Fantastic Work from the Bennington Turning Point
Workshop leader April Patrick has been working with a great group of writers at the Turning Point Recovery Center in Bennington, Vermont. Here’s some wonderful work from group members there. Please don’t hesitate to read and share!
WALK IN THE RAIN by LenaMarie
Walk in the rain
to wash away the pain
Don’t wanna go out like Cobain
or with a needle in my vein
If I can just abstain
sober I can remain
but I feel insane
from the noise inside my brain
so loud it gives me a migraine.
I feel like I’m circling the drain
trying to refrain
getting on that long black train.
Sorry to complain,
but my brain
I need to retrain,
so I can heal the pain.
Thank You Nickolas by LenaMarie
My baby brother was kind.
My baby brother was so strong.
My baby brother was so brave.
My baby brother was wise beyond his years.
My baby brother taught me how to be a mom when I was only 11.
My baby brother taught me what loving someone really meant.
My baby brother even years after his death
still teaches me how to be a
better person.
So to my brother Nickolas,
I say thank you for teaching me kindness
when we didn’t see much kindness.
I want to thank you for teaching me strength
as your body grew weaker.
I want to thank you for teaching me bravery
when you knew the end was near.
I want to thank you for showing me wisdom beyond both our years.
But most of all I want to thank you for making me want to be a better
person, as good a person as you.
Because of you I want to be the greatness you could have become.
You were already so great by the age of only 12.
Thank you my dear brother for being you
and teaching me what the best
version of me can be.
In loving memory of
Nickolas Micheal Allen Burdick
2/8/99 - 12/20/11
BOOTCAMP by Richard Mayer
The train squeaks and chuffs to a halt. The doors open to spill out a new batch of recruits. The freshly shaved-headed bootcampers pour out of the doors and clamber onto the platform. They are greeted by Boatswain’s Mate First Class Mr. Greenfield. Greenfield is a scrawny, bowlegged, crusty lifer in what he always refers to as “This Man’s Navy.”
His first words to his audience are, “Alright you shitbirds, your mother’s not here!” and “Hop to it ladies! I don’t have all day.”
We’re all worn out from the eighteen hour train ride and almost no sleep.
“I’ve made a terrible mistake,” I say to myself. I refrain from saying, “Sir, I want to go home, Sir.” I retreat into my shell and glaze over.
“Are you crying, sailor?” barks Greenfield with an edge of sarcasm that cuts to the bone. Everyone laughs.
I don’t laugh. I feel hot shame and shrink into the ground. I’m seventeen. I have three more years to serve. The laughter turns to a murmur, as if everyone has taken on my shame.
“No Sir! I feel fine Sir!”
Greenfield reminds me: “Your mother’s not here, Boot!”
SON IN CALIFORNIA, 1997 by Richard Mayer
Descending America’s western edge
on a rental car blue sky Sunday
I am with my golden boy again
with sunglasses and tee shirt turban
Wrapped around his head
like an Arabian prince he sleeps
Yesterday when I wasn’t looking
The sun burnt his fair face,
and he protects himself now
from further insult
When he was a child he took refuge
in makeshift tents and cubbyholes
Private worlds where he was safe in his aloneness
For he has been alone in beauty and in pain
And watching him sleep now
I take comfort that he finds relief in that same familiar way
But I know I can’t keep him from sunburn or heartache
REMEMBERING DENNIS by Richard Mayer
The last of the sober cowboy poets has left the building, and things won't be the same around here. Dennis's stories, (and boy he had some stories) were colorful, poignant, and sometimes true.
He'd be the first to tell you, with a central casting Irish twinkle in his eye, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Yes, he had an Irish storyteller's gift for a bit o' the blarney, yet he was probably one of the most honest of our members when it mattered. I don't think anyone's attention ever drifted when Dennis was holding court in a meeting, because he had so much to say and always said it in the language of the heart.
Dennis inhabited a world of jakey bums, tickle bullets and cash register honesty. His stories were laced with these colorful gems. A favorite of mine was the one about rolling off a freight train and careening down the stairs of the old Centerville where his sober journey miraculously got its start.
Long before he passed on, whenever I heard a train whistle, I would think of him and smile. Dennis's gratitude for the sober life was obvious, and yet he was stubborn in his concern that the program might change his personality. As far as I can see it didn't, except for the quiet generosity in his considerable commitment to helping other alcoholics. I know he was a praying man, because so many of his sentences began with the invocation JESUS CHRIST!
I met Dennis at the nooner, when we were both brand new and a bit ambivalent about sticking around. We did and gradually got comfortable with the terms of our surrender, which in the long run turned out to be the best deal in town. Dennis met Annie in a hail of tickle bullets, and a great love story ensued. I treasure having known the two of them, constant reminders of the simplicity of the program: just show up, don't drink, go to meetings.
So when you hear that train whistle, think of Dennis. He was one of the great ones.
This was a joint writing experiment in which we (April Patrick, Suzanne Wessler, Barbara Paterson, and Sara S.) each added a line or lines and passed the notebook to the left when the two-minute timer went off. The prompt was: “We are not saints. The point is that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines.” -How it Works, AA Big Book)
WE by Suzanne Wessler, Sara S., April Patrick
Honor thy Higher Power. Honor thy step work.
Humans are messy, prickly, stumbling.
No one’s perfect— Amen to that!
Spirituality is the belief that there is something greater at play.
We have no idea how big the universe is or what or who made it,
only that it was done by someone or something much greater than
a polar bear in size & power
sleeker than a seal
stronger than a dive-bombing eagle
who powers herself out of the ocean
clutching a flapping flounder.
I get drunk. We stay sane & sober.
We succeed like a dancing hive
of bees connected
In vibrating symbiotic
togetherness.
WONDER WOMAN IS SO TIRED by Suzanne Wessler
-after Kyra Wilder
Wonder Woman is so tired, she can barely keep her eyes open. Tired of her
eyeliner, lipliner, spray. She’s so tired.
Holding that can of Wonder Woman hair spray - scented with ozone, patchouli
and lemonade - her biceps tremble.
Wonder Woman is so tired, her wrists weighed down with bullet-defying
bracelets.
Tired and beautiful, beautiful and weary of saving the girls from wolfish men, the
boys from eating their cereal with their daily dose of macho. Wonder Woman is
not macho. She’s not in menopause but has paused from men, mankind not being
kind enough, strong enough to love and be tender.
Wonder Woman’s cape flutters. Her hair does not move. Her legs straddle the
earth like a goddess. Her cobalt blue eyes are stern, red lips curled in delighted
disgust as she turns away; the W glows like a dying star on her waist.
What a waste, she thinks, and wishes she was not tired.
Lena by Suzanne Wessler
(a little salute to a co-writer in recovery at the W4R workshop)
Lena, Lena, have you seen her? Writing up a storm of what’s inside her head,
sometimes hope, sometimes dread, often love and rage and pain,
but always pure and real is her refrain.
Pure intention to stay the course and speak her truth:
the truth of life free from drugs or drink, the truth of recovery to freely act and
think.
A Prayer to the Goddess of Recovery by Suzanne Wessler
Oh, fertile Goddess, sharpened, brown and smoothed by female hands:
Bring me abundance of love and compassion.
Protect me from the empty womb of spirit.
Fill me with juicy swimming sobriety,
Then grant me the courage and skill to nurture this sobriety
As I would my own child.
Lap of God by April Patrick
My ma was a sunflower, Pa was a perch
Great-grandpa a moonshine bootlegger
Grandma's house was the Lap of God.
For the hell of your grisly death, I thank you Ma,
for it jettisoned me from your Womb at last,
forced me to rely upon The Old Ones.
Ten copper Junebugs
Three little monsters,
Four little ghosts,
Three pellucid geckos,
Three hundred sugar-ants
inhabit Ma’s house when she dies.
Slowly testing her timelapse-wings,
Ma swoops out under the awning and
Flies away from her body.
Afternoon sun on Loblolly Pine
Needles shimmer silver
like Christmas tree tinsel or
fibrous filaments of frost.
Swallowtails and wasps smooch
Lavenders’ luscious blossoms.
An aggrieved squirrel sounds a
Querulous alarm.
Leaves of the Chinaberry rustle and
Rustle, a soporific hush.
Grandma rocks on her porchswing, smiling at the breeze,
drinking sweet tea with lemon. She pampers hen-&-chicks, Kalanchoe,
ferns, & roses, feeds me at age 4 little mugs of sweet creamy coffee,
bottomless bowls of Neapolitan ice cream,
hot chocolate pudding, chicken-n-dumplins, &
Miracle Whip-slathered roast beef sandwiches.
She bathes me in the sink with crumbly cubes of
lavender bath salts wrapped in gold foil.
She scratches my back with a fireplace matchstick until
I shiver with bliss.
She rocks me to sleep on her doughy belly.
These were my days of yore.
Grandma’s gone, too, to the
Great Beyond.
Gone sixteen years now.
Benevolent Old Ones,
Hallowed Great Spirit,
Thank you for these Blessings!
When I die, will I understand & love all in a flash
of awe and oneness? Will Bliss overflow me?
Will we cruise on sunny cumulus clouds,
belly-laughing?
All Your creations & all the Gods rejoined together?
That, or something better
PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST AS A YOUNG WOMAN by April Patrick
This is you on your second day of first grade, standing in the driveway between the orange Vega hatchback and the white Ford station wagon. Your four year-old sister stands barefoot beside you in a long, Scooby Doo and Scrappy sleepshirt. You wear a bright pink and butter yellow satin jacket like the Pink Ladies wear on Grease only prettier, and you carry a daffodil yellow and fuschia plastic lunch kit with Miss Piggy riding a motorcycle on it. Miss Piggy is wearing shiny silver knee high boots like George Clinton of Funkadelic would wear.
This is you in the Fleetwood Flair motorhome on your family’s great cross-country motor home trip in 1986. We’re about to hit the waves at Carmel Beach in CA. Standing beside your sleepy-eyed, mustached, furry-chested dad, you wear a one-piece bathing suit, slicked-back short hair and braces. Your sister is standing up on the fold-out single bed on the other side of your father. She’s wearing her one-piece bathing suit and Dad’s baseball cap that she’s probably just swiped off his head. Your sister looks like a gymnast, but she’s on the verge of sticking her tongue out at the camera. Your mom, who’s behind the camera, has likely been nagging her to irritability, in the special way she has of couching questions with fearsome critiques tucked inside–like some kind of foulness-filled donut.
This is you holding your Bennington College diploma beside your dad on Commons Lawn. Your dad wears a nice khaki colored jacket and dress shirt. His smile is tender, toothy and real. You wear a little black dress–how slender you were in 1996! All that dancing! Thanks to T. Creach’s and S. Sgorbati’s excellent dance classes! Your hair is long, your makeup minimal, and your eyebrows overplucked. You both glow with joy, happy achievement and wonderment to be together in Bennington VT!
TO MY POP by Yukon Fonda
Hey Pop. The nights run cold, and I grow old.
Hey Pop, I wonder if you can see me.
Hey Pop, remember you’d pick me up by my
ears? You were so strong.
Hey Pop, remember swimming in the lake in December?
I thought you were Superman.
Hey Pop, the way you loved your girl–you were so damn classy.
Hey Pop, you told me to follow my dreams and not to be scared.
Hey Pop, you told me to stand for something even if I’m the only one standing.
Hey Pop, I think I’m strong as you now–maybe classy too.
Hey Pop, you left us on a Sunday. I never cried so hard.
Hey Pop, when I look back I smile, know it was worth your while.
I’ll see you again someday. Thank you, Pop.
PAINTED DESERT by JMMJ
Why was I here? Could not find a purpose
Found no one who cared
Went, wandered through places
Didn’t know where
Saw what I saw, froze me to stare.
I’d sit in the grass and say what the hey.
So much to grab, too much to pay.
I wonder why I came this way.
Why I was here. Found not me a purpose.
Found no one who cared.
I feared, young, outside myself.
I then feared me–I shut my mouth.
I stayed that way for many years.
I drank some wine and lost my fears.
Traumatized, I slouched my shoulders and
downed my eyes.
Afraid in crowds
I’d drink to socialize.
They took me in stray, gave me time and
their children to play. Ten years hence, I don’t recall
thanking them. It’s come to today. I’ve forgotten their names.
I thank them their ways with me. Their giving goes on.
I wish I recalled thanking them all. I thank them their ways.
ROCK ON MY ROOF by JMMJ
There’s rock on my roof, studded rock covered walls
Rock on my wood, crumbled and crushed
Mixed in with something
Applied with a brush
There’s rock in my yard where I step
Got little rock walls, piles of some left
Counter that’s broke under and around where I need the wood stove
Got pebbles and stones can be thrown
Some in your way, some polished and honed.
Rock holds up my home.
I long for when it’s silver, shiny, or gold.
I can spit in my hands, fill it with dust, roll it around,
make marbles and shots, lose them, not mind,
make me some when I got me more time.
Some rocks have been squashed. Some they just come.
The earth spits them out like the teeth of a bum.
Too big to budge, mountainously tall. Some you pick up.
The ones in your shoe make you can’t walk.
Some we see as not to be moved.
Some we give, so forever you’ll stay.
I describe them as hard—I say like my head.
Out of this rock, life came to live,
leaving my feet a place to reside.
Never gave it much thought–
never paid it much mind:
a rock of this size, hanging in space,
a rock so massive, no way and no need to escape.
Never gave it much thought—
never paid it much mind.
A rock of earth’s size, just hanging in space.
So massive, so vast, just hanging in space.
SWINGING by Denise R. Simon
I keep swinging away
Floating through the air
And I see you down there, riding that train
I keep swinging away
Breathing in deep
Hoping you can get some sleep
And I keep swinging away
Praying for you and hoping…
All I can do is keep hoping
And loving you until you love yourself
And we can keep swinging away
Floating through air carefree together.
SKYE by Denise R. Simon
The gift of a beautiful skye
Sweetness and loving
Being there always now.
How all that love came free
Came to me.
No inspiration filtering through
This skye is black not blue
Those golden eyes
Burn like sunny skies
So elegant and beautiful
But totally unaware
Thinking only about happy and run and treat
And I love you Mommy, my mommy
True beauty that is blissfully, completely,
Thoroughly unaware.
Somehow it doesn’t seem fair.
SWEAT by Carol McCaffrey
He pulled the washboard from the bucket
Rubbed the metal with his shakin fingers
It was all he could make sound from there
Days the whisky had taken its toll
No more ukulele, no more banjo
Just the forever beat of the washboard
Kept him alive
Kept his feet tappin
That and another shot of whisky