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A puff of alcohol

Like with many people, the holidays are bittersweet for me.  I cannot begin to list all the many people that make me thankful -- I'm very blessed there.

Much of the bitter part comes from the fact that my father died just over four years ago after a month of attempted recovery following intensive heart surgery.  For those that did not know him, he was in AA for 33 years and died sober, but he switched addictions from alcohol to nicotine, and it killed him.  I'm sure he would still call it a good trade.

Anyway, the above is pertinent to give readers context for what follows:  a poem I've had in my mind since the evening of December 1, 2006, as I left Baptist.

This poem isn't a happy one, so I would suggest stopping now if you do not want to read about an extremely difficult time.  That said, I really enjoyed writing it, and I hope you enjoy reading it.


A Puff of Alcohol

A puff of alcohol
fluffy foam sanitizer
as you enter the room
or when you leave.
a silky liquid reminiscent
of a bitter whipping cream
sliding over the fingers
slick anodyne
the rite of passage
dispensing Lethe's nectar.
Da dum… da dum …
Recovery is repetition.
Quick movements
melt into torpor
as tubes, arms, and vials
sterily terrorize
you
us
into silence.
In ... out. In ... out.
Pithy jargon,
oppressive in its newfound familiarity:
peep, O2, extubation
power of attorney
living will.

A puff of smoke
wafted across
fifty years
of porches,
hidden in the clean air
that wasn't in his lungs.
Half-burnt tar,
no longer evocative.
There were
hundreds of meeting halls
loaded with Bill W.'s
and nicotine junkies
and their children.
Recovery is repetition.

A shot of alcohol
or two
or nine,
jocular violence
and sweet burning amnesia.
Choking that demon
was worth a cigarette.
But saying goodbye
to that new monkey,
the one that eschewed the back
as child’s play
and sank its teeth
into the arteries and neck,
required a trade with Mephistopheles,
his horns masquerading as Swisher Sweets.
When Dad's surgeon unveiled the devils,
revealing that each cigar
balanced eighty Pall Malls,
we all took a deep breath.
Except Dad.
He had always beaten the odds
until he didn't
and now his face matched his lungs,
gray and pitted and
dying.
But he tossed the dice
against a half century
of poison.

He seemed to
make it.

An unexpected call
shatters
a month of improvement.
I stumble through apologies,
tripping over thoughts
and meaningless deadlines.
"He'll only wake up
in agony."
He told me
what to do
my whole life,
and now his life
lies burnt and twisted,
the soon-to-be-discarded ember
that, like the others,
he told us to toss.
But you can't abandon a life
as quickly as it can leave
you.

A weekend of loss,
full of sound and
love.
There's a duty,
it seems,
to scream, rationalize,
beg and cajole.
No true argument
can take life
when there's no life left to dispute,
but you try anyway, with
jilted tears and laughter.

An hour left,
the stage turned tragic
but not yet quiet.
Life is repetition, but
our TV-wrought certainty
that the beep of machines
stops,
flat lines,
turns out false.
Not knowing rends
another hollow spot
as we are forced to ask
if he is gone.

As I leave my father
or what used to be my father,
I take a puff of alcohol
and hope to forget.

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