I have my coffee strong because I am not, And I’ve been keeping strange hours and stranger company as a result. See, I been sick for years But I always knew what the cure was Never stopped to take it 'cause the antidote always was Take none with nothing but strength and willpower The only thing I knew about strength, was how strong to pour my drink And that was always too strong See alcoholics lives aren't measured in minutes or days They’re measured in units and regrets and ways they coulda changed but didn’t And I can tell that you we will never change Though it feels like a Herculean effort not to say the destructive same, Truth be told I'm more like Ariadne spinning the web of my story And the strands of my recovery around those I love and others around me And as a poet: I know, I should always pick the option that will be the best story: But I been slurring my narrative to every bartender in this city for the past six years that would listen And some of those that wouldn't. The verdict is in, The script is shit, the acting cliched and the acting is amateur dramatics at best. So perhaps it's time to change my tactics the cold and sober fact is I’m better off without this I no longer wanna rely on poisons to cripple against inevitability Not when all my friends are fighters, Putting on brave faces to put up with me When statistically speaking I'll just let them down I always used to hear: "Soon he'll burn himself out" I don't see this as giving up because that suggests That when drinking I was trying to achieve something And every alcoholic is a failure. Can't meet your gaze these days and though that used to be cos I couldn't see straight, Right now it's cos I'm suffering from a slight crisis of confidence and faith. You wanna hear about my insecurities? Well then if being drunk is the lock Then being sober is the fucking key, so here is every raw and ruined inch of me: I am so damn sick of forgetting names of people I've loved and fucked I'm so damn tired of being so damn tired, I no longer wanna be perpetual motion machine, Drinking in my questions and pissing out my answers. You know when the doctors talk about diseases they always seem to stop at cancer​? Never accepting for a second that addiction is anything other than a fiction But if that’s a fact, right? Then I have been living most of my life as a lie Cos it used to be, when the drink ran out so did I. You had best believe the only shot I'm interested in taking, tonight Is this one last shot I have at trying to lead a somewhat sober life. So, forgive me if I avoid every offer of avoiding my accountability Simply because I cannot be counted on This is my response to my irresponsibility It used to be I the rocks on which I drank my whiskey Were the only geological permanence in my life. How I miss those once rock solid friends, Who can no longer let bygones be bygones I can't explain how the world feels so unsteady sober That it feels like I don't have a leg to stand on. I bet they never tell you about the turbulent tremors in the mind of an addict. Or the way that landslide withdrawal hits you so hard you feel sick. I bet they never tell you about responsibilities as boulders on the shoulders of those who just wish they didn’t have to grown any older. Though these tremors make my fingers look like earthquakes I will raise my seismic hands to the skies and tell you I am done feeling rock bottom. They tell me it'll just take twelve steps But it’s already looking like thousands And though I'm standing on the shoulders of giants as friends I am still looking up at the tops of mountains Now am I ready to use my strength and my Will to start making these mountains look like fucking molehills but they tell me that every journey begins with just a single step so let me take my first one here, real quick My name is Sam, and I’m an alcoholic

My sense of self is compromised in the absence of you doors pretend to be walls when the private jokes this hinged on rust shut, I collapse in a way that reminds me tomorrow still rhymes with us I’ll pick up the remnants we left of one another. Try to build bridges for better days, Tear myself asunder in search of closure and only find fragments of open. Am I really that good at being alone or just used to it? children of the lost years, made it up as we went along learning new language, to talk about how we never talk anymore. I don’t want you to think I talk in order to control the narrative instead consider this an open door dialogue, I’m sorry its just I haven't seen you in so long that in the safety of my head I’m counting all the days you haven't aged. suffer a severe case of remembering. Recall learning myself through the lens of you I can’t escape yesterday’s impatient perspective. I’m less scared of the jury of our crows feet, than the unkindness of ravens undoing our memories that there's no clemency for the sentence of never other than the present The conspiracy theory of a friendship, the threat of understanding, precious emergency Your silouhette prominent as a shadow in the X rays of my formative years. You know the burden of escape best. I would like to thank you for showing me there’s more, thank you for showing me that fulfillment has a learning curve. Thank you for remembering when all of us were fields in the depths of my fallow years Thank you for stopping me from feeling like someone who had never been found I have survivor’s guilt, that I was the only one who got out of this with the memory of us intact because I don’t know how to acknowledge the omission of you I’ve spent the last three years forgetting the ten years I spent forgetting breaking promises made to a me that doesnt exist This year I am thinking about forgiving myself In lieu of response I’ll await rescue in exile accept that absolved of and omitted from are quite different

What if you and the saviour of mankind mutually agree you should see other people you want different things and eking this out further is just a clever way of denying that neither of you are fit for purpose, and what if you’re both right? What if you agree to give up on god, quit god? Cold turkey and absence god?God of one remove and its not you it’s me God. But then he appears on the first day you do? A bottle full of hymns and a crazy idea that sounds like he stole it verbatim from a heist movie that you're pretty sure he put on that time where he came over for Netflix and chill and there was no chill and promises he can do better. What if you sleep with God cradled in your chest one last time because intimacy is the only time you ever felt holy then in the morning you tell him you won't let him use you this way again? That cleanliness must be as far away from Godliness as can be What happens if mere moments after saying it a prayer inducing tragedy comes along and he leaves and you find yourself? What if your friends are churches? What if that is the last you see of him What if years later after awkward moments avoiding miracles opposite you, pretending you didnt see them because you had elsewhere to be, sedentary texts, heart reacts to big life moments and birthday phone calls two days after the fact, his holy brother calls you and says “I know you used to be close” and “I'm sorry it took me so long to tell you but God passed away in their sleep on Tuesday morning and the funeral is next week. They would have wanted you to be there so be there.” What if the numbness is more surprising than the grief What if you arrive at God's funeral forget the words to the eulogy and instead stare at space and think of nothing you can do other than note that you expected this place of worship to be more full. That you heard everyone would be there and That there are spaces between the few mourners on the pews, that the only recognisable objects are single pairs of footprints and parted seas to the exit. It can be lonely to even be in the presence in this defined a lack of mourning. How even the angels have ceased their singing and are just humming and pretending to know the words, What do you do if, whilst sitting thinking, your cup filled with sea water because you don't drink no more a prophet approaches from the revelling protest of fresh atheists, floating amicably having altogether decided they will now deny gravity, and says "here he wanted you to have this" and hands you a throne, a bloodline, three verdigrised coins, a crown, a lamb, a sceptre or whatever symbol you think is the best metaphor for power, before disappearing back into the cowering pack of mourners leaving you with your hollow thoughts? Will you really pretend to grieve when you know that absence is no different from presence when there's never any answer? When your name is the only God you ever need? Now that you are free of that overbearing influence what is the first miracle you perform?

Your mother is a postal worker, she only writes in ceramic. Swirls her hand widdershins, your address, public in tasseography, the last dregs of the last words to you that she promised she never said. Your brother is an overdraft, your brother is a final reminder, your brother; the institution, your brother; addressee gone away, return to sender. He does not live here anymore, the constant traveller; nothing but postcard reminders of his existence and the honey sticky and blue tac bleached residue on walls where he tried to store his memories Your father is forgotten like so many others, your father’s name is mispronounced and you’re thankful for small sympathies. He only existed as an abstract, his noun a concept that must be and so shaped itself in language and was left in words not said You have so many names for yourself you covet them Mr Never-Learned-How-To-Say-No, Mr Perpetually-in-Probation, ,Mr Can’t-Keep-a-Job-Down-Like-It’s-Poison, Mr Can’t-Hold-Down-A-Relationship-Like-It’s-Choking-Him, stubbing out always his final cigarette from the pack that he was always quitting in ashtrays fashioned from last nights promises You call yourself something that needed an escape plan something last minute to run from, but you never thought about the “to” of running the destination less important than the leaving. You breathe harder than most with your hurricane chest made of nothing but exit, you leave behind empty spaces that look like allergens, you are so scared of heights, but can’t think of anything other than flying away, away, away, Seek some far flung forgotten corner of your get out clause. You get to the airport you know they will ask if you have packed the bags below your eyes yourself and I know you do not have time to unpack all of that in public. You put your everything up for show and tell them you are not a threat to anyone but yourself, find they will not let you board if you don’t know where you are headed. They tell you “away from here” is not the answer they need You cast around for your passport response and find there is no amnesty for loss, find there is no embassy to protect those who declare themselves a no nation state. Your family hanging over your head like a no fly zone some mismanaged “wish you still here” that you can’t rid yourself of. You try and use your history as a currency but they won’t accept your exchange Your story has no value here. So you return to what passes for home, the same journey every night, you return to find all your unanswered questions waiting in porcelain on the doormat, with this correspondence writ sour in citrus on the cage walls of your ribs and you think to yourself: What a beautiful word “boundaries” is.