Thanks for all the comments...I think the "plain" language serves the
subject matter - not all poems have to be flowery or overly metaphored to
get a point across. Sometimes simple is better I think.
I went to school with a guy who once, when we were heading out to the pub,
cracked a beer from under his seat about 30 seconds into driving. He then
regaled us with stories of how the night before he woke up on his couch and
didn't know how he got there. When he went outside, his jeep was parked on
the lawn with the door wide open. Yep. He drove home. That was the last
time I got into his car. Alberta now has zero tolerancy - but how many
actually get caught? Not enough.
The problem with alcohol is that it is legal and those who abuse it don't
think of it as a problem (I mean everyone does it right? What's the
problem?) and in the UK, the culture is heavy into drinking. I had a long
period of not drinking and I used to get a lot of trouble from some of my
friends. It was strange as I never got that at home but as someone in my
mid-twenties, I was under enormous pressure to drink to fit in. I wonder is
this really my issue or is it that other people are uncomfortable when they
can't hide their problems behind someone else...
-----Original Message-----
From: Roger Day [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 02 November 2006 14:38
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Long snap: Drinking
I like this piece, it's plain workaday language is it's strength. The
poem does not romanticise it's subject - Bukowski, for example - and
that's always a plus.
White Lightning really is a foul concoction.
My Father's family had a large religious streak, of a fundamentalist
kind, but that didn't stop them from having a glass of cider on
Sunday. My Mother's family, dirt-poor Welsh miners, had an enormous
capacity for drinking, fighting, arguing and less of the chapel-going.
FWIW, it's my mother who was - is - the more religious and unforgiving
of the two. She drinks occassionally, but always threw a wobbly when I
came home drunk, which I did a lot when I was younger.
I was actually shocked when I went to Scotland a couple of years ago
and *everyone drank buckets before going closing time and hoying into
the Land Rover. It was ironic that my project was linked to an
anti-drugs campaign as it seemed bloody obvious that drink was the
greater problem.
Roger
On 11/2/06, Heather Taylor <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> This is a longer one but I wanted to share, get some feedback, etc. Tried
> to send it last night but it didn't go through...
>
>
> It was absent in my house:
> red wine, white, baileys, whiskey, six packs.
> No one had beer at the end of a hot summer work week
> or snuck something in their coffee mid-afternoon.
>
> My grandpa was a mean drunk way before I met him,
> before he became the man who slipped me
> fivers for candy, played cards late into the night,
> sat me on his lap to show me how the world worked
>
> as he dieted on his new habits of coffee and cigarettes
> and KFC family bucket meals - the ones we expected
> every time he came round to visit, while my mom hovered,
> making peace by fetching and cleaning and keeping quiet.
>
> Before me, my grandpa was best at blame, the strong
> silent type that didn't talk about his army demotion,
> or why my Grandma couldn't speak "Goddamn German
> in front of his Goddamn children," or why he slipped
>
> vodka into his morning coffees and continued slipping
> until the day was done and at least one of his kids
> had a bloody nose and at least one of his kids was in a closet
> or under the bed so he wouldn't find them.
>
> So alcohol didn't exist in our family beyond that shadow
> of a past we're not never ever supposed to talk about.
> Our breed don't talk about things.
> Our breed knows how to keep things quiet.
>
> But still, I was taught what alcoholics looked like:
> red veins mapping their way across noses, the meek man
> shouting and fighting with strangers, the drinking of real
> vanilla essence or lysterine when the shops shut
>
> and you couldn't get a hit. These people were cartoon
> characters in bad America sitcoms, the ones that taught
> you an ABC after school lesson so you didn't fall
> down that path. It was no one I knew.
>
> The retired teacher who buys 2 litres of White Lighting each morning,
> my uncles that finish the 2-6s of JD at every party, funeral and wedding,
> the friend who almost broke my arm over concert tickets -
> They weren't alcoholics. Just another set of normal people.
>
> But when you're lying naked in a bed in a hotel room with strangers,
> and your doctor says you're killing yourself, and your friends
> marvel that you make it through the day after the night before,
> and your best mates are wearing grooves in bar stools - is that enough.
>
> My Grandpa was a mean drunk. He drank to cope.
> My friend to cope, my uncle to cope, me to cope.
> And forget. And forget. And forget. Until we all
> forgot and drank another. A sweet release down the throat.
>
> My Grandpa was a mean drunk. He drank to cope.
> But we don't talk about that anymore.
>
--
http://www.badstep.net/
Suspicion breeds confidence
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