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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “I wrote this in the dark” Down in the Dirt, v207 (5/23)  Order the paperback book: 
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Cake Night
Rod Raglin
In a dank hall, under a punishing light,
cheap cologne mixes with nervous sweat,
stale cigarette smoke, burnt coffee.
I’ve come to celebrate your sobriety,
as if returning to normal is a great achievement,
as if being independent, considerate, law-abiding,
caring, employed, reasonably unselfish, flawed but not fatally–
as if being like most people deserves a celebration.
I’m greeted by a newly converted,
eyes of zealot, grin of a true believer.
I want to say ‘thanks, but no thanks.’
I’m not one of you, just one of your victims.
Your ‘cake night’ has drawn a big crowd,
indicative of the number of lives you’ve messed up.
We visitors smile and whisper
like non-Catholics at Mass, unsure of the protocol –
do we kneel, cross ourselves, shit, or go blind?
The chairs are as used as those who sit in them –
uncomfortable, unsteady, unreliable.
I watch the suspicious eyes of impatient newcomers,
arms hugging trembling bodies,
seriously wondering what’s better –
another night listening to litanies of self-incrimination
or pissing their pants passed out in the park?
And the old-timers, soothed by the travails of others,
faces filigreed with exploded capillaries
masters of the Big Book, creators of endless clichés
All tips of icebergs, your deadly bulk submerged,
lurking in wait for those who love you, passengers on a Titanic
not of their choosing, adrift on a sea of misery
never knowing when their hulls will be ripped open
and the torrent will overwhelm them,
pulling them down choking into icy blackness,
only to fight back to the surface and amid the debris
watch the life-boat float away, you in the stern,
on your voyage of good intentions.
“My name is ?Alcoholic and I’m a loser.”
The meeting begins.
Your peers applaud your progress, thank you for their sobriety
but we know your sins, have suffered every minute of them –
then, now, and forever,
and though free of you, the scars refuse to heal.
I brace for your ‘fearless moral inventory’,
a detailing of the cancer of chaos and crisis you inflicted,
a metastasizing of abuse,
neglect, humiliation, disappointment, embarrassment –
but am offered only contrite confessions
you’re sober, you’re sorry, you ask for absolution,
you want to make amends.
Do we forgive you? Do we have a choice?
It’s all about you.
Again.
God grant me the serenity....
The meeting ends.
We join hands, rejoice in the fact that ‘just for today’
you’re finally doing what most people have done everyday
all their adult lives,
the get-up-in-the morning, go-to-work grind
you found so hard, so unfair, so uncaring,
because you were too sensitive, your parents were dysfunctional,
your wife didn’t understand you, society was flawed,
as if you alone
were the victim of all this injustice,
as if we all at some time
didn’t want to give up and say
fuck it
become the burden instead of the burdened.
We eat your sickening sweet cake,
sip the acid coffee, listen amazed
at the platitudes you spew,
how you’ve woven these self-evident utterings
into a philosophy of blamelessness.
I’ve accepted the things
I cannot change.
