Click on the Play arrow to view the author read this poem.

In a dank hall, under a punishing light
cheap cologne mixes with nervous sweat
stale cigarette smoke, burnt coffee

I’ve come to celebrate your sobriety
as if returning to normal is a great achievement
as if being independent, considerate, law-abiding, caring, employed,
reasonably unselfish, flawed but not fatally
as if being like most people
deserves a celebration

apparently, it does

I’m greeted by a newly converted
eyes of zealot, grin of a true believer
I say thanks, but no thanks
I’m not one of you, just one of your victims

your Cake Night has drawn a big crowd
indicative of the number of lives you’ve messed up
we visitors smile and whisper like non-Catholics at Mass,
unsure of the protocol
do we kneel, cross ourselves, shit, or go blind

the chairs are as used as those who sit in them
uncomfortable, unsteady, unreliable
I watch the suspicious eyes of impatient newcomers
arms hugging trembling bodies
seriously wondering what’s better
another night listening to litanies of self-incrimination
or pissing their pants passed out in the park

and the old-timers, soothed by the travails of others
feeling they belong, are better
masters of The Big Book, creators of endless clichés
faces filigreed with exploded capillaries.

all tips of icebergs, your deadly bulk lying submerged
lurking in wait for those who love you,
passengers on a Titanic not of their choosing,
adrift on a sea of misery
never knowing when their hulls will be ripped open
and the torrent will overwhelm them
pulling them down into icy blackness

only to fight back to the surface and
amid the debris
watch the life-boat float away, you sitting in the stern
on your voyage of good intentions

the meeting begins,
your turn, centre stage

we know your sins, we’ve suffered every minute of them
then, now, and forever
and though free of you, the scars refuse to heal

I brace for a ‘fearless moral inventory’
a detailing of the cancer of chaos and crisis you inflicted
a metastasizing of abuse
neglect, humiliation, disappointment, embarrassment
but am offered only contrite confessions
you’re sober, you’re sorry, you ask for absolution
you want to make amends  

your peers applaud your progress,
thank you for their sobriety

do we forgive you
do we have a choice
it’s all about you
again.

God grant me the serenity….

the meeting ends
we join hands, rejoice in the fact that ‘just for today’
you’re finally doing what most people have done everyday
all their adult lives
the get-up-in-the morning, go-to-work grind
you found so hard, so unfair, so uncaring
because you were too sensitive,
your parents were dysfunctional
your wife didn’t understand you, society was flawed
as if you alone
were the victim of all this injustice
as if everyone of us at some time
didn’t want to give up and say
fuck it
become the burden instead of the burdened

we eat your sickening sweet cake
sip the acid coffee, listen amazed
at the platitudes you spew
how you’ve woven these self-evident utterings
into a philosophy of blamelessness

I’ve accepted the things I cannot change