Clean
It took a parceling out of pills
issued governmentally
just to get you off pills
and stabilized mentally–
just as it took, from your stool and lacquered table,
a cavalry of bouncers
to haul you off–your stable
shot glass towers of half-ouncers
leaning a bit, as the Leaning Tower of Pisa,
refusing to topple, though structurally unsound–
as you leaned into the squad car with a “please,” a
girlish “thank you kindly, sirs,” and found
yourself holed up in a cell for the night. Your cell warden
found you, if not repentant, at least
inclined to chatter; by morning the “lord” in
your “lordy lord” turned mildly reverent. Released
to the gently prodding hands of St. Luke’s
Community Health–the interns’ hands that held you down
through sweat and the shaky-shakes,
a rag to the forehead and straps at the knees, till at last you found
your way, yea verily, into “the golden-rodded vale”
with a stunning volte-face that shocked the nuns,
held out your tongue to the viaticum, who once
held intently the metal lip of your metal vomit pail,
and nightly, took in The Treasured Vulgate
rendered in animé,
a six-part videodisc they screened
down in Recovery B. The weight
of your life got weightier the more
they cleaned you out,
weightier than your
shuffleboard pucks of meat,
but there at St. Luke’s was a system of valves
and seamless counter valves,
round, little blowholes for letting out steam
that gradually brought you round, as gradually round again you came
to visit. We, who’d seen you clean off
a dance floor with your famously lewd
gyrations–and times aplenty who’d
cleaned you off
with a bar rag and spot of seltzer–crude,
corrupt, you came back clean,
if notably less witty,
no more drama from the drama queen,
if less pretty.
–David J. Daniels, from Clean (Four Way Books, 2014)
I come from a long line of alcoholics. My father is an alcoholic who’s started drinking in the morning, according to reports; my grandfather drank a half-pint of cheap corn whiskey in the morning and another fifth in the evening, and died of cirrhosis of the liver about a decade before I was born; my great uncle Tad was an alcoholic who taught my father how to drive when he was 12 or 13 years old because he had so many DUIs, it was safer to pay a fine if my father got caught; a great grandfather went to jail during Prohibition for running a still on a mountainside; another great grandfather hid his whiskey in the smokehouse. Those are the stories my father told me about his family, and yet he still drinks more and more every year, staking his claim on the word alcoholic. Those are the stories I know about my DNA, and yet I still drink. I can dry out for a while, months or years even, and then it takes no time to start drinking all the time if I am not very careful. I haven’t ever been an alcoholic, but I worry each year that my ability to resist what feels like an inevitability fades. And I worry who I’d be if I did nothing at all, never even touched a bottle. Who would I be at a bar? How would I socialize? How would I blow off steam? How could I forget those things I just want to forget? It is terrifying.
So my god, how I understand this poem. Hidden among a lot of really cool repetitions (“pills” in the first stanza, “lord” and “lordy lord” in the third stanza, “shaky-shakes” in the fifth, etc.) and rhymes so good that you don’t notice them (“governmentally” and “mentally,” “bouncers” and “half-ouncers,” “least” and “released,” “Vulgate” and “weight,” “lewd” and “crude,” etc.) is a story of a washing clean. The man who had a “stable / shot glass tower of half-ouncers / leaning a bit, as the Leaning Tower of Pisa” and who did “famously lewd /gyrations” is now clean. And it hasn’t been fun–“The weight / of your life got weightier the more / they cleaned you out,”–and he hasn’t been as fun–“you came back clean, / if notably less witty, / no more drama for the drama queen, / if less pretty.” Which is to say he’s not himself. And I appreciate that this poem, among a sea of poems about the viciousness of HIV and AIDS in the gay community in David J. Daniels’ new collection, Clean, doesn’t make everything all clean in the way we think. The man who drank and popped pills to forget his problems now has to address them. And clean means something different now, and it’s not tidy and it never will be.
-R
