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Bill Watkins, Traveling Poet

~ Words For You, Just Ask

Bill Watkins, Traveling Poet

Tag Archives: Alcoholism

The Truth

25 Friday May 2018

Posted by Bill Watkins in Poem, Poems, Poetry, Truth

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

AA, Alcoholism, Betty Ford, Christianity, Gospel, Jesus, Joy, Life, Love, Lying, Peace, Recovery, Religion, Spirituality, Truth

Things are whether we call them
such or not; words inappropriate
vessels for the Truth.

And yet, when we try, and at the
right time these symbols hit the
spot, music in time.

We cannot tell our own true story
and feelings until the room is safe—
we’ve been hurt before,

so sometimes back off at the moment
to secure ourselves from further harm.
Seek ye, and ye shall find

was spoken by a teacher who preached
“gospel” from the old English “God-spell,”
stories about God,

“good” and true requisite, the evidence
of truth being the oneness you feel
or don’t feel, the thing

wins or loses, you know truth when you
read or hear it, most of the time!  We
lie when afraid, when running

and hoping everything will be all right
if I can just get by this tricky moment.
Plenty of time for truth…

Just not today?

Hmm, tragedy bleeds a different ray,
golden sunshine at the rain yields
color.  The pain un-

medicated improves, and beyond that,
the thrill of overcoming becomes its
own high-level joy, so…

Go for it.  Tell your journal first,
if you’d like, but find that safe room
and tell the truth.

Be a safe pair of ears for someone else;
advocate for truth, but you must seek it
first!  It may mean you enter

a place you have fears about entering,
a 12-step meeting, a spiritual retreat,
where the schmucks there

don’t appear to be “doing” anything!!
What a bore!!  You look for a basket, a way
to achieve and score.

The rug will be under your deception as
long as God wants it there, but when it
is pulled, go with it,

and come down to where I kneel, it’s
fun to not only feel, but to report the
feeling, band together

with your brothers and sisters in truth,

and sing.

In Third Grade…

16 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by Bill Watkins in Childhood, Poem, Poems, Poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Alcoholism, Joy, Love, Peace

In third grade I knew enough to
know what I wanted, who I wanted—
and was even a year from knowing
who I wanted to vote for in
November.

But no adult asked or cared about
what I wanted, who I wanted, or
even who I might want to vote for
in November.

And the adults controlled me.  I backed
off my dreams:

To be a professional athlete, to love
and marry Anne Devereux, and to
have a vote because I wanted to be
a part of and help this country.

By eighteen years old I was drinking
flammable alcohol underage, breaking
laws, flipping the bird at hope and
politics, a racist, chauvinist pig unable of
expressing love for Anne or anyone.

At home was alcohol and “divorce,”
the misnomer some so excited to
pronounce against Jesus’ truth that “man
cannot separate what God has bound”—

it explains the private frown, as I walked
around, pretending to be fine—the Old French
word meaning “end.”

Friends:

The devil is tough, and wide is destruction’s
path—this is not now nor will life ever
be easy!!

Take a hard line against alcohol, and at least
look it up in a dictionary “what it is” and decide
if it’s smart to imbibe it.

Maybe the grape is better than the spoil
that makes intoxicating wine—

the pain of loss and hardship felt better than
the alcoholic escape into buzz and fake
views on men and women breaking
vows before God.

It’s not the messenger but the message
that shines, when I attempt to bring you:

“Children!”

After God, “Children!”

Drink not spoiled toxic waste, feel your
short term pain to get long-term gain,

and listen to our children!!

They want what they want, for me starting
around eight—

Money for school could have been parlayed
to the serious coach taking my dream
seriously;

Someone would have asked if I was in
love, and I would have said “yes,” but
I was not asked, felt judged anywhere
near the topic, and had no God to
give me courage to tell her the truth.

Shhh.

To give what we did not get is tough.

Shhh.

Listen to the child and what they’re worth.

Some even read better than a man forty-three;
are ready to vote, and help our country.

The Answer Behind Us

01 Friday Sep 2017

Posted by Bill Watkins in History, Poem, Poems, Poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholism, CIA, History, Joy, Karma, Love, Native Americans, Peace, Slavery

We race on the internet to find the next thing.

“Trump trains, Mueller advancing, Floods
and natural things.”

War and peace, bombs and lies—the truth
hides the fact that usually there’s…

an answer behind us.

History teaches, waits to be hailed like
a cab down the street, like prayer that tells
us not to drive so much raining down
Spring like sleet.

Sheet after sheet, I look back to Samuel
asking for a king, JFK killed by members of
the CIA, slavery never amended in this country,
contracts and treaties killing native people—

tossing them out of their own land so we
can abuse it.

The answer is behind us.

Amends to make, cakes to bake for perceived
enemies you made on our way to friendships
to make—this can’t wait, ask an alcoholic on the
twelve-step train we reach number eight.

“Made a list of all persons we had harmed,
and became willing to make amends to them all.”

It starts to make the sidewalk clean…

Walk with me to number nine:
“We made direct amends to such people wherever
possible, except when to do so would injure them or
others…”

The answer is behind… in the road we self-forked
by self-will run riot out-rooked, pawns to the queen,

take a look at where we have been.

Immorality and lies from the White House is not new,
corruption and untruth.

Look back, get hit in the front was not always the rule,
if looking both ways you see a safe pool on which
to reflect…

See yourself as you are, see me but better yet: see
our history, go backwards to see the path ahead,
and see that covert government makes people dead.

It’s never too late to turn around, rescind Samuel’s
request—ask God to be our king, Something Bigger,
a Higher Power, not the corrupt men and women better
served to just be followers.

The answer is behind us, the wall that we made.  To
chip it away takes mighty tools, or none at
all, remember Lao Tzu who said that to do nothing…

gets everything done.  We are powerless…  Our leaders
not in any way “powerful,” especially during a flood
or earthquakes.

Ours is to enjoy, but first reflect.  Stand by the pool,
see the past and watch it dream into now for
Peace’s will to perfect—this could be the Way!!

Looking back when there’s a safe moment, study and
read a book to go with your internet.

See the news today cresting from a historical wave
of past activity and doings.  Be the one who sees
the now as an avenue of the yesterday parade
brewing to end the alcohol and drug sales stewing—
growing wings, flying rampant through the wide
path to death, so the devil takes his due, God sidelined
to watch our response.

We do and dream, things aren’t always what they
seem, and I—

I took the path less traveled back, more is less,
less more, the answer behind us clear as bells
at Christmas time converting mass amounts
of people to snowy July feelings of rebirth.

The answer behind us takes work.  Stop drinking
flammable liquid, rebuke TV drug ads and walk
away from your car enough to feel five senses
bringing you to your critical sixth:

so hard you’ll wanna cuss!

The answer is behind us.

2nd Adolescence of a 33-yr Old Virgin Alcoholic

30 Wednesday Aug 2017

Posted by Bill Watkins in Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Recovery, Sex, Sexuality

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Alcohol, Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholism, Betty Ford Center, Joy, Love, Peace, Recovery, Steve Carell

Whew!

It’s hard to make a comeback, especially
when there is nothing behind you—only now.

Drinking fire on Dad’s lap at five, I let
my first crush pass me by…

There were no feelings, nor a safe place
to explore or express them…

Until I got to Betty Ford at 22, and a black
social worker named Lee intervened on
my dishonesty.

In time for me to abandon the sickness of
telling lies, in time to join Al-Anon, overdose
twice, join AA, and finally have sex on my
third sobriety birthday.

I was thirty-three in human years.

Thirty-three!!!  Seven short of a Steve Carell
comedy on the subject, and of a sad topic in
my Abnormal Psych class at UCSB.

I’ve been on a long second childhood and
adolescence post-Lee and Al-Anon, since
telling the truth and trying to “move on…”

It’s hard to be a child with a beard.

It’s hard learning to say “I love you” and
other truths for the first time in a man’s
body when they expect you to “Go to
Work.”

My mind without alcohol beating down on it
was “working.”  That work I did…

Work was Force multiplied by Distance, said
my Physics teacher, known to live a life of
Celibacy—how could he?

Easy.  Hard.  Difficult, but with a God or Higher
Plan about you, anything you want to do can be done,
even moving the canyon from there to there.

I have given up sex to honor my first crush, the
Wife of my Youth.  No one told me to do this,
but the idea came like a prayer to wrestle my
mind from confusion.

Honor.  Honor your parents, yes, keep the
Sabbath day holy, believe in God, don’t kill,
lie or steal, but also:

DO NOT COVET and DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY.

Do not pretend to be single, when you have failed
to keep your commitment to the Wife of Your
Youth…

I am married to God and her.  She lives not with me;
therefore sex is not possible for a moral man.

No one told me what to do with sex growing up,
No one told me about it, what it was for and
with who to have it…

My first life was a dishonest pass through love,
never admitting or expressing it.

A “childhood” of alcohol consumption, sports
and superficial relationships.

That “childhood” had to die; a new one started
in the middle of my body’s manhood—which made
many, including me, uncomfortable.

But it had to be done; I had to live the Truth, get to
here, pray to God—find my sexual and loving path,
reason and pray sex away in the current moment,
make an adult decision to Honor all that makes
us proper men and women.

“Be as a child” to enter heaven, and “rejoice
with the Wife of your youth…”

That is the plan, not handed to me by any
person, though spiritual friends have helped.

“Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.”

We can make our lives sublime, Longfellow
reminds, go big or go home.

“Be perfect as God is perfect,” strive to be the
best we can be, and attain John Wooden’s
famous peace of mind, if you merely strive
you surely get it.

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