Sometimes We All Get So Fearful

I’ve said I don’t go to AA meetings, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a group. I do have a group, in fact; there are five of us. Each of us is attempting to work a program that lets us live in the same world as booze.

I’m the longest sober, with a bit more than four years. There’s a guy who will be at four years on January 2nd, another guy is at 14 months; one guy fell off recently But is still working it and hoping, and another guy decided that three years was enough for him and is trying his hand at the Mich Ultra route, which is not impossible.

We have never had a meeting, and one of the guys doesn’t know two of the others, but we are a group nonetheless.

This is for those guys, each of them individually and as a whole as well.

• These verses are being considered for a potential Split Nixon CD.

 

Sometimes We All Get So Fearful

 

Sometimes we all get so fearful

sometimes we each have the need

sometimes the hurdles

seem to reach to the sky

but we can’t get up off our knees

 

sometimes it’s too big to carry

sometimes we shrink with the weight

sometimes we only can tarry

while the world marches on,

never late

 

sometimes I just want to hide,

to ball myself up and just shake

scared to face that cold world outside

just another yesterday waiting

to be lived today

 

sometimes I miss you like mad

sometimes I miss me the same

I want to laugh at the madcaps we were

before all the harm,

the guilt, and the blame

 

But the laughs are no more than thoughts

a foreign language I can’t just now speak

and the memories stay trapped in my mind

unable to offer

this moment release

 

Sometimes I just get so sleepy

sometimes it’s hard to stay up

sometimes I turn the dials so far down

that I can’t even raise and

reach for my cup

 

Sometimes today’s room smells so bad,

certainly worse than yesterday’s did

you’d think I’d want to be rid of it all

but I can’t be until

it’s ready to rid

 

sometimes there’s only a pen

just a pen that can write on a page

sometimes we’re removed from all men

left alone with the fear

and the sage

 

and something makes us want to have hope

reminds us there has to be more

and the pen writes its promise,

with the words so fulfilled,

and we pick up our fear

and sneak a peek through the door