The Enormity

The AA central office
Calls me now and then
When someone calls them
Who lives in my neighbourhood
And they want help
With their drinking
With their lives
With their families
With their jobs
With their friends
With everything
Crashing down of them

And you're supposed to take
Another sober alcoholic with you
When you respond to these
Twelve step calls
Carrying the message
Of Alcoholics Anonymous
To those who are still suffering
Under the lash
Of John Barleycorn
But I don't anymore
I just go it alone
It's too much work
To coordinate
And sometimes I'm embarrassed
With what other sober alcoholics
Say

Anyway
I go it alone
Talking to them on the phone
And offering to meet them
To take them to a meeting
To bring them the Big Book
Of Alcoholics Anonymous
Of which I always keep
An extra copy
For when
AA central office calls

And as I'm sitting there
In some coffee shop
With a shell shocked sot
Shaky, sweaty, bloated
But gaunt
I say that, yes
It doesn't seem to make any sense
It never did to me
Why or how I could be
Powerless
Over a liquid
A pill
A powder
How something inanimate
Could have me beat
But there I was one day
Sitting in your seat
Across from another me
Life reduced to rubble
Wishing it would turn to dust
And wishing a wind would come up
And blow it
Blow me
Away
Spread me so widely
That I'd forget
That I'd ever been
And forget what I might ever be
Forget all those nightmares and fantasies
That tortured me

And then when he
Or she
Looked amazed
When they apparently felt
That I understood
When they saw that I carried around their brain
Their thoughts
Their painful hopes
Their itching fears
That they were trying
Unsuccessfully
To choke
And drown
They'd wonder how I stood up
In that storm
And I'd tell them I didn't know
But that I had never found
I needed to know
In fact, I'd needed to let go
Of knowing
Anything
To let go of my thoughts as they came
To open up my body
At the first sign of a feeling
Invading it
Because my body
It seemed
Was too small
For the enormity
Of feelings

But what does that mean?
What do you actually do?
They always eventually ask me
And I answer
As best I can
That I have to admit
Or at least pretend
That there is nothing
I can do
To help myself
Or at least that I'd tried
Everything I could think of
And this is where I ended up
After all of that
After everything

And so, so I
I got out my broom
And went up in my mind
And swept everything out
And then I stood at the door
Of that empty room
To make sure nothing
No thoughts
Snuck back in
And I tried to trust
And I continue to try to trust
That within that empty room
Something that I was never able to divine
Will take root
In my empty mind