I'm originally from Canada - so I'm afraid to say it's a global epidemic...
-----Original Message-----
From: Jennifer Compton [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 02 November 2006 10:54
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Long snap: Drinking
i do like that poem - it is a very austraian poem
i hope yoiu are not going to tell me you live in another country which also
has that problem
----Original Message Follows----
From: Heather Taylor <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
poetics <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Long snap: Drinking
Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2006 10:38:42 -0000
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.
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