing their monstrous illness and great tormentor of mind and soul. This book, wonderful in its ability to represent all who silently suffer, lit up emotions deep within me. I felt feelings of familiarity and the urgency to shout out to the four corners of the Earth that William Styron found a way to describe to the millions of human beings who are otherwise incapable of understanding, the full gravity of suffering this dark beast within causes.

The sad truth is that the majority of silent sufferers fail through no fault of their own to explain to the healthy of mind just how paralyzing, painful, imprisoning, and hopeless this very serious illness actually is. In many ways society remains stuck in the 1950s when it comes to treating mental illness and showing compassion to those who suffer from it. There are far too few facilities in existence designed to properly treat the ailments of the mind because humankind has not made it a priority. There are far too many prisons filled with but unequipped to treat the mentally ill. All too many times the mentally ill are told by strangers as well as those who are closest to their own hearts that mental illnesses such as depression are just labels created to coddle the weak. Far too many time the sufferers are told by people who have no idea what it means to suffer from depression, anxiety, and the like that they need to “buck up” or “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” This kind of “tough love” is especially cruel.

Imagine figuratively if you will being locked in a cage with a dark, formless creature whose sole purpose for existence is to oppress your mind into an exhausted state of defeat. Now imagine that while you are in this cage , you are in the center of a massive crowd of people who do not see the cage or the creature and therefore do not understand why you don’t join them. The crowd cannot understand how bad you are suffering from this excruciating pain or why you fail to perform even the most basic functions of self-care, much less the more rigorous functions of modern society. This is chronic depression.

Now imagine a second formless beast in the same cage, this one fiery red, who then places you in a constant state of utter panic and terror. You become fearful for your life and are completely convinced that some way, somehow, you are doomed. You then cannot sleep, cannot eat, suffer aching pain, have the shakes and you begin to experience cold sweats and nightmares. While you are in this agony, people in your life who do not think mental illnesses are real cannot understand why you do not partake in frivolous activities and then they become offended. This is generalized anxiety.

One last time I call upon your imagination that you might envision yourself suffering from these terrible conditions for hours, days, months, years, and even decades. This is unending suffering. Perhaps then you can understand why thousands of human beings each year kill themselves and why thousands more hole up inside their homes. Still history has shown us examples of human beings who have long suffered from mental illnesses, but who still left a positive mark on the world. People like Abraham Lincoln, Edgar Allen Poe, and Vincent VanGogh, to name a few. Having read Darkness Visible, I am surprised by the stark similarity that the author’s descent into madness has mirrored my own. Without fail, Styron has intelligently mapped out and one might even say decoded the mystery of depression, which always seems to baffle so many who do not suffer from it. It is my hope that society finally becomes aware.  

They must think that we are mad. With the yelling at all hours, and the breaking of things. With the cars in the driveway, and the people that come and go.

The screaming match in the front yard last week, even I don’t know what the fight was about. The cops probably flip a coin to avoid coming to our house. Our dog barks at anything, and my mom sits on the front steps anxiously awaiting someone to walk by, her voice hoarse from talking to herself, the words just pouring out.

My brother has some seedy business going, anger in his eyes when I look at him as if I want to talk to him. My father never home and my grandmother trying to quietly live her life on her own.

I hate what I think of my home, so I wonder what the neighbors must think.

It wasn’t just once.

There were many times.

Over many years.

Exhausted, sick, ashamed, disgusted with myself so many times.

But I am prideful.

I am arrogant.

I got on my knees.

Begging.

Praying on bathroom floors, in hallways, in front of the mirror.

But then things got better.

So I had to make them worse.

By deciding I had the swagger or I just don’t care.

I’d dive right back in and swim.

Really push off and glide into oblivion.

Then oblivion left and reality crashed back down.

And who was that in the mirror?

Why was she back?

What the hell was I thinking?

I wasn’t thinking.

I was lashing out or jumping in.

And it just kept coming back to this big letdown.

And disappointment.

My greatest fear.

To be a disappointment.