Christmas, 1969
“We shall not regret the past or wish to shut the door on it.”
for Helen
The camera’s fire froze us in a flash:
a holiday amber of the happy middle-class.
In one photo Dad, the bitter, maudlin drunk,
Mom, the needy, nervous, crazy-making closet drunk,
big sister’s first hubby, the soon-to-be philandering drunk,
little sister pre-cocaine, me, who swore he’d never be a drunk
and a plump-faced boy in a suit and white socks -
the son of family friends - smile. When I was four
I watched him nursing through a crack in the door
pink and glad. He died in detox.
Last night I met my old friends in a dream;
Johnie Walker, Jack Daniels, John Jameson, and Jim Beam
were all there. They spoke in tongues:
a cursed double mantra in the heart and lungs:
“Never look anyone up, never take snapshots.”
in the dialects of single malt, sour mash and blends.
I’ll have other dreams tonight . Now I have other friends.
Bill, I love the anthropomorphizing of booze into old pals with J names. Very clever, yet touching.
It is sad when people destroy themselves. I loved Jack Daniels and grew to regret it. But it is also just sad to look at those old pictures. All those hopes, all that passion and suffering and ecstasy. All that boredom that assumes things last forever. All those young faces shrunken and shriveled and ready now for annihilation. Sorry to be so melodramatic! Your poem brought out this deep response in me.