April 25

FEEDING THE MONSTER

Who will feed the monster once they’ve made her?  Her hunger burns in her like a beacon.  Should I let her starve?  Should I put her on rations of old crusts and tepid water?  Rebuke her as if she were her own idea?  Possibly bind her hands and cover her eyes?  Stand her in line with the good girls and fit her in?  Turn her visage from her desire and tell her to forget?  Hold her hand and tell her that’s enough?  When I stand in the face of her yawning hunger, what do I say? 

“It’s for your own good.”

Well, that’s what ‘They’ said, too.

Round the corners and square your shoulders.

*

Blinded

Alcoholism hits me like a kind of blindness.

I stagger through the living room

cursing anyone who changes familiar placement

or published timetables.

Like every aspect of this disease

shocked sightlessness is mine to deal with.

I must pick up the white cane,

procure the Seeing Eye pup,

learn to read clustered Braille.

When my vision clears

in these well worked spaces I am relieved

but I must accept that when I walk into a new room

more often then not I will be blind again

and must pick up my walking stick once more.