Poetry in recovery challenge Oct 13

Motivation
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Discouragement coils like a serpent in night,

Whispering secrets that chill and bite.

Peaks rise like crowns, valleys fall like graves,

Life drifts on currents that twist and enslave.

To feed the dark voices is to hand them the key,

They murmur of failure, of what cannot be.

They linger in silence, they crawl in my head,

Yet even in shadows, some truths must be said.

The future is hidden, a room with no door,

The mundane persists, the ordinary lore.

But beneath the still surface, the waters run deep,

Carving the contours of what we will keep.

Mountains once feared are now mere dust,

Others have faltered, yet rise from the rust.

Step by step, shadow by shadow, I learn to abide,

The demons may whisper, but I will not hide.

I walk through the black, I confront what is real,

I clutch the small spark that refuses to kneel.

Through terror and turmoil, through hunger and strife,

I carve from the darkness the marrow of life.

The shadows may linger, the night may seem long,

But even in horror, the soul can be strong.

And somewhere, just faint, a lone red bloom,

A dark sunflower rising from shadowed gloom.

Simplyme

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could you put your poetry in one thread together?

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I was just thinking the same thing :slight_smile: @Simplyme1987 you could start ur own poetry thread :slight_smile:

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Im new there how just post on the same post ?is that how that works ?

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How do I do this I’d love that ?

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On the main forum page, click on Create New Topic (like u did to write ur poetry) but instead of creating a new one every time. U can add to the same poetry thread so its all together and in one place :slight_smile:

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you just answer here = post here.
moderators can merge your already existing threads into one. just private message @moderators
you can edit the headline of your own threads by clicking the pencil button.
i recommend the tutorial for using the forum, @discobot

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Hi! To find out what I can do, say @discobot display help.

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The dealers of our addictions wear many masks
Whispers of comfort, fleeting lights in the shadow of hours.
We chase them, hands outstretched, hearts hollow,
Blind to the truth that stands silently behind all masks.
Time is the only dealer.
Patient. Relentless. Impartial.
It waits while we stumble, while we grasp at smoke,bottle,pills,people,work what ever it is for you.
Counting every moment spent in illusion.
Each craving is a bet, each indulgence a coin tossed
Into the unyielding ledger of existence.
Pleasure glitters, but only briefly;
Loss lingers, a shadow stitched into the fabric of life.
Do not be fooled: the masks offer nothing.
They deal only emptiness, only the echo of what you might have held.
Time deals the real stakes your life, your mind, your self.
It is the true measure of wealth, the only reckoning that cannot be cheated.
Every hour surrendered to illusion is a debt you cannot repay.
Every moment wasted is a line etched into the silence,
A footprint of what you have allowed to slip away.
To live is to choose where to place your attention.
To guard your hours is to honor existence itself.
The masks will beckon; the cravings will scream;
But Time watches all, unmoved, unbroken, unyielding.
Choose wisely. Engage with presence.
Let the illusions fall away, one by one,
And see the dealer of all Time reveal
The life you could have claimed, the self you could have cultivated,
The freedom that was always yours if you had dared to see.

Simplyme

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It’s not a prize, this frantic chase.
It’s pathology.
Claws in the dark, teeth on the walls of your skull,
a mind gnawing itself from the inside out.
We scurry, rat-like, biting at the edges of our own sanity,
afraid to stop
because stopping feels like death.
And in some ways, it is.
Alcohol. Meth. The carnival of lost hours.
Each spin of the wheel a calculated lie.
Every “win” a wound.
Every “high” another dissection of the soul.
Addiction is not pleasure
it is ritual.
Self-erasure.
A theology of nothingness.
Clinicians call it compulsion.
Philosophers call it nihilism.
The body calls it survival.
But the truth?
It is worship at an altar of rot,
where the only sacrament is decay.
Hope arrives like a trickster,
a whisper in the psych ward of the mind.
It doesn’t shout.
It stalks.
“Easy does it,” it says
but easy never belonged here.
“One day at a time,” it hisses
but time itself is the knife.
Human values respect, honesty, openness
sound noble, but in practice?
Glass shards,
cutting deeper the tighter you grip them.
We hold them anyway.
Hands bleeding, hearts trembling.
Without them, there is no mirror,
no self to claw back from the abyss.
Prayer rises not to a god,
but to silence,
to the empty ceiling of the mind.
“Hold me,” it begs.
“Teach me how to step away from the rush
without dissolving into nothing.”
And silence answers not with mercy,
but with scars.
With brutal clarity:
we chose this cage, again and again,
until the cage chose us back.
The addict falls,
not because they are weak,
but because the abyss is familiar,
and the brain mistakes familiarity for safety.
Better the pain you know
than the nothing you fear.
Recovery is not salvation.
It is revolt.
Camus’ Sisyphus pushing the boulder again,
not because it leads anywhere,
but because not pushing is collapse.
“One day at a time” is not hope
it is absurdism.
To fight endlessly with no guarantee of victory,
knowing the boulder always rolls back,
but pushing anyway.
The shadow lives here
not under your bed, not across the street,
but within you,
breathing with you,
waiting for the moment you forget
it has your name.
Recovery is not wings, not light.
It is teeth clenched in the dark.
It is discipline in the void.
It is saying:
“Yes, the abyss is beautiful.
Yes, the abyss is mine.
But it will not eat me today.”
This is not triumph.
It is philosophy.
It is survival.
It is choosing to exist
in full knowledge that existence hurts,
and still refusing to hand yourself over to nothingness.
The addict’s greatest freedom
is not ecstasy, not escape.
It is the quiet, trembling decision
to remain.
Claws have retracted.
Teeth still bare.
The abyss stares
and I stand.
Not saved.
Not cured.
But alive.
And for now, that is enough.

Simplyme

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Thank you @erntedank for advising members :blush:

@Simplyme1987 I moved the other two poems here.

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Thank-you guys for all your help

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Thank you @Misokatsu for helping!
@Simplyme1987 Keep the poetry coming :folded_hands::sunflower:

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15

The Creature

In the forest, there was a creature.

I did not give it a name,

But it had a face I knew

Before I knew myself.

Pointless to hide.

Pointless to run.

The fearless teacher life, pain, consequence

Watched me fumble

Through every lesson

I did not ask to learn.

My mindless head, forever jaded,

Knows I live,

Knows I survive,

Knows I have danced with this creature

Since before I could walk.

Addiction my darkest friend

A creature with claws that scratch at my ribs,

Eyes that promise warmth

And deliver hunger.

It whispers: come, come,

And I do.

Again.

And again.

I sought refuge.

And sometimes, I found it.

But sometimes,

I only found the creature

Waiting in the shadows,

In the silence that smelled of surrender.

My heart less mine,

More like stones

Skipping on a river

That cannot carry them.

I walk with the creature.

I speak with it.

I eat with it.

It knows my fears,

My weaknesses,

The corners of my soul

I never showed to anyone.

Fear of happiness,

Fear of losing it,

Fear of being free

All shackled to this creature.

Love proves stronger than time,

Yet even love bends

Around the pull of shadows,

Around the bottle, the pill, the ritual

That repeats

Because the forest taught me how to obey

Before it taught me how to live.

When I sort back through my life,

I ask:

Was it me?

Or just the echoes of hands I never held,

Voices I never could quiet?

Mice or men?

Child or shadow?

The forest breathes,

And the creature breathes with it.

I follow its footsteps

Even when I know the path

Leads nowhere but the same darkened river.

I call to my darkest friend,

And it answers

Not with words,

But with the taste of ashes,

The weight of centuries of struggle,

The pull of what cannot be undone.

I fall.

Or rise.

Or disappear into the roots of the forest

That have always known me,

That have always belonged to the creature.

The forest folds in on itself.

Paths twist like veins.

Branches reach like fingers

That remember every sin I ever committed,

Every secret I whispered to the dark.

The creature multiplies

A thousand faces in the shadows,

Each one a reflection,

Each one a warning,

Each one a ghost of what I might become.

I step forward.

Or backward.

Time bends,

And I stumble over moments

I thought I had forgotten.

The ground hums beneath me,

Alive with murmurs of the past

Footsteps that were never mine,

Laughter that cracked the night,

Tears that burned through soil and stone.

I touch a tree,

And it whispers my name.

I shout,

And the echo screams back

With my own voice twisted, unfamiliar,

A stranger I have always been.

The creature circles me,

Flickering like candlelight in a storm.

It is knife, mirror, shadow,

It is the friend I fear,

The love I never let flourish,

The betrayal I carry in every bone.

I fall into a river of memories

The water tastes like iron and smoke.

Faces dissolve in its current.

Voices merge with the wind.

Time is a broken clock

Spinning backward, forward, sideways.

I call to my darkest friend,

And the forest answers.

The leaves shiver.

The roots pull.

The stars drip like wax from a candle I cannot reach.

I walk, I run, I stumble, I rise.

The forest is infinite,

And so am I.

I am the echo and the scream,

The hunter and the hunted,

The shadow and the light

That pierces it.

Love, fear, loss, pain, addiction

They swirl together

In a storm I cannot escape.

I feel them, I wear them,

I dance with them

On the edge of reason.

I am mice and men,

Ghosts and echoes,

Dreams that bleed into other dreams.

I am the lesson the fearless teacher could not teach,

The creature the forest could not hide,

The soul that cannot rest

Because it remembers

All that is lost

And all that is yet to come.

I raise my voice,

And it becomes a river, a fire, a wind

That shakes the trees,

That shakes the stars,

That shakes the bones of the world itself.

I speak,

And the forest answers:

Not with words,

But with recognition.

Not with light,

But with understanding.

Not with comfort,

But with truth.

The creature kneels.

Or do I?

The line dissolves.

The shadows dissolve.

The trees dissolve.

And I realize:

The forest, the creature, the teacher, the pupil,

The echoes, the memories, the fears, the love, the addiction

They were all me.

I am infinite.

I am alone.

I am everything.

I am nothing.

And in the space between,

I find home

Simplyme

Please let me know if that better ?

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Compulsion disorder

They call us junkie.They call us alcoholic.They call us porn addict, gambler, thief, liar.They call us workaholic, rage-aholic, shopaholic.They call us thrill-seeker, self-harmer, glutton, martyr, body jumper.Each name a chain. Each name a cage. Each name a way of saying: You are not human, you are your hunger.

But the truth is simpler, and far more terrifying: these are not separate conditions, but reflections of the same abyss. They are costumes stitched over a single wound. Whether we drink it, snort it, swallow it, buy it, chase it, or burn ourselves in it the pattern remains. Compulsion. The ritual of pain.

The labels keep us divided, pretending that our prisons are different. They let the world point its finger at the junkie and say, “That is not me.” At the porn addict and say, “That is filth.” At the workaholic and say, “At least he is productive.” But underneath, all these faces belong to one archetype: the soul fleeing itself, the human being who would rather bleed than sit in silence.

Every addict label is only a mirror with a different crack. The gambler rolls his dice, the drunk raises his glass, the adulterer slips into shadows, the compulsive checks the lock again and again. All are bowing before the same altar the god of repetition, the god of escape, the god of nothingness.

And so I say: let them name me, let them carve their words into my skin. Junkie. Alcoholic. Porn addict. Body jumper. Whatever they choose. Their names do not change the truth.

For I would rather be nameless and lonely in recovery than to live comfortably among their poisons, wearing the crown of a label as if it were my identity.

Better to be a soul stripped bare than to be a title for ruin.

Simplyme

So next time you’re sitting lonely in recovery, wanting to relapse, just remember, it’s even lonelier in your addiction… For loneliness, in recovery. Is your soul finding your body again? Make friends with that. It will be the best adventure you ever have. Even if it is lonley

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You’re a really talented poet, @Simplyme1987! Great stuff! Thanks for joining!

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Help when you can

Service is in my hands,Roots me deep where shadows stand.Fear once circled, a beast in the night,Peace now comes, a gentle light.I breathe the present, whole, alive,Old ghosts fade, new strength arrives.Through poetry, I share my soul,Through service, I help others whole.Sit in the forest, watch and see,Lessons of life in each tree.Animals move with patience and grace,Flowers bloom, each in their place.All assist, nothing stands alone,Forgiveness and care in seeds sown.Conflict resolves in silent ways,Wisdom flows through nights and days.I carry lanterns for wandering hearts,Guiding them where the shadow departs.To give all to the moment is freedom’s song,A rhythm of courage, enduring and strong.So I pray keep me willing, keep me true,Generous in all I think and do.A servant of now, a poet near shade,Bearing the flame that darkness obeyed.

Simplyme

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It startles me, it cuts so deep,
When grudges wake from ancient sleep.
A ghost I thought had lost its flame,
Returns to whisper back my shame.
I wonder then, “Did I let go,
Or bury hurt too far below?”
But chasing questions wastes my breath,
And drags me toward a living death.
The truth is simple, always near:
Resentments rise, but need not steer.
They’re not a measure of my past,
They’re just reminders pain won’t last.
Each time they surface, raw, brand-new,
I’m offered strength to walk them through.
To meet them calmly, soft, aware,
And treat myself with patient care.
Why flog myself for what I’ve done,
When every day I face the sun?
The “me” who struggled years ago,
Could only work with what they’d know.
So let me meet this present test,
With open hands and gentle rest.
For beating down the self in shame,
Just feeds resentment’s fiery flame.
Instead I’ll breathe, release, and see,
That pain can come, but won’t own me.
Though old wounds stir, I need not fall,
They have no power, after all.
Resentments circle, sharp and sly,
But I no longer fear their lie.
For though they come, they cannot stay
I choose a kinder, lighter way.
So when the past knocks at my door,
I’ll meet it gently, fear no more.
The scars remind, the lessons stay,
But love will guide my steps today

Simplyme

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The Underappreciated Gem

She is the underappreciated gem,
a beauty swallowed by fog,
left shimmering in silence
while the world sharpens its cruelty against her skin.
The hollow alleys whisper her name,
endless corridors of stone and shadow
where faceless wanderers drift,
their painted grins borrowed from a circus
that feeds on sorrow.
She walks there, unseen
her light wrapped in mourning cloth,
her heart burning in secret defiance.
Solitude claims her as disciple,
abandonment its altar,
yet still she shines
a jewel no cruelty can grind into dust.
In this dark world, brilliance hides in silence.
Gems slip through careless hands,
falling into cracks where blind eyes never linger.
They vanish not for lack of worth,
but because the gaze that should have held them
turned away.
So they rest in hollows,
forgotten relics buried in cathedrals of shadow.
Their light does not die;
it softens
a secret flame beneath the weight of night.
Neglect leaves its ache:
to be unseen is a wound of the spirit,
a silence heavier than words.
Yet in this hidden chamber of darkness
alchemy awakens.
The shadows do not consume
they teach.
They whisper
worth is not measured by fleeting eyes,
nor diminished by hands that failed to hold.
What is true remains whole,
even unrecognized.
The darkness becomes a monastery,
the gem a monk of light
patient, unmoved, glowing with a resilience
born not of pride,
but surrender.
Here is the lesson:
peace is not in being grasped,
but in being.
Strength is quiet.
Love is freedom.
And so the unseen gem endures,
a cathedral without walls,
a hymn without sound,
a gentle defiance against the void.
To see it is to be humbled.
To let it be is devotion.
And to recognize the light within,
even when the world does not,
is the beginning of peace.

Simplyme

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22

The Demi Goddess

Am I Demi More
whole, adorned, a name that echoes survival?
Or am I demi-less
a shard of myself, half-empty,
haunting my reflection like a ghost chained to glass?
We speak of halves as if they matter:
half alive, half remembered, half worthy of love.
But what is half a soul? What is half a wound?
Even a fracture bleeds like a whole.
I walk through corridors of mirrors,
seeing not a face but a reduction
not a woman, but a ruin.
Every reflection asks: are you more, or are you less?
I never know if the whisper is mine
or the shadow that follows.
Because in truth we are always demi:
half alive, half decayed, half craving eternity,
half aching to disappear. I demi-less instead
half among the living, half with the dead.
I kneel before the mirror’s shrine; its silver eyes are strangers.
It chants what I cannot confess: You are more, yet always less.
I pray to absence, pray to night, to shadows in borrowed light.
I beg the void to show the fractured ghost that lives as me.
O half a soul, O broken song, teach me where the lost belong.
Teach me hunger, teach me pain, teach me why the halves remain.
For I am demi never whole, a bleeding script, a shattered role.
My ribs a rosary, bone by bone, counting prayers I chant alone.
Not more, not less the endless breath, half in life and half in death.
I bow to silence, cold and true, and worship the grave that looks like you.

Simplyme