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you say that you love me
but you don't have the heart
you don't have the wit,
you don't think in art
not like I do.
I write not for my arts sake...
I write for my hearts ache...

I write not to remind myself...
I write to re-mind myself...
I perform my own exorcisms through my keyboard
i am so tired
but
everything that
exhausts me
keeps me
awake
at night
having a hard time sleeping
 Oct 2023 deanena tierney
Aimée
×××××
And you?

You were a dream so beautiful

That waking to a world without you

Was a nightmare
×××××
It's said that coffee
Is a bitter drink
Today I swear
It's the sweetest
LHB 10/18/23
At her wit’s end
there is no destination
other than the road
leading back
to her beginning

Stepping into
her maddening pace
she feels wrapped
with thick, quicksand soup
covering her shoulders

She’s sinking deep,
drifting into severance,
life’s most resounding pain
cut off down here
drenched in warm liquid
molasses —  
her newest home
depression, life’s purpose
As I gaze up at the moon
all I can think about
is you

I will never understand
who or what I am
but when you're next to me
I gain some sense of
familiarity
I see your face in the moon
staring back
blankly
 Sep 2023 deanena tierney
v V v
Stops and starts  
tidbits and scribbles
3 years of notes and files
and pain filled ramblings
but nothing cohesive.

Instead, what’s written are
the short circuit musings of a brain  
on the mend after 25 years of  
miscellaneous addictions.

I gather all the words together  
and wonder what to do with them.
I contemplate deletion, but no,
there has got to be something  
here that's worthwhile,
something worth saving.

So I pull out all the lines  
that somehow feel right,
lines that have potential,  
lines that show me how far  
I’ve come since getting clean

and I write down the best of them
and then comment on each
from my current perspective.

     I used to chase the dragon  
     now the dragon chases me  
     across fields of wet leaves
     in the timid December sun.

(I must have walked a thousand miles while being chased)

      I force feed the feel good  
     to override the let down.

(One of the main reasons a user uses)

     There is no willing oneself to wellness,
     there are no bootstraps to pull on, and
     no self talk to conquer the chemical
     malfunction in my head.

(Without Faith and Hope, I wouldn't have made it)

      It’s a kind of spiritual act,
     A mystical replenishing of
     all the used-up parts of me.

(Could have said meditate just as easily)

     I knew it was wrong
     but I wanted it easy.

(Perhaps the most honest thing I have ever written)

     It makes me wonder if  
     the gaps I have are
     there to protect me.  
     But more so it makes me
     fear that hidden moments  
     shaped the core of me,  
     and when I don’t like me,
     what's missing are the things  
     that if I knew I could not  
     survive the knowing of them.

(I can only assume this made sense at the time)

     I do best when I live in retrospect.
     The present is too real.
     In the present my demon is here.
     In retrospect  
     I can choose to leave him out.

(So glad I got past this, and live solely in the now)

     When we exist for only ourselves  
     the world is not round,
     it is flat and we tend to fall off the edges  
     into pandemonium and unhappiness.

(Still so very true!)

     In all of my searching I  
     cannot find a way to love you  
     like you need to be loved.
     In other ways, yes, but
     second to what you want.
     But even so I want you to know
     you are my rock, my harbor,  
     my safe place, as consistent as  
     the dawning day, as reliable as  
     the setting sun, and as beautiful as  
     the harvest moon.
     Without you I am lost.

(She saved my life and she knows it)

     When I am close to God  
     I smell lavender.

(Don’t remember writing this but I like it)

     A common idiom -  
     don’t put skeletons in your closet;
     My father hung bones like he hangs his shirts.

(Never been a fan of “Do as I say, not as I do")

     I can't let myself
     be shamed for that  
     which I'm already
     ashamed of..

(Be kind to yourself!)

     I'm not afraid IN the dark
     I'm afraid OF the dark.

(The unpredictable loneliness)  

     I will never be happy because
     there is too much I don’t know.

(The need to be in control is a death sentence)

     There's an uneasiness with the  
     easiness of stress-free living.

(Chaos is a large magnet and I am sheet-metal)

     Sleep never satisfies for long,
     like a drug tolerance 
     its ability to provide escape  
     loses effectiveness over time.
     You'll notice this while dreaming,
     your dreams become more vivid
     and uncontrolled, a rolling
     tide of daytime worries warped
     into colors you can't escape.

(Sleep, by far is the most elusive aspect of healing)

     I am afraid of love 
     and that's a difficult existence 
     when your greatest need
     is also your greatest fear.

(Such a horrible paradox to live in)

     Pounding my fists on  
     the darkened altar in my mind
     makes the night much darker.

(A place I’ve been where you do not want to go)


The gap of these years has now been recorded.

I am free to move on towards what is to come.
While away from HP, I spent the last 3 years healing mentally and physically. I am now 3 years clean from any addictive substance which for me included Alcohol, Nicotine, Opiates and Benzodiazepines. It has been an extremely long road to recovery but it had to be done. I truly believe that had I not done it, I would be dead. As a public service announcement I just want to say that most people don't know that Benzo's are by far the hardest thing to get clean from. The most important literature out there for this is the Ashton Manual. https://www.benzoinfo.com/ashtonmanual/   I highly encourage anyone out there who takes Ativan, Xanax, ******, etc. on a regular basis to read and reference this.
Loyal hearts are a paradox,
These strong and frail commodities,
They're not concerned with etiquette,
Or confused by love's vast oddities,
They're strongest not for how they love,
Not weak for vision that they might lack,
They're strongest once they've been abandoned,
Love one who will not
Love them back...
Sometimes, I leave comments on someone's poetry in verse, reflecting what I got out of the piece.  This was one of those from a recent read on HP, reflecting some of my own feelings at the same time about trust, loyalty, and what happens when love (or even  friendship) is abandoned.
He left.
I’m not ready to cheer myself up again; to bring all the bright phrases to the point of being so intense and real inside my flesh, I prefer to commit to writing deadly, like there’s nothing more interesting than stamping your departed soul with all the Poets’ nihilism.
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