Blue light ricochets through water
Coursing like seismic electricity
Invoking cosmic destiny
Molding a conjecture with prophecy
This visceral manifestation of what I feel for you
You are my sponsees
My karmic proteges
Conjuring inner magic
Reverberating like kinetic static
Through these waters of synergy
I believe in our program
This journey of recovery
This journey of spiritual discovery
Fluid rites of passage
Through which we arise from addiction
I believe in each of you
In your power and promise
In your intellect and inspiration
This is manifestation of liberation
A fulcrum of infinite possibility
A sacred artery to divine fire within us
This is a poem about lineage
A meditation on what I have learned
From those who came before me
From my sponsor in particular
From our literature and our process
I want to capture what I learn from each of you
As we practice radical fearless honesty
Amplifying the sinuous power of empathy
Conjuring the alchemy of our respective generations
Synthesizing divergent paths in recovery
You are my dark knight and my gothic angel
Connecting my mind with new culture
With phenomena elusive to my middle-aged spirit
You keep me vigilant and growing
You remind me why this matters
Why each of our lives matters
You remind me of my own wild drug-fueled twenties
Ensuing decades lost in webs of illusion, delusion, and confusion
If only I could have started this process earlier…
Could I have been spared the nearly fatal consequences of addiction?
Could I have caused less harm to those I loved?
Could I have avoided the arrests, the debt, the dereliction?
But I strive to live without regret
For my path led me here
To water churning and tumultuous
Vibrating with the energy of Spring
This water a medium
A conduit between my lived experience
And your pulsating evolving minds
We are three different people
But we share a common predicament
A disease of emotions
Forces with whom we struggle to cope
Of whom is born an insurgent hope
This psychic jungle through which we grope
Gives way to rising mountains of resilience
Tectonic home to glaciers of nourishing potential
Feeding fertile plains of spiritual possibility
Sustained by the prophecy of sacred pulsating water
I pray that it is not pretentious
Or condescending
To call you proteges
You are spirit brothers
Giving back the love you are given
Teaching me as I teach you
Guiding me
Rewiring me
Blessing me with this platonic attraction
Manifesting this process of connection
Growing through the potent power of suggestion
Learning new lessons
And posing new questions
In asking me to sponsor you
You have each breathed new life into my recovery
You have offered a sacred, vulnerable trust
A gift of supernatural portent
Over recent weeks, our community has been in pain
Struggling to recover from the senseless loss of a brother from our tribe
Reminding us that addiction is a ruthless and feral enemy
Rapacious, cunning, insidious, and depraved
But you have been anchors for me
You have helped me through this maelstrom
You have helped me survive and stay clean
You probably do not know how deeply I have felt you through this
I love each of you in ways I never knew possible
Some languages have a multiplicity of words for love
One word for love within the family
Another for romantic love, and another for the purely erotic
In the newrising language we craft
We gestate our own hybrid idioms
We make new meaning of the words we learn through lineage
I love each of you fiercely
With a fire born from within
A crucible of perilous danger and insurgent potential
I write with my left hand by the river
These waters are torrential
They are emotionally viscous and elemental
Tantric mirrors for my love for each of you
Through the pain there is joy
The eternal unfolding of awareness
Prophecy manifest in each of your evolving minds
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
–BYPO PHOENIX c)2023
