John Milbury-Steen

Uncle Charlie

My uncle, when my parents needed a sinner
as an example, was always conveniently there
smiling toothlessly. And why? They swore
he could not wait to find an opener
as soon as he got out of the liquor store
and lost his front teeth opening bottles of beer.

And when his shoes were soiling our welcome mat
at 6 PM, my mother couldn’t not
invite him in for dinner, lest that good
for nothing piece of walking human waste,
dead of starving on our stoop, amount
to marring of her soul’s pristine account.

He was a glazier, often glazed, so his
avocation and vocation phased,
a life of glasses tossed and glass replaced.
He worked when sober and, alas, when drunk,
those were the days that he spent shooting out
windows (people say), which helped his business.

Holding his liquor, holding liquids, im-
pounding mighty waters like a dam,
he had a hobby — building aquariums
larger and larger, and the neighbors came
to every filling, betting whether that
frame would hold. The sense of doom was thrilling.

Served, he also served; given to drink,
he also gave; he took and passed the cup.
With summer at its hottest, he had a block
of ice on two saw horses in his shop
he shaved with a special sort of plane to make
snowballs for us kids and the local cop.

And he had made a bar, behind him those
flavorings on a shelf like fifths of booze.
His favorite expression then was Yowzer!
(Yes sir! Great!) agreeing with your pleasure,
whatever color poison you might choose —
vanilla, cherry, grape, whatever it was —

or just erupting Yowzer! when there was no
statement in the air to be agreed to,
as if it were his inner voice that said
something so right that it simply had to
be yowzered gladly with such generous glad
that he attributed that thought to you.

(Let no one read this wrongly and conclude
Good Lord! I am condoning drunkenness,
which kills you in the ward or on the road,
and makes you Rudolph when your nose is red
and even a flying horse to a little child
up in a cloud on your undulating lap.)

When I was four and on my horse, I said,
Yowzer! loud and clear and silence reigned
around the table and my folks were stunned
as carillon joy, unrestrained in their hearts,
sounded the utterance of my first word,
confirming I was well in throat and mind.

I only marvel that I had been so
adamant in Nowzer No so long,
refusing to reply or even say
“cookie” for a cookie. That, I see,
foretold the actual way that I would go —
autodidact in sullen autistry.

Twice now at a formal concert when
I was bored and have smelled whiskey on
someone’s breath, Yowzer has come down
and brought a heady round into my brain
and my so-called niveau mentale has been
abaisse’d to yes not walking a straight line

as in some parody of bread and wine,
some form of inspiration which irks those
that cut the air and people with remarks,
who guard their arks against the bad outgroups,
while my salvation is from drink, not works,
and my prayer beads are loops of strung corks.

Companion Piece

When I wrote “Uncle Charlie” I intended the poem to be a mere character portrait. (As if portraits were easy!) I did not realize that the poem would become not only a manifesto for my work, but also for my life.

My folks, Baptist fundamentalists, certainly did feel morally superior to Charlie, since he drank, and drink was one of their moral hot buttons. I think there is a certain key generation in which the adults must get “saved” in order to acquire enough of a sense of duty to get up when the alarm clock rings and obey a boss. Obeying God is certainly good practice, sociologically speaking, and is one important American way a blue collar generation prepares a white collar for the next. For that older generation, alcohol symbolizes everything slovenly and undisciplined. (A few generations later, the by then professional descendants can start drinking again without danger.)

Alcohol is a strong spirit and Charlie was intoxicated with Yowzerness, the “yea-saying” spirit that wants to accept people and please them. He literally was a glazier, but, figuratively, a glazier fixes windows, that is, repairs our broken view of the world. Charlie knows how to build aquariums, which are frames that effectively contain their inner pressures and yet are transparent and fun to watch. Charlie is the horse that bounces you up and down; also, Pegasus, the Word’s horse: it really was on his lap, within his whiskey breath, that I uttered my first words at the age of four to the relief of my desperately worried parents. In the poem he even gets consecrated into the Church of Charlie, and his whisky becomes Eucharistic. The sacrament figured by his life saved me from a form of mute autism. So the poem describes what kind of church I belong to, Charlie’s intoxicating spirit church, the main requirement of which is to say Yes (Yowzer) continually.

By the way, to abbaise votre niveau mentale means to “lower your mental level” from a conscious and controlled mode to a less conscious and more open one.