Prevention and Recovery Poetry Jam! Coming to St. J. this Friday!! Cosponsored by Writers for Recovery. Thanks to WFR Workshop leader Gavin Wynkoop-Fischer for helping to make this happen!

What was I expecting?  It is like exceeding your expectations when you have none?  I used to wait tables in a place where they’d make you pass out comment cards.  Each one would be worth like 10 cents.  This would translate into the company’s own dollar buck system where you could get food or swag.  Exceeding expectations is like that.  Like when you have to pass out a comment card as way of spending dollar buck bonuses at a place where you are waiting tables.  Almost a total pointless loop.   And they will raise your salary 25 cents in the next two years if you get dozens of comment cards that say, “exceeds expectations.”  

Or you have to rate your professor, or even worse,  be rated as a teacher by 14 year-olds who want to tell you about how much weed they can buy with a million dollars, but are not interested in your academics as a teacher.  How are you supposed to exceed expectations then, huh?

It was very hard to give testimony to get the diagnosis last week.  I had to put a lot of things into words that had impressions and feelings, and may have been left untold.  There’s a myriad of conditions, factors affecting every moment.  

Richard Dawkins has said that the specific gravity of the doctor delivering you has more pull than the gravity of the stars on the night you were born.  There’s no way of telling which of the conditions count, what’s the signal to noise ratio.

How up do you feel, or down?  

Music engineers can see a soundboard and read the dials and knobs.  To them it’s not just clutter, or noise, or a ripped up Doctor Who set in disrepair!   

The conditions:  the sunny day, the amount of iron in my last meal, my B12  levels, noticing fun, accessing joy, harnessing gratitude, intrusive thoughts, a loop–who knows the conditions?  

And maybe I was missing something crucial.  Or prevaricating, or embellishing.  I come from a long line of lecturers and educators.  Rover says, if I were faking it,  I would have to be a “Muchauser”, a baron?  I loved that Sarah Polley/ Robin Williams film as a kid: Baron Munchausen. Is that what he meant?  I guess the point being is that  I would have to be the most supreme faker of the century if I were able to pull this off this presentation of conditions without having the actual thing.  

Last week, I did not get a chance to deal with spilling the trauma stories in a white-walled office, the potential diagnoses, and I then had a reprimand at work… and maybe not such a reprimand, my lurking unfriendly narrative of myself would call it a reprimand.  More than a reprimand: confirmation of my fears, my imposturing, confirmation that everyone hates me as much as I thought, so that I may hate myself more and get ahead of the train. 

 I guess that’s part of the conditions too, being wretched to your own inner dialogue, hating your body, wanting to press the eject button on this cartoon-proportioned reality and emotional scale, but really that’s part of it too? 

I wasn’t what I expected, although I have had it all my life.  I now have a diagnosis.  The doctor said alcohol is often running with it, body treats alcohol like a benzo; alcohol actually treats some of the conditions.  It’s gonna be a process. 

Almost fist fought the pharmacist when he said my meds were ten times what they were last month…  but we’ll try again next week.  My sponsor says they’ll figure my hormones, my thyroid. However, in her line of work, she thought it may be…

My arm is pockmarked by all the labs, I will have to deal with this my whole life, and maybe I will have more of a life.  It will swing and swing again.  I…

I have several diagnoses this week, no iron stores, pernicious anemia, ADHD, generalized anxiety, abysmal ferritin, perimenopause, tanking estrogen, stories surfacing and changing colour being refigured under the heading that it might be, or has always been… 

Lots of research to do.  I guess about it, now that it is on the books.  It is written.  Maybe I say it out loud.  Say it at this pre-formed stage.  Don’t know what it means yet.  Say it before I discover… say it before my expectations about it take over.

 I am bipolar.  

Rather, I am bipolar, too.

This is what I really wanted to say: 
Thank you. 

Thank you for being a human, a good human, 
a human who hears and heals and grows along. 

This is what I wanted to say: 
I am glad we got the plumber to fix the sink 
and I got to move your noisy gum cleaner thing, 
but also I kind of like sharing the other sink 
with all your floss and shaving stuff and good smells.

This is what I wanted to say:
Thank you for the adventure for always saying yes.

This is what I wanted to say: 
Yes.

“Untitled” by Jim Main

 My drinking inspired by my
inhibitions retired.
Bringing to me my fears more at
ease, my timid, releases, I thought
I was free, finally, me being me.

 
Then I would see its benefit bring
me to my knees, grasping at life
and what I once hoped it would
bring.

Me and my drinking in the way of
our dreams. My crying soul
screamed, I could have never
occurred my drinking from me.

Yet now here I am. With my
fears held at ease, my timid
released, me being me, and me
being free.

My drinking inspired the losing of
me. Today is the day, for me to
be me. Today is the day for me to
be me.

I drank away my days
in a blank and hollowed haze
wasting who I was, and never 
growing up. The more undone I
come, the harder I had to run, I
just could not keep up, just were
no more fun.

I drank away my days, in a blank
and hollowed haze, wasting who I
was, refusing to grow up.

When no drinking came my mind
was in a fuss, tangled tight and
muddled up, broken is what it was
I drank away my days in a blank
and hollowed haze, wasting who I
was, never growing up.

The more undone I come, the
harder I had to run, I just could not
keep up, it just were no more fun.

I drank away so much, now I'm
living for today, I'm a better man
this way, my boy is growing up.
I'm a better man this way, my boy
is growing up.

I began to notice 

I began to notice the trees

I began to notice the trees and the frost on sloping hills and I learned I needed to pump the brakes and pump the brakes to avoid skidding off the road and into their snowy embrace.

I began to notice the trees and the frost and the scary sloping hills and the one way roads without street lights as I cruised through the dark abyss, eyes flicking up and down and back and forth as I checked the location of my wife on my phone, wondering if she made it home safe. Was she alive?  Or would I have to drive around on this dark lonely road until I found her lifeless, beaten body discarded in a frost covered ravine? 

I began to notice the trees and the frost and the scary sloping hills and the dark, dank one way roads and the pick up trucks with thin blue lines that would beam me into oblivion with their high beams as they speed around and past me too quickly to notice I could barely see the road through my tears. 

I began to notice how often I think about death. Dying. I am dying. I am dying here in this place. I am afraid and unsafe and perhaps I am already gone. Will this be the day my body swallows AR bullets at the queer dance night at Babes Bar? Will today be the day I rush my whole world to the ER with oozing, gaping wounds imbued by a stranger with fists full of hatred? Fists and kicks and punches and lunges full of the politicized rhetoric gleaned from endless news cycles where our bodies– freed of the binary, are their favourite subject. Their dirty little obsession.

I can’t help but notice the trees and the frost and the scary sloping hills and the pumping of the brakes and how awful it feels to live in this idyllic northeast kingdom.

— This piece is dedicated to Nex Benedict 2008-2024 

It was a substitute
For compassion
For empathy
For tolerance
For love
For reality
It was a substitute
For happiness
For contentment
For friendship
For connection
It was a substitute
For doing the work
For getting it together
For looking in the mirror
It was a substitute
And now it’s gone
Someone please
Recommend a substitute for my substitute
Because i need one now more than ever

When it’s going right Write
When it’s going well, Write
When it’s going wrong, Write
When you've got it all figured out, Write
When you just can’t take it anymore, Write
When you hate him, Write
When you love him, Write
When you wish he was here, Write
When you want to scream, Write
When you want to cry, Write
When you want to die, Write
When you want her to die, Write
When you regret everything, Write
When you regret nothing, Write
When you couldn’t be happier, Write
When you couldn’t be angrier, Write
When you don’t know what you feel, Write
When it’s going just right, Just Write.

I mean all problems have solutions right?

All theories should be falsifiable.

But do all problems have solutions?

Does a problem with no observer behave differently in the absence of observation?

Is there an answer to every question?

You see,

I’ve been chipping away at my shoulder for a long time, my baggage ripping rotator cuffs.

When I hear the city speak it shows its true intentions, but it speaks in the cadence of family. Each time I try to find a way to get this curse out of my blood I’m left bloodied and bereft. The indignities an addict suffers on a minute to minute basis is enough to want to keep one’s head down, cap peak held low, hood up in a don’t speak to me, just let me die in peace, don’t watch me kill myself, avert your eves unless it’s to give a passing hello, just let me be alone in public because I can’t stand to be alone, alone.

It came out of nowhere, My Rage
that’s what I always say, afterwards
and I believe it
it certainly SEEMS true
when I explode over the smallest things
did it REALLY come out of nowhere?
or has it been brewing?
truth is, it’s always brewing
I'm on a hair trigger
and I don’t know how to take my finger off of it
I wish I could unload the gun
but it appears I have infinite ammo
I need a reverse cheat code
down down up up right left right left A B start
nope, that didn’t work
as expected
nothing works
“just choose to be happy”, they say
“they” always being someone who’s never had an angry thought in their life
sure, thanks Becky
why didn’t I think of that simplistic and unrealistic solution?
empty advice from a vapid mind
always something that’s been suggested a million previous times
and never works
yet that all think they’re saying something groundbreaking
“why don’t you just”
the rally cry of the heartless

It came out of nowhere. 
What was it this time? 
It hasn’t been so fair.
Also ended feeling confined. 
Or maybe it’s just this time,
That is the source I find. 
I’m still not sure of where,
Or who, or what or how. 
Though I struggle with the insincere
I’m bracing for what’s coming now. 
Come out of nowhere already, 
Come out and seek what you find. 
I wouldn’t say yet that I’m ready,
But yet I still showed up somehow.
Are you going to show up? 

Shit! Ya, no - 

I wasn’t ready after all. 

Not at all.

One second I’m standing in the musk of the basement dropping a shirt into the dirty pile, as it snaps…This is not the me, I want anymore… instantly my bare feet are in cold wet grass then slapping leaf covered pavement. All the way to the sticky sand littering the beach. The cold of the water rushes around me. It's rough. I turn to push against the waves.  Fighting the waves to get where my feet no longer touch, beyond where I can touch and feel…this.

Cold lake water fills my mouth as the waves spin me over and over and over… Blacking Out I feel the sharpness of the breakwater’s rocks beating me. Flogging me… I guess the ocean didn’t want me today. … Bloodied I lay there… Well I guess that happened.

Place the embers

cooled and ready

Ring the quiet in

List the ways you need and wany

and yes

I will listen to you

dear one

Wonder from the clothed fortress

naked on the inside

Sing the wandering feather’s

promise

Just reach out from the

kitchen table

set for a hopeful two

Bless me and bring Amen

Hi, Everyone!

For the past year, WFR has been working with Scrag Mountain Music and Vermont Network to help new moms write amazing lullabies for their children and grandchildren. Now it’s showtime! Please join us on September 22 at 5:30 PM at the Capital City Grange in Berlin, Vermont for a community art project and lullaby concert. All the details are below. Don’t miss this amazing FREE concert. Advance reservations are encouraged at www.scragmountainmusic.org.

Gary

Friday, September 22, 2023

Capital City Grange

6612 VT Route 12 Berlin, VT 05602

5:30 – 6:30 pm & post-concert: Community Art Project

6:30 pm~: Concert

(Marshfield, VT, August 14, 2022) – Scrag Mountain Music, together with Healing Together, a project of the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, and Writers for Recovery present Healing Together: A Lullaby Project Celebration Concert, a program of beautiful and heartwarming songs created with moms and caretakers in our community through the Lullaby Project. The celebratory event also includes a special community art project for all ages. This concert marks the culmination of four Lullaby Project workshops held this year together with Vermont Network advocacy partners Umbrella, Inc., Voices Against Violence,

Outright Vermont, Kids-A-Part (a program of LUND), and DIVAS (a program of The Network). Healing Together: A Lullaby Project Celebration Concert is on Friday, September 22 at 5:30 pm (community art project) and 6:30 pm (concert) at the Capital City Grange 6612 VT Route 12 Berlin, VT 05602. . This concert is free of charge with advanced reservations encouraged at www.scragmountainmusic.org.

Healing Together: A Lullaby Project Celebration Concert showcases a dozen or more new lullabies created in our community this year, performed by a band of esteemed musicians including: Mary Bonhag (soprano), Evan Premo (double bass), Marianne Donahue Perchlik (guitar, Celtic harp, vocals), David Ruffin (vocals), Colin McCaffrey (guitar, mandolin, fiddle), and Andric Severance (piano). Before and immediately following the concert, audience members will have the opportunity to participate in a special community art project inspired by the original lyrics of these lullabies.

“Self Portrait” by Idle

Montpelier was seriously knocked down by the July flood. But if you travel there now through September 22, 2023, you can view a wonderful exhibit of art created by incarcerated people in the West Virginia Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Inside Out: IncARceraTion features drawings, paintings sculptures and other art created by incarcerated folks, along with audio narration by a young man (and current Goddard College student) who was formerly incarcerated there. Beautiful, emotion, and stark in their truth, the pieces presented provide an often lacking insight into the nature of incarceration and the people who live it, as well as the ability of creative expression to improve incarcerated peoples’s circumstances.

Be sure to see this important exhibit if you can. And stay tuned for collaboration between WFR and the folks who organized the exhibit!

For about the exhibit, click here.

With every step that we all take something shifts. 

In me. In them. In you. 
Sometimes we feel it. Some of us don’t. 
But every person is impacted, and something shifts in the world and in each world each person lives. 
Whether or not they feel it. 
I’m tuning in. 
I’m reconnecting and with every step, I connect deeper with myself, 
I step away and disconnect more from what I thought was important. 
And it is, in a very different way than I felt it was important. 
It’s like unconditional love that doesn’t mean unconditional tolerance, nor unconditional capacity...
Every step has taught me everything comes with limits. 
Although my love can shift with everything else, it’s a weird place to have that remain unconditional, 
but what does it really matter when it’s all dependent on the definition? 
Up to the interpretation of each and every person. 
So as I said, every step shifts something. 
Do you feel it? 
Do you even care? 
Maybe that’s what matters more. 
What do you care about? 
What’s most important? 

We are sad to share the news of the passing of longtime WFR participant Leslie Bonnette, who died on June 29, 2023 at the home she shared with her husband Thomas in Shelburne, VT.

I’m not sure, but it’s quite possible that Leslie attended our first ever official WFR workshop session at the old Turning Point in Burlington. If she didn’t, she showed up soon after, bringing a wonderful writing style, a fearless approach to the written word, and a lovely sense of kindness. Leslie participated in our very first public reading at Burlington’s ECHO center on Recovery Day in September, 2014. The people who were lucky enough to hear her were undoubtedly stunned by the beauty and intensity of work like “What I Have Recovered,” which I include below.

Leslie was a proud child of the 60s and a huge music fan. Later on, she shared some of her drawings, and I learned that she was a talented artist as well. That she did so many things so well is a testament to her personal strength; she successfully escaped an abusive relationship in her early years, and fought mightily for her recovery through a number of setbacks.

If there is one thing I will remember Leslie for, it was her crows. She told great stories about the birds who visited her and brought her gifts, no doubt because she fed them so well. Every time I saw her, I was sure to ask about the crows, and it always made her smile. I hope wherever she is now, they can find her and brighten her day. We send our condolences to Thomas and the rest of Leslie’s friends and family.

“What I Have Recovered,” by Leslie Bonnette

I have recovered

A shattering of shards

Spiritual pieces of myself

Recovered from compulsion,

Never knowing what it was

That hole so deep it was unfillable

No matter how and what I tried

I tried to recover

From the digging of that hole

I tried again and again and again

And now I feel full of awe and joy fleetingly

But I feel.

That’s what I’ve recovered.

The current took me. 
The current conditions were turbulent rapids that thrashed and splashed. 
Saturating everything in its wake.
Eroding just for eroding sake. 
Meaningless reasoning considering the substantial damage.
Waiting and braving the storm all around me. 
All these forces exerting their power over me. 
So of course I let the current take me. 
Take me away. 
Take me anywhere else but here. 

I had it locked away. 
I couldn’t use it. 
I couldn’t even access it anymore. 
It was buried and covered so deeply. 
There are still subtle vibrations and echoes, 
   when things get really still. 
But it just feels like an earthquake. 
Rumbling underneath me. 
My feet shifting and destabilizing me,
   more than I already have been,
   stumbling around from this already uneven ground. 
I shake and stir and rebalance
   in whatever contorted position is required to keep a level perspective. 
Can’t slip up. 
Not allowed to react or be affected by all of the injustices everywhere. 
It’s not safe to fix. 
It’s not safe to resolve. 
It’s not even safe to make it known or shed light on it. 
And that’s exactly why it’s been long locked away. 
                                                                                                My voice. 
She wants to change this for everyone, but it would kill us - 
   before we could truly deliver any of this healing she’s screaming for. 

“I got distracted…”

 It was raining hard as we drove through the early winter night to the show. She could barely see the lane markers as she has terrible night vision. I said she should pull over so I can drive since my eyes are ridiculously sensitive to light. As we continued on down the soaked and cold highway she put her hand on my right arm as it gripped the shifter. I could feel her warmth through the thin fabric of my hoodie. The way she rubbed my arm, gripped my thigh. We were soon pulled over on a farming back road. Collapsed upon each other. In the cramped back seat of her coupe, I wanted to stay there forever. As we held each other, I never wanted to let her go. She felt like the answer to my every physical need. I got distracted.

“It happens all the time…”

 Heart beating, nostrils flared, I could feel the warmth of my blood throughout my body, her body, welcome to now. Is this it? All you get is now. I wanted to stay in this moment with her forever, I never was one before this. Is this like singularity or something…? Happens all the time I guess.