|
Shortchanged |
|
|
|
People are told |
|
all their lives what is good
for them who to vote for |
|
where to go and what to do as
they march |
|
to work and up and down the
streets buying things and yet |
|
Dostoevsky |
|
in 4 great huge novels barely
scratches the surface |
|
of what it is to be a human
being. |
|
People are told what to think |
|
and what it all means and what |
|
to give their lives for by
politicians |
|
and bosses and bureaucrats and
experts and |
|
teachers and traffic signals
and laws |
|
and electric shocks and 30
days in County Jail and armies |
|
that kill millions of people
and yet |
|
Shakespeare |
|
barely shines a few rays of
light |
|
into the mystery of the human
soul. |
|
People use up their lives |
|
thinking they are worth
nothing as they follow other people's directions |
|
while the genius of Tennessee
Williams |
|
in dozens of plays moves our
understanding |
|
of what is really inside us |
|
one fraction of an inch
forward. |
|
|
|
Winning |
|
|
|
No reason |
|
to get up each morning looking
and hoping for love |
|
that you will never find no
reason |
|
to spend your life wrenching
words out of your heart |
|
writing novel after novel
after novel that will never get published, |
|
no reason |
|
to leave your heart wide open
to a child or parent or lover |
|
who will never love you or to |
|
enter that race and run it
over and over when |
|
you will never win or to stare
up at the stars night after night |
|
wondering |
|
why we are here when |
|
you will never get an answer
no reason |
|
to keep trying to say
something in a poem |
|
or painting or song that |
|
can never be said, |
|
except |
|
for that thing inside of us
that must never stop trying. |
|
|
|
Why I Will Never Stop
Writing |
|
|
|
These words I write my poems
with |
|
have picked up the broken
lives of thousands of men |
|
on concrete factory floors |
|
and my own broken life on
those concrete floors |
|
in their hands and lifted them
up to some kind of light |
|
and transformed them. |
|
They have given me |
|
a way to go, |
|
the only |
|
way I could ever have gone and
the only way |
|
I will ever be able to go, the
way |
|
I was born for and had to
bleed and vomit and weep and |
|
moan and go crazy and want to
die for because I didn't |
|
have it, |
|
away |
|
that can never fail me and
that is really worth so much more |
|
than fame or money |
|
or immortality. |
|
|
|
Suicide |
|
|
|
Every time |
|
a homeless man walking a
sidewalk crazy with the pain inside him is passed |
|
by us |
|
driving our good cars with our
good jobs something dies |
|
inside of us every time |
|
we leave a homeless man
crumpled against some wall |
|
on asphalt where he must try
to sleep in the cold and go home |
|
to climb into our warm beds
something dies |
|
inside of us every time |
|
on some street corner because
he has failed to gather enough change |
|
to eat again some man's |
|
head falls as the last drop of
hope drains out of him |
|
at age 40 something dies |
|
inside of us as |
|
all our cold cash in those
bank vaults |
|
thrives. |
|
|
|
Shrunken |
|
|
|
Lives |
|
that were once going to leap
tall buildings |
|
and save the day |
|
and kill all the bad guys
lives |
|
that the universe once
revolved around when they were 6 |
|
now |
|
looking out of windows in
lonely bare apartments |
|
with their 13th beer of the
day in their hands wondering |
|
how they got trapped now |
|
staring out of the high
plastic windows of steel mills |
|
after 20 years under the
brutal eyes of foremen |
|
stunned |
|
as if they can't believe the
only life they will ever live |
|
could have ended up there, |
|
lives |
|
that seem to know nothing
about how any of this has happened |
|
except |
|
that something |
|
has gone terribly wrong. |
|
|
|
Down But Not Out |
|
|
|
Maybe the greatest thing about
our Sunday pickup softball game |
|
was that |
|
no matter how lonely |
|
or poor |
|
or hungover or strung out or |
|
fresh out of a mental hospital |
|
or jail or |
|
hated by our parents or |
|
stuck-on-a-nowhere-job-that-was-breaking-our-spirit-and-mind |
|
any of us were or |
|
no matter how ugly and small
and cockroach-infested of an |
|
apartment |
|
we lived in or |
|
how many times we may have
tried to kill ourselves, |
|
any one of us might still |
|
step up to the plate |
|
and hit a home run. |
|
Anyone |
|
who can hit a home run |
|
still has a chance |
|
to turn their life around. |
|
|
|
Mysteries |
|
|
|
Bikers |
|
with soft spots in their
hearts |
|
who would give the shirts off
their backs to helpless bums and respectable |
|
computer geniuses in big
houses with 3 cars who |
|
could walk by a man starving
to death in an alley and feel |
|
nothing and fragile |
|
little ladies who have broken
the spirits of their sons |
|
for life and |
|
a man who has never hurt
anyone in his life |
|
suddenly murdering 8
co-workers with a gun and |
|
politicians in immaculate
suits murdering thousands |
|
and thousands with waves of
their pens and |
|
a murderous gang member |
|
become a poet |
|
or painter and machinists |
|
who have always acted like
they would step all over |
|
anything throwing bread crumbs |
|
to birds so they can take them
to their chicks |
|
born up on machine shop
roofbeams people |
|
are never as simple as you
think |
|
they are. |
|
|
|
Broken |
|
|
|
Laid off, |
|
in a little trailer by a guard
gate the machinists |
|
are stripped |
|
of tools out of their
toolboxes |
|
and photo i.d. badges |
|
and company shirts, |
|
stripped |
|
of incomes, |
|
stripped |
|
of usefulness at 45 or 51 or
55 |
|
stripped |
|
and sent out the gate like
little boys, |
|
little boys |
|
with families |
|
and mortgages |
|
and lifetimes of pride |
|
on the line |
|
who must now beg |
|
other companies for the right |
|
to be adults. |
|
|
|
Dealing With It |
|
|
|
Put them away behind a wall
put away |
|
the people down on their luck
the man |
|
who begins tearing himself
apart whenever he cannot get a drink the man |
|
who murdered someone in a rage
11 years ago the men |
|
in those alleys and out on
those street corners the man |
|
from out of state who cannot
find a job the woman |
|
whose husband beat and robbed
her for 8 years |
|
and then disappeared the
teenagers |
|
who have not found a reason
for anything |
|
but rage and violence the man |
|
who took too much add and
can't stop talking about God the woman |
|
who lifts her dress over her
head at intersection |
|
crosswalks the man |
|
who is willing to destroy his
life for a 15-minute crack high the man |
|
on the bicycle with no teeth
who could have been a math genius the man |
|
who steals what he thinks
should have been his |
|
to begin with put it away
everything |
|
in ourselves that we do not
want to have to look at put them |
|
away behind the wall |
|
of a prison and pretend |
|
that God cannot see them. |
|
|
|
$350 A
MONTH |
|
|
|
Rooms |
|
that hold us with nowhere to
go rooms |
|
with windows that look out on
a city full of a million people |
|
we don't know rooms |
|
with beds that beckon us to
die on them |
|
as we sit drinking |
|
before TVS and driving |
|
five days a week to jobs at
factories |
|
that are not ours in lives |
|
that are not ours rooms with
walls |
|
that are blank because we have
nothing inside us to put on |
|
them rooms |
|
that close in on us |
|
with low wages |
|
and wasted years |
|
and dead dreams rooms |
|
that kill us |
|
and then are rented |
|
to someone else. |
|
|
|
UNSIGHTLY |
|
|
|
Shop floors |
|
black with machine grease and
pitted with potholes making forklifts |
|
rock as they roll over them
shop floors |
|
with trails ground into them
by the heels of machinists |
|
operating the same machine for
20 years shop floors |
|
making the toe |
|
and knee and leg and hip bones |
|
of workers ache with years and
years on their concrete hardness shop |
|
floors soaked with the blood
of severed fingers and hands shop floors |
|
where men have grown old |
|
giving their best to make
parts so buses |
|
or wheelchairs could roll or
planes fly or jackhammers pound shop |
|
floors |
|
spat on and kicked and smashed
with dropped loads |
|
and gouged with crowbars and
covered with metal chips and stained |
|
with rust and oil shop floors |
|
never shown in a company
catalogue or photo shop floors |
|
where we spend our lives. |
|
|
|
OUR
BROTHERS |
|
|
|
They had mothers like ours, |
|
fathers |
|
and dreams of being heros and
saving the day and playing in the |
|
major league and they |
|
have shaved in mirrors and
known the beauty of roses |
|
and cried at funerals and |
|
lifted the beating hearts of
children whose lives depended on them |
|
to their breasts and stood |
|
up to fights and half-ton
factory parts at the end of 10-ton crane |
|
chains swinging at their heads
they |
|
have cherished the warmth of a
woman who loved them against their |
|
backs |
|
through long nights of fear
and |
|
they have felt something like
God dwell in their hearts |
|
and tell them that they were
loved, |
|
so why |
|
must they sit in tiny rooms
downtown holding last paychecks |
|
looking out at the hard hard
asphalt of alleys |
|
they will soon live in? |
|
|
|
ENTERPRISE |
|
|
|
The foreman's eyes letting a
machinist know |
|
that he will fire him whenever
he feels like it all the workers |
|
on the streets who cannot find
work all |
|
the cops ready to take them to
County Jail all the machinists |
|
racing to turn machine handles
to turn out parts |
|
faster then each other so they
won't end up |
|
out on the street all |
|
the nightmares |
|
and fear that never lets a man
rest |
|
or feel easy all |
|
the stories of crazy bosses
ruining lives all |
|
the heart attacks |
|
and fights |
|
and murders and suicides |
|
on machine shop floors all the
lifeblood |
|
making the engine that builds
our world |
|
race. |
|
|
|
PEARLS |
|
|
|
An old bent nickel with its
edges curled up from being |
|
smashed in the center so hard
so many times the brimming-with-tears eyes |
|
of a woman |
|
staring out of a face so slack
and dead |
|
from having every dream in her
heart beaten out of her |
|
again and again the old wood
sides of abandoned houses on the beach |
|
weathered until only a few
strips' of peeling paint |
|
remain on them the deeply
lined faces of old black |
|
workers dragging themselves
through another 8 hours |
|
as their bodies scream with
decades of pounding and shoving and stacking metal parts |
|
and drinking and knowing there
is no way out for them. |
|
|
|
Maybe it's |
|
because life has cut so deeply
into them that these things |
|
are so beautiful. |
|
|
|
PARADISE |
|
|
|
In the 1970s when I was young |
|
the factories each had their
flavor as I drove up to them looking for work. |
|
There were the little tin ones |
|
on gravel with a row of Hell's
Angel-type motorcycles in front |
|
of them |
|
and the smell of County Jail
and toxic chemicals that I drove by |
|
slowly 2 or 3 times with a
half-sick stomach trying to decide whether or not to go in even
though I knew |
|
I'd probably be hired. |
|
There were big factories |
|
with proud signs sporting
company logos atop their roofs |
|
on endless asphalt under
blazing suns that roared |
|
with blast furnaces and 10-ton
machines that I knew |
|
were Hells on earth |
|
and there were the little
1-man machine shops like dental offices with the owners |
|
that would squeeze as many
keys or tubes or drill casings |
|
or slotted steel shafts or hex
nuts as possible |
|
out of me for every penny of
the low wage they paid me |
|
and there |
|
were all those huge aerospace
companies with endless buildings on vast lots |
|
that would swallow me up with
good pay and then spit me out |
|
in savings account-draining
layoffs until I'd hung on working there long enough |
|
that I wasn't fit to work
anywhere else |
|
and could never leave. |
|
|
|
Never again would there be so
many poisons |
|
to pick from. |
|
|
|
ON THE
BOTTOM |
|
|
|
It was always the big desks |
|
that the foremen or owners of
machine shops sat behind |
|
in tiny offices as they told
me they had no work available |
|
and that there was no work
available anywhere |
|
and that they had never seen
it this bad, |
|
it was always those desks
separating me from them and a job and a paycheck |
|
that hurt, and the doors |
|
swinging shut behind those
owners and foremen as they walked |
|
out of their offices back into
their shops |
|
full of machines and
machinists cutting metal, |
|
doors slamming shut |
|
like 100 or 200 times before
and leaving me |
|
to walk the sidewalks that
could soon |
|
be my home. |
|
|
|
Desks and doors more important |
|
than my life. |
|
|
|
BALLS |
|
|
|
His wife just a year dead, |
|
his torso crisscrossed |
|
with the scars of repeated
open-heart surgery, |
|
his legs scarred |
|
where sections of arteries had
been cut out to replace |
|
bad ones in his heart, his
walk |
|
slow as a tortoise's as he
struggled for breath, |
|
the old Lead Man always |
|
had a cigarette |
|
hanging out of his mouth or
going |
|
in the ashtray beside his
toolbox on the workbench |
|
where he spent 98% of his
8-hour shift sitting, |
|
a non-filter Camel cigarette |
|
in defiance of company rules
and doctor's orders |
|
that he made sure sent clouds
of stinking smoke |
|
into the face of every
machinist |
|
who had to come talk to him, |
|
proud of that deadly |
|
non-filter cigarette |
|
like it was the last |
|
of his manhood. |
|
|
|
LIVING GRAVEYARD |
|
|
|
All the crosses |
|
on churches surrounded by
vacant lots and boarded up |
|
stores all the crosses |
|
of black iron sticking up out
of the roofs |
|
of churches in neighborhoods
where black children |
|
who will never have jobs play
all the crosses |
|
sticking up starkly out of
landscapes |
|
of burned-out buildings and
useless |
|
rusted-out cars in yards and
hopeless |
|
beaten eyes staring out of
apartment windows covered |
|
by iron security bars all the
crosses |
|
above black asphalt streets
full of drugs and cruizing |
|
police cars and men |
|
to whom jail is a way of life
who sit |
|
on aluminum chairs on porches
or in backyards like 13-year-olds |
|
the world will never let grow
up all the crosses |
|
on churches surrounded |
|
by gunfire and people living 5
to a room and lost |
|
wandering beggars screaming
obscenities at the wind all the crosses |
|
surrounded by all these people |
|
who might as well be nailed |
|
to them |
|
|
|
|
|
LIFESAVERS |
|
|
|
Just |
|
a clickclack of a secretary's
highheels |
|
across the concrete factory
floor just |
|
a scent of her perfume in the
steel dust air just |
|
a memory of the way his mother |
|
touched him the last time he
saw her or the beautiful checkout lady |
|
at the supermarket smiles at
him just |
|
a memory of the way his last
lover held his cock |
|
in her mouth so long ago or |
|
a green tattoo of a naked lady
dancing |
|
on his arm as he turns a
machine handle or the flesh |
|
of that beautiful young girl
in that picture on the side |
|
of his toolbox |
|
drawn gratefully into the
embrace of the soul |
|
of a machinist who must work |
|
the rest of his life away
inside the tin walls of shops |
|
full of nothing but the
hardness |
|
of men, |
|
may be enough to make the
difference between life |
|
and death. |
|
|
|
|
|
WE'D BETTER NOT LOSE
TOUCH WITH IT |
|
|
|
All of the paintings |
|
and the symphonies and poems
expressing |
|
what we are inside ourselves |
|
do not seem so important next
to satellite dishes |
|
beaming around-the-world
images blown up |
|
on 5-foot-high tv screens and
100 tv channels |
|
of endless entertainment and
personalities |
|
chattering and smiling and
bombs |
|
blowing up cars and buildings
in Dolby Sensurround Stereo on 100-foot- wide |
|
technicolor screens and the
soaring arches |
|
of bridges and freeway
overpasses and huge sports arenas |
|
full of people with
scoreboards exploding in miraculous |
|
computer-generated graphics
and airplanes |
|
zooming people around the
world all of the paintings |
|
and the symphonies and poems
expressing |
|
what we are inside ourselves |
|
do not seem so important at
all until |
|
we remember |
|
that what is inside ourselves |
|
can still blow all those
things up |
|
into radioactive dust |
|
in a few minutes time. |
|
|
|
|
|
DISOWNED |
|
|
|
Just because the cold asphalt
of an alley has been his bed |
|
does not mean we will let him
stand on our doorstep just because |
|
he is forced to roam the
streets all day as an animal |
|
does not mean that |
|
we must remember when he was
not one just because |
|
he must beg on streetcorners
with no one in the world who cares |
|
does not mean that |
|
he can come to us for help
just because |
|
he has been stripped of
dignity and privacy and hope |
|
does not mean that we must |
|
feel sorry for him just
because |
|
he has come back to us |
|
doesn't mean that we have to
see him or talk to him |
|
or let him in just because |
|
he was once a part of the
family of man |
|
does not mean he is |
|
anymore. |
|
|
|
LOSS |
|
|
|
The money stacks in the banks |
|
as the hands of the homeless
tremble holding the cardboard saying they |
|
are hungry and the little
change they have collected all day the money |
|
stacks in the banks |
|
as great unknown poets lie
dying with nothing under trees |
|
and ageing factory workers
work longer and longer hours |
|
until their bones throb with
aching just to keep cheap tiny rooms and |
|
men being evicted from
apartments |
|
scream and strike their little
girls again and again and 60-year-old |
|
men who have never been in
trouble |
|
ruin their lives |
|
going back to companies that
laid them off |
|
with guns the money stacks in
the banks as the children grow thin and pale |
|
with nothing to eat and
jobless men |
|
who once owned houses sit in
backyards |
|
all day with bottles and eyes |
|
like tombstones the money
stacks higher and higher in the banks but it will never buy |
|
back our souls. |
|
|
|
SOMETIMES
MAYBE THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS LUCK |
|
|
|
Sometimes |
|
they are locked up and retreat
into corners of padded rooms |
|
and never talk again and
sometimes |
|
they run companies for years
sometimes |
|
they babble to themselves as
they walk the streets in rags and sometimes |
|
|
|
they drive Porsches |
|
in $1000 suits sometimes |
|
they cry and cringe in bed for
the rest of their lives and sometimes |
|
they take over countries and
give speeches on the radio |
|
to millions of people
sometimes |
|
they are too scared to talk or
look at |
|
another human being ever again
and sometimes |
|
they hold the lives of
thousands of employees |
|
In their hands sometimes |
|
they draw knifeblades through
the veins in their wrists and sometimes |
|
|
|
they order thousands of people
to be fired |
|
or killed sometimes |
|
they think they are Napoleon
and sometimes |
|
they are Napoleon. |
|
|
|
MYTHIC |
|
|
|
Machinists |
|
who cover their workbenches
with photos of themselves |
|
crouched in trunks and gloves
ready to go 10 rounds in their Olympic |
|
|
|
Auditorium boxing days
machinists |
|
who cover their toolboxes with
photos of the 6 or 7 vintage |
|
1940s or 1950s automobiles |
|
they have restored to as-new
perfection and drive |
|
to work one after the other |
|
on various weeks |
|
and machinists |
|
with vans full of surfboards
who every day after work drive to coves |
|
to ride to perfection the
waves rolling in under setting suns |
|
whether showing off their cars
in parking lots |
|
or telling stories about
hitting men in the old days |
|
or leaned back on benches in
the sun at lunch |
|
describing the feel of those
perfect boards on those perfect waves |
|
these men swagger and smile |
|
larger than life |
|
surrounded by machinists they
are glad to grace |
|
with their stardom. |
|
|
|
|
|
JEWELS |
|
|
|
The old black workers |
|
stand in towmotors or walk
across the concrete floor in the paint shop |
|
or weave between machines in
the machine shop |
|
in old overalls and there is
something about their eyes |
|
set in those heads gone gray |
|
and faces with lines beaten
into them |
|
something about their eyes |
|
on top of those bodies so
slack and slow |
|
like they have had every bone
in them broken |
|
3 times something like a
diamond forged out of the massive pressures of their lives |
|
something that shines with
more beauty and value |
|
than anything else in the
building. |
|
|
|
WHEN THE SUNLIGHT
ON AN ARM IS LIKE GOLD |
|
|
|
Sometimes a bum |
|
in the thinnest cheapest
clothes can shuffle |
|
past and catch you with a look
in his eye so glowing that you suddenly know he is grateful |
|
for the sky and the worn shoes
on his feet |
|
and the light of the moon and
the stars and the sinking sun, |
|
truly grateful for the
foghorns and the bellowing horns of the great ships |
|
on the sea and the pigeons
clustered on the balcony of that apartment on 1st Street |
|
and each and every one of the
tomorrows ahead of him |
|
and how good it feels to move
his arms in the air |
|
and every drop of food that
enters his mouth |
|
and the earth under his feet |
|
and the light in every living
eye |
|
and the smell of every green
thing growing until |
|
you feel poor |
|
indeed. |
|
|
|
WE DO NOT WEAR ONE CHAIN |
|
|
|
We barely make enough money on
our machines |
|
to keep roofs over our heads |
|
but we are not slaves. |
|
The bosses treat us as if we
have no choice |
|
but to let them have their way
with us |
|
but we are not slaves. |
|
We drag ourselves to work each
morning exhausted |
|
with 60 or 70-hour work weeks |
|
to jobs that we hate |
|
as they kill us with toil and
humiliation and hopelessness |
|
but we do not wear chains. |
|
We are not slaves. |
|
We have nowhere to go but to
other |
|
machine shops where they will
treat us no better |
|
and pay us no more |
|
as we wonder each day if we
might be laid off |
|
to fatten the wallets of men
who drive Cadillacs |
|
and what will happen |
|
if we get sick |
|
or our wives or our children
get sick |
|
with no insurance |
|
but no-one has a piece of
paper saying that they own us. |
|
We are not slaves. |
|
There is nothing ahead for us |
|
but more and more pain and
fear as we grow old |
|
and more and more cornered |
|
and the bosses use us up |
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until they throw us away |
|
but we are not slaves. |
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|
|
|
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I
KNOW THIS MAN |
|
|
|
In the alley |
|
I meet him: |
|
a man who has had his humanity
stripped from him |
|
a man who has had his sanity
stripped from him, |
|
his wife |
|
and his 42 years of dignity |
|
stripped from him, |
|
all the love and care of his
mother and father |
|
wasted, |
|
all the child who was once 6
and had every present he could wish |
|
for under the Christmas tree |
|
gone. |
|
Invisible, |
|
he lifts lids and picks
through garbage, |
|
keeps his eyes on the ground
and scurries |
|
along walls like an animal, |
|
and all the finest most
brilliant arguments in the world |
|
will never convince me that he
deserves to be there, |
|
for he is me |
|
if I had not somehow stumbled
across that job |
|
on the luckiest day of my life |
|
|
|
|
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IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN |
|
|
|
Enduring yet another of our
weekly |
|
Self Managed Work Team
meetings |
|
we machinists all sat silent
around the conference table |
|
until Rick |
|
the centerless grinder
operator shoved his chair back |
|
against the wall and stuck his
chin out and said, |
|
You know, if Goodstone really
wants us to manage things |
|
like this was our own machine
shop, why don't they have all |
|
those managers come to our
meeting -- have them come here and |
|
stand against the wall and
we'll PICK all the ones we want |
|
to get rid of -- we don't need
all those managers, they don't |
|
do anything to get out parts,
they're not hands-on production |
|
like us, they're just DEAD
WEIGHT -- they're all just each |
|
other's relatives or uncles or
somebody's wife or friend! |
|
They're makin' $1,000 a week
and they're hiding each other, |
|
protecting each other's asses
because they know they're not |
|
needed and they don't want to
end up WORKING AT JACK IN THE |
|
BOX FLIPPING BURGERS! |
|
Get 'em in here and we'll let
'em know we don't need 'em! |
|
We'll reduce costs! |
|
WELL KICK THEIR ASSES OUT THE
DOOR!" |
|
|
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Some machinists take the term
"Self Managed" very seriously. |
|
|
|
|
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AS WE SPEAK OF JUSTICE
AND VIRTUE |
|
|
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We are thieves |
|
as the man who wanted a job
starves in the alley, |
|
we are thieves |
|
lying on rich soft beds
looking innocently up at ceilings, |
|
we are thieves |
|
sipping drinks on balconies
looking at sunsets |
|
depositing money from good
jobs in banks |
|
lying on sundecks on world
cruizes |
|
slipping buttery lobster onto
tongues |
|
trying on $100 earrings, |
|
as the men who wanted a job
starves in the alley |
|
we are thieves |
|
taking communion in churches |
|
studying Picasso in classes |
|
lifting beautiful children up
to our hearts full of love, |
|
in voting booths, in the
finest country clubs, |
|
with a cabinet full of civic
honors, |
|
playing a game of chess on a
glass table, |
|
we are thieves |
|
born to the best families, |
|
thieves |
|
that no policeman will ever
arrest, |
|
thieves |
|
home free |
|
as the man who wanted a job
starves in the alley. |
|
|
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THE PRICE IN THE EYES |
|
|
|
As I entered the steel mill at
age 23, |
|
far more frightening |
|
than the slam of the 2-ton
drop hammer |
|
down onto steel to make the
concrete floor quake |
|
and the heart jump |
|
was the look in the eye of the
man |
|
who had squatted before it for
34 years, |
|
the rage |
|
and the humor |
|
and the toughness to go on
with his trembling jaw |
|
and bloodshot eye. |
|
Far more frightening |
|
than the blast furnace with
its white-hot flame |
|
turning a ton of steel red-hot |
|
as it roared and seared |
|
the nostrils and lips |
|
was the look in the eye at the
man who tied tended it |
|
for 37years, |
|
the pain |
|
and the strength and the
brutality and the desperation |
|
of somehow making it through |
|
the noise and the shock waves
and the stink and the heat |
|
of the steel mill |
|
as his hands turned into
gnarled claws |
|
and his back bent |
|
and his fingertips shook. |
|
Far more frightening |
|
than all the huge machines and
cut steel and flame and poundings |
|
between tin walls |
|
were the eyes |
|
of these men |
|
who had somehow made it
through |
|
like I wanted to make it
through, |
|
who knew so many terrible |
|
gut and heart and
soul-wrenching secrets |
|
I would have to learn. |
|
|
|
|
|
NUMBERS UNDER PLASTIC |
|
|
|
After 10 or 20 or 30 years |
|
of giving all the strength and
life in our fingers |
|
and backs and hearts to the
machines and the parts they cut |
|
we are employee numbers |
|
in a seniority list under
plastic |
|
on our workbenches. |
|
After all the years |
|
of coming back to the same
corners of this tin building |
|
again and again until we
wanted to scream |
|
we are numbers |
|
in a seniority list, |
|
numbers |
|
to be chopped off in the next
layoffs |
|
by upper managers who have
never shaken our hands |
|
or looked into our eyes |
|
or learned one bit about us, |
|
numbers |
|
stacked |
|
and ready to be chopped off |
|
by one third or one half, |
|
ready |
|
to be sent out the door by
security guards |
|
to once again become people |
|
so human |
|
in the desperation and fear
and panic |
|
that has no number. |
|
|
|
|
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SOMETHING TO
GET THROUGH A DAY AND A LIFE |
|
|
|
In any machine shop a
machinist may often be thinking of the sea |
|
and of how he touches
something a billion years old |
|
when he drops a hook into it, |
|
in any machine shop where a
foreman holds the men |
|
in the cruel deadly grip of
his stare |
|
full of the power to fire |
|
a machinist may often be
thinking |
|
of the early morning sun |
|
touching the jagged face of a
mountain so much older |
|
than man |
|
or of a horse |
|
running down a racetrack with
something in the wild fury |
|
of his legs and eyes |
|
that Man will never capture |
|
or of a star |
|
so bright and sharp in the
black desert sky |
|
that he knows how small a
foreman |
|
really is, |
|
in any machine shop |
|
where machinists are trapped
between tin walls working away their so |
|
brief lives |
|
a machinist may often be
thinking |
|
of any little bit of eternity |
|
he can get his mind on. |
|
|
|
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|
|
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GEARS AND BONES |
|
|
|
There are men |
|
on machines who run those
machines all their lives, |
|
who crouch |
|
beside their green greasy
sides under their huge barrel heads |
|
and force |
|
the worn teeth of their
handles to turn the worn teeth of their |
|
dial gears |
|
by popping their elbows |
|
and grunting |
|
the way we have seen them do
it ten thousand times, |
|
who know |
|
the feel of their machines'
heads and tables |
|
in their fists squeezed tight
around their handles |
|
so well |
|
that they can nudge them to
perfect thousandth of an inch settings |
|
by the feel in their bones, |
|
who |
|
can make those machines do
things no-one else can come close |
|
to making them do |
|
as their smooth effortless
grace turns metal cutting |
|
into an art form, |
|
until |
|
when those men finally retire |
|
it seems like no man should
ever again |
|
run those machines, |
|
like they should be retired |
|
and left in the corners of tin
buildings to await the grave |
|
too. |
|
|
|
STEEL AND SOUL |
|
|
|
The rich people walking
around the sculptures in the museum |
|
gaze at their mammoth steel
sides with eyes |
|
full of refined good taste |
|
but even if they went to this
exhibit |
|
1,000 times I don't believe
they could begin to understand |
|
these 20-foot tall
2-inch-thick walls of steel |
|
twisted into elliptical
teepees by Richard Serra. |
|
All the art classes and all
the art museums around the world they have the money |
|
|
|
and leisure to go to would not
allow them to really understand. |
|
A man just let out of prison |
|
after 3 months in solitary or
a press operator who has sat on a stool in a tiny tin building |
|
stamping out a million
gaskets |
|
would have a better chance. |
|
A janitor |
|
with a mop in his calloused
hands |
|
or a child of 5 or a man
begging for quarters on a sidewalk |
|
would have a better chance |
|
would have a better chance of
understanding these simple twisted rust-colored steel walls. |
|
A man who has done nothing but
wash pots and pans all his life |
|
would have a better chance. |
|
Maybe that is the price |
|
the rich pay. |
|
|
|
A
KIND OF LOGIC |
|
|
|
When the heads to our machines
are breaking down |
|
one by one causing our
machines |
|
to be idle for months and
months waiting for parts some machinist |
|
will ask |
|
why Goodstone Aircraft Company
doesn't order parts for the heads in |
|
advance |
|
so the heads can be fixed the
same day they break down |
|
and another machinist will
look shocked and aghast and answer, |
|
"No! No! Goodstone COULDN'T do
that - THAT WOULD MAKE SENSE!" |
|
When Goodstone Aircraft
Company lays off some of our top machinists |
|
who happen to be at the bottom
of the seniority list |
|
for a few months in the winter |
|
to avoid paying them their 2
week Christmas-to-New Years holiday pay |
|
and those top machinists don't
come back |
|
when Goodstone tries to recall
them, |
|
some machinist will ask, |
|
Is it worth it, laying them
off and losing all that skill and all |
|
that good work they'd've done?
WHY DOESN'T |
|
GOODSTONE JUST PAY THEM |
|
THE HOLIDAY PAY?!" |
|
and another machinist will get
a horrified look on his |
|
face and answer, |
|
Nol No way! Goodstone would
NEVER do something like that - THAT WOULD |
|
MAKE TOO MUCH SENSE! I" |
|
|
|
Our only chance of making
sense out of Goodstone Aircraft Company |
|
is by reminding ourselves
every so often that they don't |
|
make sense. |
|
|
|
ETHICAL GIANTS |
|
|
|
We machinists gather in the
conference room |
|
and view the Goodstone
Aircraft Company interactive video about ethics. |
|
The video presents to us and
asks us to discuss |
|
the reasons why informing on
our fellow employees is the ethical thing to do, |
|
why |
|
our qualms about informing are
not ethical, |
|
giving us |
|
many phone numbers to various
managers and offices and ombudsmen |
|
so that we may inform
personally or anonymously |
|
on behavior inconsistent with
company rules |
|
and thus maintain |
|
the company's and our ethical
integrity. |
|
|
|
Apparently Goodstone Aircraft
Company |
|
considers its filling up the
office buildings with hundreds of air |
|
conditioners |
|
while the machine shop has
none |
|
and its consistent lying to us
about our hard work preserving our jobs |
|
and its filling of our
building with toxic fumes |
|
and its laying off of
50-year-old men |
|
with families and mortgages |
|
to the streets where there are
no jobs |
|
so that rich upper managers
can get bonuses highly ethical. |
|
|
|
AS THE
GRAVEYARDS FILL WITH ALL OF THOSE WHO WILL NEVER MOVE AGAIN |
|
|
|
(for Robert DeLaura) |
|
|
|
Always the great ships full of
cargo moving to port |
|
as starving saxophone players
put all their strength into the notes |
|
that come out of their horns |
|
and old ladies die of
loneliness in spotlessly clean |
|
apartments |
|
and no one reads the rows of
books of poetry in the public library always |
|
the million dollar loads of
goods moving toward port on great ships |
|
on the sea a half mile out |
|
as the pen drops out of the
dead drunk hand of a Hemingway |
|
who cannot get a word
published |
|
and no one understands |
|
the rose |
|
or the riffs of Charlie Parker |
|
or the way the fog hangs
around the steeple of the Villa Riviera |
|
or the pain |
|
in the eye of another human
being always the great ships |
|
are moving their tons of cargo
to the port without stop |
|
as the fingers of an unsung
poet |
|
ending his life at 36 |
|
stop forever |
|
and the backs of ageing
workers stiffen as they wonder |
|
where their lives went and
everywhere |
|
people sit in rooms without
one reason |
|
to really want to be alive
always |
|
the great ships |
|
on the sea full of millions in
cargo moving toward port. |
|
|
|
|
|
LIKE THE SUN THAT
WILL RISE EACH DAY |
|
|
|
Each day our hands throw the
same machine levers |
|
and turn the same machine
wheels |
|
the same way we have a million
times before |
|
as we swallow 6 or 7 gulps of
water out of the drinking fountain |
|
every hour or so like we have |
|
10,000 times before and rest |
|
our butts and hands against
sheet metal workbench edges watching |
|
our machines run for years and
years and years until |
|
those workbench edges are
shiny, |
|
wearing |
|
paths into the concrete floors
where we walk |
|
back and forth from handle to
handle hundreds of times |
|
each day, |
|
dreaming |
|
the same daydreams of breasts
and frosty schooners of beer and the soft bodies |
|
of our wives next to us at
night, sweeping the same oily chips across the same floors |
|
into the same piles |
|
with the same rocking motions
of our bodies as our hands |
|
grip the same spots on the
same broom handles |
|
and we whistle the same
melodies, until |
|
we seem as old |
|
and unstoppable |
|
as the tide that has inched
its way up the sand |
|
for a billion years. |
|
|
|
AS YOUR UNEMPLOYMENT RUNS
OUT |
|
|
|
After looking out the window
of a cheap room |
|
at the alley |
|
where you may soon |
|
live, |
|
raindrops |
|
are not the same, |
|
the faces of people begging
for quarters |
|
are not the same, |
|
the way your Dad held your
hand when you were 2 |
|
and the rose |
|
are not the same, |
|
the tombstones in the
graveyard |
|
and the cold eyes of the rich |
|
and the breasts of women |
|
and all the Indians dead of
alcohol and broken promises |
|
and the gold-plated trim |
|
on Cadillacs |
|
of executives who let people
die in the streets |
|
and the words on classroom
chalkboards |
|
justifying it |
|
are not the same, |
|
the locks |
|
on the doors of churches |
|
and the meaning |
|
of sunlight on the grass |
|
and blood spilled out of
veins |
|
and cocktails in 40th story
penthouses |
|
and all that is really
important on the face of this earth, |
|
are never quite the same |
|
again. |
|
|
|
SILENCE UNDER THE SUN |
|
|
|
Out in back of the factory I
lean |
|
against a 110-year-old brick
wall with a Mexican |
|
eating lunch. |
|
L.A.,&nbs |