Six Notebooks

I am boxed in between

A god I don’t believe in

And a death that I do

 

I woke up to the words

“I’m more than 6 moths clean

And I will stay that way”

Reposted on the facebook of a friend

 

And thoughts of another friend overdosed

who will make no more meetings

Whose spouse (possibly former)

Has let us know there will be

A service in Denver where he lived

Then sometime this summer

A memorial here

 

And I am boxed in between

Wanting to believe

It will stay this way

But knowing that

Sobriety is always provisional

 

There is work to be done

Every damn morning

Every noon and every night

Or a fire that burns the bones and the flesh

Into a box of ashes that

No one knows what to do with

 

A friend’s mom carried

Her fathers ashes in the car

For several years, maybe still does

 

And I have never believed

It will always be this way

That this clean will stay pure

 

A friend said to me, one morning

On a walk through the city

“Paul, you seem to be one of those guys

Who has really got this”

I started shaking, in the middle of the block

Told him to never say that again

Because I don’t know that I do

 

All I do know

Is a friend named Bill

Showed up after being gone for several months

Then didn’t show up again

 

We cleaned out his house

Vodka and m&m’s, clean shirts folded

Blood still in the bath

 

I said hi to his wife at the service

Looked across the room at his young kids

They’ll never know why

They weren’t enough

But nothing is and sometimes something is

 

Saw a documentary this weekend

About a singer who carried me

When I couldn’t carry myself

He has one more clean year than I do

All I wanted was his secret

Which didn’t come up

I walked away angry

At not getting what I wanted

From him in that 94 minutes

 

The truth is none of us know

If we are lucky

If some kind of grace shows up

We remember that this sobriety

Is provisional and we are boxed in

Between god and death

Hoping to get to bed

Without having succumbed

 

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