This isn't a poem,
it's a thank you to the
HP community for
all their support and love.
I'm in treatment and working
******* my addiction,
but I woke up with a
heart full of gratitude,
not to sound sappy, but
I love you all.  Carpe Diem,
and let the ink flow.

TIME HAS COME

to myself, I think the time has come
I've made up my mind, It's taken me years
to understand- it was never my fault
I  was blind to facts while always taking blame

today is the day, we both face the truth
you will not change, so change begins with me
I counted each day as a prison sentence
you as the warden to keep me in lock and key

why did it take so long to recognize why
I have no easy answers to explain
love is blind, and each time you think
that with a little more time, things will change

as I touch the doors handle, my hand shakes
I don't turn around to look back, or I will
surely remember the pain- it's tuesday morning
at 3:30 am- I've finall y taken all I can take

the street outside is silent, the light is barely through
my life has been a blessing, yet I've always felt the curse
as my mind races faster than I can comprehend, I stand here
thinking- my feet planted, to reflect on, a freedom deserved

by Michael Perry

They said I gotta write some things down
But I don’t liketa write and what can I say.
I disappointed my Mama and I’m real sorry for that
I tried to stop once, I truly did.  But it was so much fun.
I enjoyed cowboyin’, and all the guys too
They called us The Wild Gang.
Them months in jail was not any fun.
I promised 'em that I’d be good, but
The banks was there, the trains was there
They called to me and I had to answer 'em
I don’t feel bad for them that died.
They all had it comin’
I finally got tired of bein’ chased,
And me and Sundance tried to lay low,
But there wasn't no place to hide any more.
Both Robbers Roost and Hole in the Wall was known to all.
And them dad-blamed Pinkertons was ev'rywhere.
So we lit out on a boat, and Etta tagged along.
San Vicente was pretty, but the bank was a’callin’
Nothin’ else we could do but hit it.
Hiding didn’t work out so well that time.
All in all I think going to Bolivia was a big mistake
That’s about all I got to say.
-Butch

A bumpy track led to the old cottage. The place hadn't been lived in for quite a while but was intact, a perfect timber-framed Tudor cottage. Even the old thatch didn't leak. Just two rooms downstairs with a small lean-to on the back, the kitchen still had a Dutch oven and an old copper for hot water. A kite-winder staircase followed the central chimney up to two bedrooms.

The place was coming up for auction. Desperately I wanted it. At the auction it made four times what I could afford. The buyer did not move in however. There was a story about him being in prison. At this time the farmers used to dispose of waste straw after combining by burning it in the fields, a practice now banned. That's how the thatch caught alight. There was no attempt to fight the fire because no-one even noticed it. Gales later blew in the gable ends, then the chimney crumbled, brambles grew over it until there was hardly a visible trace of the place left.

I wish I could have saved it. It would have been beautiful. Instead I bought a little terrace, then a detached needing renovation, then the one we have today. I got what I wanted eventually, but I still think about that old place sometimes, and how I wanted it.

My life, then, hung like a
sun-yellow mobile that spun
in the heat as I flowed from
one end of summer to the other.
The songs on the radio were
my island.  My life as a girl
in the years before fences
appears in memory slides,
dressed in the beaches of  
youth.

I grew from seeds to roses in
the ground of my childhood
summers.  In the calendar of
my life as a young girl
every date prefigured you.
Day by day, in the years of
growing I bought, with the
barter of my soul, all the
heat and all the music.

Battened by the times before
you, strengthened by long
storms, hot suns, cold winds,
this, then is what I offer
you:  deep beaches, thornworn
roses, summers that flow
from one end of your life
to the other.

Caroline Shank

the last time he went out of
his mind he liked it
so much there
that he never came back

not even after the
alcohol left
his blood

he keeps writing to this day

addresses women with 'sweangel'
a combination of sweet
and angel, I guess

but never spends more
than a matter of weeks
with any of them

some take pity on him
and some morbid curiosity

but no one loves him
truly
only his insanity