Stop Your Engines
So lately the meetings I’ve been attending have lots and lots of newcomers in them. Always a good thing.
But like most newcomers, they are more interested in reaching the finish than learning how to enjoy the process. Many of them are writing fourth steps while they’re still in their first year. It just seems so hard to have any real insight into the EXACT nature of our wrongs when you’re barely a few months away from your last drink. But lately, it seems like I can hear the newcomers revving their engines at the starting line.
So when I saw this photo, I thought it perfectly described the alcoholic mindset in those early days, when getting better was a mission to be accomplished and not simply a lifestyle.
Resolutions
Are you keeping yours? Did you even make any? For all you drunkards who resolved to get in shape here’s a little primer on Drunk Yoga. Enjoy!
Jimmy and Rita
The best way to read these poems would be to click Jimmy and Rita in the categories sidebar. Then scroll down to the first entry and read back to the latest post.
Race
Jimmy dropped $200 at the track.
Should have bet Nickel Dancer
to win in the fourth—
one more regret to face down
late at night.
She pulls ahead
in a series of slow-motion strides.
In a dream he’s riding her, sliding down
out of the saddle, dragged after.
Mud and shit in his face.
Rita’s in the upstairs bar
letting that jockey they met
buy her drinks. Gold chains
and a diamond-eyed unicorn
around his scrawny neck.
Bullshitting about horses he owned,
his arm loose around her shoulders.
Jimmy wakes up and wants
to hit her, lying there curled
towards the window.
Just once,
hard,
so she’d cry out
and he could comfort her.
This is from Kim Addonizio’s amazing book of poems Jimmy and Rita. If you don’t have it get it here
AFOB 