Rhythmically reducing time
for you
for I.
Coagulation increasingly lessens the beat.
Off-written and wrecked,
We can’t turn home as
Junkies and
Dealers.
This home,
Washed out in familial gossip of relapse and resurge
After our firefights
Against venomous appetites.
Yet here we light this pipe, you and I,
With a reprise of shell-shocked war stories
Reanimating the grind
Of addiction’s battle.
Promise by the world,
A mind’s conviction and a 12-step program
Would naturally manifest in abstinent purity
And after,
Serenity.
Through the itch
Still
We are lumbering on, yet raging.
Violently insisting that these dreams are vouched for and
Stances held
Should leave our slicked soles immobile.
Smooth winds crinkling past twigs
And I with you, my dealer,
Am a lubricated branch on smooth-weathered granite grade.
In descent I tear at the throat with embarrassed tears.
Cries that only slicken the stone.
So of it, I swallow what will fill,
And beg you to do the same.
As fingernails rip from flesh
In grip of a still frame I can hear the 12-step program bid out again.
“Let there be sweat till the clouds run red.
Let trailing beads glisten while
I the blossom
Begin budding in the fall.”