THE
DESIGNATED DRIVER
I'm
drinking in a pathetic way
My
fingers take up the task.
They
drum on the table.
A
friend jokes, "How's the Sarsaparilla?"
Actually,
it's flat cola.
I'm
the designated driver.
My
thirst has been elected.
It
must stay away from quenching
while
my companions
double
down on their happiness
with
every sip of ale.
Tumblers
of the stuff arrive,
froth
enough to give birth
to
Venus on the half-shell.
The
beer glows melted gold.
The
table rocks with filthy jokes.
Only
I know they're not funny.
Jukebox
blares and the singing commences.
Raucous
bellows compete with booming beats.
Harmonics
take a beating.
Melody
tanks.
My
ears are sorry
they
were ever volunteered.
My
buddies flirt. They roar.
They
argue loudly but nothing comes to fisticuffs.
Mostly
they're out of it.
Some
collapsed across the table.
Others
taking S curves to the men's room..
It's
up to me to tell them
what
a good time they're having.
Eventually,
the bar closes
and
my amateur, unpaid taxi
drops
them at their house, one by one.
When
I'm done,
I
really do need a drink.
Out
comes the whiskey bottle.
Click
goes the glass.
I'm
the designated driver
who
drives himself to drink.
LOOKING
IN ON THE AUTHOR
She
wrote ferociously with one hand
while
the other tapped slowly, softly, on the desk.
And
then her pen slowed
as
the tapping sharply increased velocity,
became
almost violent as it thumped
relentlessly
into the wood.
Finally,
she began to write at a moderate pace,
and
tamped the tapping to an equal speed.
Her
creation, her fingertips, in perfect equilibrium,
gave
“Dear John” all of the kiss-off he could handle,
all
of the kiss-off he deserved.
He
was a white American boy
with
one incessant problem.
He
wasn’t a black American boy.
No,
not the poor kid
dodging
bullets on his way home from school
in
some inner-city ghetto.
But
the stylish, dazzling kind
he
heard on the radio,
saw,
now and then, on television,
when
the Southern censors allowed.
He
was troubled by his own skin.
Not
because it paved the way or anything.
But,
when he picked up his guitar,
the
shade of his hands
didn’t
go with the chords he played,
And
when he opened his mouth,
the
tonsils gushed sweet as a soda fountain,
not
rough and lived in.
No
grit in the tongue. No blood in the notes.
Not
even when the tune dropped
from
major into the 7th.
Just
a vapid imitation of a standard blues progression.
He
was a white American boy
obsessed
with what he wasn’t.
He
tried writing songs.
They
came out like the Archies not Muddy Waters.
He
even made some black friends.
They
thought the Blues were a corny as Fat Albert.
They
remained friends however.
And
he became a white American man eventually.
Accepted
what came with it.
Not
privilege exactly.
But
a willingness to leave his guitar
shuttered
in its case for months on end.
When
he did bring it out,
it
reminded him how dumb he must have been
to
want to be some old black bluesman
with
the world on his shoulders
and
the sound to prove it.
Instead,
he picked out some of the latest pop songs.
Sang
along to who he had always been.
John
Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in
That,
Dunes Review, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work
upcoming
in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Thin Air, Dalhousie
Review
and failbetter.