The Impossible Trials of Living

Of all the missing colors,
Washed away by sleepless nights,
I missed the blue sky most of all.

The morning birds,
They could hear me shuffling,
Behind the tin foil window shades.

My skeletal hands,
Moving in the half light,
They shook as I talked inside my head.

A few small bills and chewed up bags,
Beside an empty pack,
Were laid upon the table.

In this falling stillness,
I would often hear my mother's voice,
"Jason?"

As if she was searching,
In the dark,
Through rooms of strangers.

She was losing me,
I was losing me,
To an impossible disease.

The fantasy of death,
It always followed,
As my high began to fade.

The violence of addiction,
No moral code can bend,
Taking what it wants from many.

But in my last minutes on earth,
Just before giving up,
There came an inner silence.

My cheek upon the cold pine floor,
Struggling for breath,
I closed my eyes as if to vanish.

Somehow I am still here,
Begging for another day,
In the mystery of what remains.

I found there were many,
Survivors of that desperate prayer,
Watching for the drifters.

Threadbare,
Hand over hand,
They pulled me into the fold.

Together,
We give and take,
In turns like friends do.

Holding each other up,
Past midnight in the coffee shops,
Because some nights we just can't be alone.

Many years have passed,
Still sober,
I am grateful.

My daughter now fifteen,
Knows only the stories,
Of the dying boy I used to be.

And I don't miss the sky anymore,
Because I am not afraid,
Living day to day this beautiful life beneath the sun.

Finally Standing

Unto the silence of man,
Born mad from hunger:
The upside of nothing,
Wherein all dreams can die.

So fast humiliation comes,
With have-not shoes upon your feet:
When poverty is on your face,
Glass ceilings teach us to hate ourselves.

But I have gleaned from faith,
A power thought lost:
Some deeper strength to fight again,
And use what lessons my tangled past has taught me.

In life there is no salvation,
Only what acceptance brings:
For all that people wish would be,
Miracles never seem to last.

Many pray because they're told,
A God will come to take them home:
And all their days,
They slip away like rain upon the glass.

The real magic simply hides,
Within increments of living:
Like the music of a first embrace,
That sends us dancing home to a private tune.

If only we could look again,
To find the simple truth:
We are all together here and now,
Searching not for God but each other.