jim leftwich, poem

they butterflies in my

opinion pinyon rack
and old pinyon world
view declining is an
orchid protist endang
scales endangering
glow oatmeal in time

jim leftwich, 6 poems

removed for cultivate are

their / they environment unique
for several / the worlds it
eats are from began



continues to public an
aura / created a coastal
ancient / has bent less
with fjord / closer to
aligned through mutter



this year we noun
programr dystou
Fred Periscope
the DIY fire slurp
have been to sea
on a log where the
first fish dare to loaf



to debunk risk sack per
diem experiment a
word a worm at least a
field where you cave
your onions peering
into the historically
innovative



creation and observable creatine
judgements budge fascicle over
the role of the growl in red
seemed critics precipitate as a
starfish with less
tooth buttons from the thumb



bushel who when exactly
volatile craves the taste
in which national pajamas
are enpoached by a
heat lavender zoo
microceilings we hat to
the nominal mall of green

all art is polysemic 08.17.2021

 

jim leftwich, 13 poems

we are, if anything, in architecture

to these changes / annual parrots
sharing an egg or two / steadily
wanting to create what is produced
waiting to curate what is reduced
panting to collate what is seduced
ranting to prorate what is deduced
haunting to rotate what is traduced



read our moss reservatior abunda
have the coat for the coast
indoors again crest and
other otter
the destructive nature of paper
structural read none for
shoes flew the broken wrong few
around groutl 14 on nor
perspectives contem cultura
again to provide a persona expe



panop
Big E
has
co-life



proposed by confining
convincing never
mental dimer
as the priv
plad work rele
by the socks of the
experiential
immaterial digita med
works projecft half
of the united umbrella



seas weight nor scissors
reduce / chairs in the
cafeteria / abacus,
but not for you



bitten who said there will be
no revolving meat / expect
thousands more, felt / over
the sea and across the sand
with mostly myself in mind



today, fillip of fish, the
land-scar aesthetic
/ philosophy is
arbitrary and solitary



in an instant leveraged
the Weary Continent
or feathers, relatively
secret materials / pour
& similar, aha & unless



what house what 8-foot
what Historian of Was
what the line and what
the wind 70 years less
comfortably undecided



to imagine
has quite another
porous



never seen
including an even
narrator



another weel wildfires inflect
from 9-Wild Covid Smoke
that crosses the loss and
is more cornered than
before the burn scar floods



physic centaur papers and
furnace tornado / if the
crushed awareness / for
vocal obtuse about the
bottleneck seen / spleen
among ants, as original as
they are crooked

Jim Leftwich, Blackout Drinking and The Suicide Notes

Blackout Drinking and The Suicide Notes

Alcohol is a dangerous drug. As far as my personal experience is concerned, it is the most dangerous drug I have ever encountered.

I started drinking on the job almost as soon as I started working. I was arrested for Driving Under the Influence 3 times in a period of 10 years. I lost count of how many times, almost all of them in the early-to mid-80s, a couple in the late 70s, that I was picked up and held overnight for being drunk in public. Maybe a dozen times, I'm not sure.

I remember my first cross country trip, taken in the spring of 1978 with some high school friends. I remember driving a hundred miles an hour through the New Mexico desert, very drunk. When we stopped for gas, I got out and fell onto the parking lot. There was a photograph of me from that trip, sitting in the backseat of the car, wearing a straw hat, with a bottle of whiskey in each hand, yelling at the camera.

About 10 years ago I started working on a Selected Early Poems, a compilation of works written between 1972 and 1991. The working title was Blackout Drinking and The Suicide Notes. I threw away all of my paper copies of the poems a couple of years ago. Last week I deleted the pdf of the abandoned work-in-progress.

I drank excessively for 20 years, 1971 to 1991. During the last 9 of those years, I consulted with numerous counselors in a variety of settings. All of them were AA/12-step based, and none of them worked for me. Finally, in the fall of 1991, a counselor told me about the cognitive model of addiction. It worked. I had to put a lot of work into it, but it worked.

I stayed away from alcohol for 7 years. Then, at the perfect midlife age of 42, in 1998, I decided I wanted to drink some more. And I did. Every day for almost exactly 2 years. When I decided I had had enough, I quit. No counselors, no days and weeks and months and years of struggling and miserably failing, I just decided to quit, and did so. The cognitive model of addiction worked for me, once I knew how to use it.

I have been alcohol-free for 21 consecutive years, and for 28 of the last 30 years. It might seem like I would be over and done with all of that by now. It should feel like a significant achievement, and most of the time it does, but every now and then something happens to remind me of my drinking days. It doesn't take much. Alcohol is a very dangerous drug. I don't want to ever forget that.

08.16.2021