More Recovery Poetry AND I Can Finally Say I Am Published!

I am really proud of myself! The Nami Gwinnett newsletter just came out and on page ten were six of my poems! Of course, it would be nice to be paid for my work, but still, any recognition is better than none and knowing that the people I submitted my work to valued it enough to publish them gives me hope that another publisher might too. Three of the poems are ones that I have previously posted here - both of the ones on February 14th and the poem entitled, "Do Not Believe the Lie" on August 28. Here are the other three:

Failure

Failure
Is just a word away.
A refusal
To arise in the morning,
A complacency
When the sun is not shining;

When war storms through my door,
Failure is just the failure
to make another mistake.


(I wanted to picture failure, w/out being depressing. Did it work?!)

The Phoenix

Don't label my life
with a Finally
Don't tell me
that the light is at the
End.

For the light is continuous-
There is no finally.
Life carries on after death-
An eternal renewal.

What Works

The meds do not work.

Because the meds do not listen.
They don’t hold our hand-
They do not care.

The meds do not work
-At least-
not enough!

What does work?
LOVE!
And I can feel it here,
And I can feel it now-
It is enough.

(Click on the image to read the article, "Love as Medicine" by David Simon, a doctor who writes about "listening for the underlying story" behind his patients' pain.)