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  Dec 2023 v V v
Paul Glottaman
When I hear myself scream
I hear your echo coming
back at me.
Howling at the moon,
just like you taught me to.
I feel your rage boil away
in my blood.
Running my tongue along
my teeth and trying
not to remember the
comforting burst of copper.
But the way I feel sick
and hollow inside, the hate
I always feel for myself,
that's all me, man.
I worry that the bruises
and the broken bones
and the bloodletting
weren't enough to get
your poison out of me.
I'd lock myself away
on moon bright nights
if it came to that
and often I've felt the
sickening pull toward
rending flesh and shedding blood
felt the unconscious twitch
of a hand raised,
knuckles out,
you *******,
and I know the curse is
strong still inside me.
There is forever an itch
for the easy way.
I know how to circumvent
understanding and empathy.
I know the paved smooth path
to becoming the beast.
I'll always wear your mark,
you ragged old creature,
but I don't have to
live your life.
I don't have to find
someone else to bite.
v V v Oct 2023
The breeze from the east brings
the sounds and smells of the dairy
and the beginning of Fall.
On our morning walk, Sandy stops
to roll in the dewy grass.

A desert valley is no match for
a Golden Retriever, maybe
color-wise, but not ****-wise.
She bumps into me as we walk
and her coat of stickers
scratches against my leg.

She’s not what I ever intended
to love.


My father used to walk alongside
me the same way. Lecturing me as
he walked, he’d lean in, like Sandy,
forcing me to either lean back,
or drift off the sidewalk.

I’d drift as far as possible but
could never escape his thorny barbs,
many of which stuck deep,
festering in my soul for decades.

He’s not what I ever intended
to forgive.


He’s been gone a few years now
and with the passing of time
I have slowly begun to forgive,
and in the forgiving
I have found healing

nevertheless scars remain,
and when Sandy brushes
against them,

I remember.
v V v Sep 2023
I've always believed that
something exists beyond the veil.

But the modern age has done its best
to keep us from seeing it.

The world spins and tells us what we want
but the world lies.

The world can never provide
enough
to satiate the soul.

A six-figure income
lies

    Your new toothpaste
lies

“I cant wait until Christmas”
lies

That SSRI drug trial
lies

“If only she would love me”
lies

An early retirement
lies

A trending poem
lies

“I can quit whenever I want”
lies

Additional home square footage
lies

That new car smell
lies

Hair plugs
lie

“I’m fine to drive home”
lies

*******
lies

Any kind of cosmetic implant
lies

Anything you wish you could get your ***** little hands on
lies

There is no end to the lies
and lists of
  things that will not satisfy

for long

Only the now
is true and
fulfillment will not come

later

It is right now
  in this moment

You are alive and
you don’t need to be

You are your own gift

Embrace the now

Breathe

and

Observe
v V v Sep 2023
Nat writes:
so many eddies colliding on the surface of a mighty river
yes, there is something otherworldly here
yes, even sacred,
in the finest sense of that overburdened word


Ah, what you speak of is
the very eye of God.

I see it in a Kaleidoscope of color
perfectly balanced yet
confusing all the same,
and the beauty of it!

A chaotic comfort like adrenaline.
The simple confidence of the knowing
held together by a single point of reference.

His bright eye the Fulcrum

o_______o
^

between:
The Sacred and Profane,
teetering in perfect balance
(For now)

between:
Respiration (The In) and Exhalation (The Out)
He resides in the pause between breaths

between:
Air and Water
(The Earth hovers within)

between:
Eyes Open and Eyes Closed
We live and die within the blink(s)

between:
Connectivity and Breakage
(Our true desires at the watershed of)

between:
Out Loud and Silent
(One without the other drives men mad)

Again Nat writes:
we exist,
we edit,
our eddies,
our overlapping lives,
in a never ending series
of Venn diagrams
all delicately balanced
at a single point


So perfectly stated.

The very eye of God.

Here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=rVKRRzaf21U
  Sep 2023 v V v
Nat Lipstadt
<|>

v V v  writes:

It is quite amazing to me that everything in life, love, relationships, survival, progress, growth, etc. .. it all boils down to some type of sacred balance.. a balance that is extremely precarious, and fragile... even the known universe follows a sacred balance, the seasons, the tides, day and night, if any of those balances slip, we no longer exist.. fascinating and brain bending truth

<|>

3:27AM

there are somethings you just know

read the words above, without hesitation,
knew therein lay a poem co-missioned
that required instantaneous creation,
as if it was a observable commandment
that need instant gratification,
nay, more so,
a relieving, an unburdening
a lifting of a hearty blockage impeding,
distressing my existence

perhaps
our lives are a life long attempts
to keep
A Balance,
our individual and mutually conflicting
of-all-our-imbalances,
as they intersect and sway,
on a flood plain, ever unstable and shifting,
so many eddies colliding on the surface of a mighty river

yes, there is something otherworldly here,
yes, even sacred,
in the finest sense of that overburdened word,
so oft overemployed that
one man’s overburdened sacred
is another’s overworked profane

but sacred is sacred

at a level just above our collective reach,
is an aspiration, a respiration and exhalation,
we unconsciously try to time our breathing in coordination
with our surroundings,
grasping, gasping, grabbing
for understanding, micro-management of the minutest
current of water or air running contrary to the main current,
that we plunge willingly and willfully into

when we open our eyes
every morning
and confront a new array
of illusions, allusions
and conceive our own illustrations,
and paint our lives and every act
on a corner of fresh page of a giant, ponderous
tome
(or tomb, if you prefer)

I know you understand.

in a few hours, I will rise to
be confronted by chaos and challenges,
armed with bits of strings, tape and bows
to wrap them into a cohesion,
to present them to you,
insert them into your eddy,
and in the froth of poetic collision,
is our constancy of connectivity and breakage,
a perpetual reformation

so that we may
mind-bend into each other,
verifying our mutual dependency
and saying together,
out loud and silently

we exist,
we edit,
our eddies,
our overlapping lives,
in a never ending series
of Venn diagrams
all delicately balanced
at a single point,
forever transitory and reforming
our language of calculus
on a curve of constant change.
3:27 AM
Mon Sep 18
2023

with the kind permission of v V v
v V v Sep 2023
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.
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