Vanish

You struggle to breathe

Your lungs groan under the weight of a million cigarettes

Your body will not heal, nor will you allow it to

You prefer to smoke tobacco than to breathe, you tell me

Your liver is hardened

Fluid builds up in your legs, abdomen and lungs

You bleed into your GI tract

Again and again

Requiring dozens of blood transfusions

Until when?

You prefer to drink than to live, you tell me

Your blood harbors viruses and bacteria

Years of IV drug abuse riddle your veins

My eyes draw lines between the scars on your skin

And spell out your pain

Your body is massively obese

You’ve had just desserts

Your blood is dangerously sweet

The food on the menu is not nourishing

With vibrant foods, we could all be flourishing

Instead we are toxic

Now you’re turning hypoxic

Your own body gets in the way of breathing

Rather than a vehicle, your body is your handicap

Too much mass to move

Stumbling, you tumble into my view

Bullet wounds have torn right through you

Senseless violence, what kind of freedom is this?

We reserve the right to die at the hands of another at any time

I want to take all the suffering I see

Concentrate that energy inside me

And use it to wipe away cigarettes and liquor stores,

Smash opioids off the face of the planet, and while I’m at it

Take my magic wand and with a swish banish sugar from our lips

Eliminate weapons with one wish

I’ll water that seed of hope with the tears of those who know, so it will grow

And we shall be sheltered in our old age by the tree planted in our youth

We’ve suffered enough to learn how to thrive in our world- at least we’ve discovered what not to do.

I have a dream that tobacco, alcohol, illicit drugs, processed foods, and guns will vanish.

I realize that this is unlikely to happen for a while, as there are profits to be made and suffering to be had.

Taking into account the billions of healthcare dollars it costs to deal with lung disease, liver disease, drug addiction, diabetes and gun violence, let alone the immeasurable cost of lost lives and poor health, how can we afford to carry on the way we have been?

If a substance is harmful, let it vanish.

Why hold on to that which is no longer serving us?

We can do anything with our infinite human potential.

We alone can change our lives and leave the world better than we found it.

Let’s do what we can before we vanish

Do something today

There is no guide book

Vote with your dollars, your actions, your thoughts

Breathing in gratitude, I thank you

Practicing Presence

I have good reason
To feel over-worked and under-paid
Burnt out, with a need to get laid
But good loving is hard to come by

I also have many reasons
To feel hopeful, joyful, grateful
Even satisfied

I’m not gonna lie
I’ve got a flame of desire between my thighs
That you light up with your eyes

Every time I see you, I re-realize
That life is only right here, right now
All we ever have is the present
For the divine gift of your presence, I thank you

Who could ever win the tug-of-war
Between past regrets and future worries?

It is hard to shake off the trauma that clings to me
I try to slip under it, but trauma’s tentacles are tenacious and latch onto me
But I know a secret trick
Without my ego, trauma has nothing to latch onto
I have acquired immunity
I shrink my ego enough to escape trauma’s grasp, float downstream and buoyantly resurface, safely out of reach

When I return from my latest circumnavigation of space-time
And redirect my awareness back to
where I am in this moment
what is happening in this moment
how I feel in this moment
I feel victorious!

Practicing presence is the only way
To be happy, healthy, and free

I wish such peace to thee

Absinthe and Abstinence

Instead of drinking absinthe

I wish I’d practiced abstinence

Absinthe passed through my lips

You followed suit, more than just the tip

I was butter and you were the knife

Wish I could take back that night

Spread out like jam on toast

On a Manhattan mattress, we did the most

It got so hot, we were the roast

But I was the one who got burned

Absinthe, you brought on sweat, blood and tears

Abstinence, you would have spared me much fear

Absinthe, why’d you help me undress?

Abstinence, you would have prevented stress

Absinthe, you never delivered that green fairy

Abstinence, your fruit is sweeter than the ripest berry

Absinthe, under your tutelage I’ve grown wary

Now I practice abstinence

From every Tom, Dick and Harry

and all the other men who didn’t have my best interest at heart-

You protested loudly when I told you we had to part.

You don’t have to understand

You just have to know that you’re not my man.

Small

You made me feel so small that I didn’t feel like a person at all
You denied my emotions the few times I showed them, brushed them aside
You taught me to ignore my needs and serve yours because my survival depended on it, or at least you terrified me into believing that it did
So I painfully came to know that I was worthless and worth less than every one else on the planet
I came to accept that I existed as a tool to be used by others to try to make them happy
But they were impossibly unhappy
Though I have a lifetime of practice in pleasing others, I always inevitably fail
This was the heavy load I bore
On such a skinny little kid frame
My family ignored me, silenced me
Put me down
Hurt me emotionally and physically
The few times I got attention
It was traumatic, violent, violating
My one wish throughout my childhood was that I could become invisible and fly away
Now I am shaking off the burden of feeling responsible for everyone else
Unlearning the long, hard lesson of suffering
Is the true lesson:
I don’t have to suffer my whole life
I can feel more than only pain and heal beyond my own brain
In sharing, my healing potential becomes limitless
Thank you, dear reader, for you are the key
It turns out that being small is quite a big gift after all

Dance with the Devil

I’ve met the Devil plenty of times
He’s a man with a drink in his hand, asking for mine
He’ll buy me a drink and drop a few dimes
But in the end, he’s just another waste of my time

I’ve seen the Devil at close range
I feel his eyes on me; he looks at me strange
When I hesitate to perform his every wish
(Whether or not I know what his wish is)

At first I make him happier than he’s ever felt before
Until I leave his heart panting on the floor
I survive with him til I remember how much I’d thrive without him

Like anesthesia, my amnesia wears off eventually

And when it does it’s like I wake up in the middle of surgery

Open heart in a bloody mess, I struggle to pick myself up and get dressed

Headed for the horizon, under duress, yet determined and strong, I sing my single song

Until I meet my sacred Devil again

And he gives me another chance to burn, another opportunity to learn

How many times must I learn how to get out of a toxic relationship?

Please, let this be the last time

The key lies in prevention, so I laid down a one simple rule:

Never be alone with a man behind closed doors, especially when alcohol is involved

The Devil likes to dance naked with me
His dick points at me like a compass needle
And I’m due-North, though I’d like to head South
His dick feels like a poison mushroom in my mouth
I want to spit it out, and shout:

Devil be gone- we’ve been dancing too long!
My feet hurt and they’re caked with dirt
Haven’t we made each other suffer enough?
Surely, your attachment to me feels rough
When I rip myself away

I’ve ripped myself away from the Devil
Plenty and plenty of times
I hope that I can quit him for life
You are my witness by reading this rhyme