poems
by ron androla (c)
some of these
poems have appeared online at the-hold.com. & other mysterious cyberspace
places.
ron androla
2407 raspberry
st.
erie, pa 16502
dead letters of air
call me golden
golden courser
golden human
being ascending
depths
old men
tell me stories
i see pictures from their words
then they
die
here's
me
with a
bursting prophecy
& them
dead
one dream
all our old folk medicine
will be flown from chile
in yearly supplies
without fail -- we are healthy,
saner without the saturation
of society soaking our souls
with drenching consumeristic
kerosene:
living with six billion
other humans
simultaneously
dying in flames
of fire,
screaming,
thinking,
loving. we decide
we've had enough.
we have a fine hut
in a small green valley
on easter island,
& my hemorrhoids
are the worst thing
in this civilization
of aloneness with ann.
hemorrhoids,
& the pain of being
far, very, very far
from the rest of our family.
otherwise,
i don't
even
write, i hang in a hammock,
listen to eerie birds
& insects slice
black
night.
i never
remember
much of the
past. the world
wide web
sputters,
my old poems
go flinging off --
dead links.
decades pass.
both ann & i
grow beautiful stones
along
our
coast
line.
offerings for uncle tony
come hell or high water
was a phrase my father often
declared. i imagine him
meeting my uncle tony
at the end of the white light tunnel
of death & they are smiling &
laughing & maybe my dad has a
fifth of kessler's in his
fist offering it to uncle tony
& uncle tony,
new wings & all,
guzzles hard & long.
then my grandfather
materializes from the
sands of obliteration &
he slices a
cucumber,
salts & peppers it,
offers it
to uncle
tony on a tiny plate of cloud.
julie's art show
my niece is a high-school senior
at a private girl's school here in erie.
she's like a 4.0 girl, real smart.
once i took julie to the roadhouse
theater to catch an avant-garde rendition
of macbeth. once we saw julie smoking
a cigarette at a stop-light
& she never did see us,
she looked so happy driving with a
carload of girls. julie is dave's
younger sister, if anyone realizes
what any of this means -- dave is already
in college
in a groove
of tenuous existence. in half an hour
villa maria has a student
art show, it's down on 8th street,
we're on like 48th & slept in;
i look absolutely
despicable
& portishead is playing in the livingroom
on a cloudy sunday in march.
i'm remembering funerals
& grave-yards -- dad, grandpa, sitto,
grandma, uncle ernie, uncle tony,
stones in the air,
their voices.
thinking otherwise
it's imperceptible degrees of sensory
fluctuation we think we recognize when really
we're black dust settled a good 3 feet
deep on the moon phobos. if not sensory
differences, then spiritually
nothing fucking matters -- not one's
flowering head,
especially. the mind thinks
& spreads like a plateau
of cream-lit smoke. oh what swirls
within consciousness
within death.
in 15 days
judy retires in 15 days. she's been
counting down, aloud, since 30.
her car is inspected for another year.
her work-clothes are tattered & just waiting
for the fire. she's got everything
ready & she's got plans:
the son who lives with her in a lake
city trailer will pay half the bills now,
because otherwise, after all is sd & done,
she'd have to live on four dollars a month.
so she handed keith a list & he didn't
say a word. i'm envisioning judy in 1972
with 3 boys (a set of twins, keith & kevin)
in a lake city flat -- she works two full-
time jobs back then.
then the flat burns down
& they lose everything but the
clothes on their backs -- the boys'
father never even offers
to help them get back on their feet.
judy drove a harley.
judy smoked pot (once she wore
pot-leaf ear-rings to work) &
drank a lot of beer. she never touched
another man after her ex
left. she was crew-leader
at marx toys,
drove jitney at niagara plastics,
& raised those 3 boys
on her own. in 15 days judy
retires & i might
cry -- i'll never
see her
again.
no other poet
on this goddamn planet
has known
judy like i know judy.
judy retires
tonight at three o'
clock in the morning
a caterer is coming to the lunchroom
with the fruit-flies & mice.
judy's last night of work
is next thursday, but they're
having the one hour lunch-break
a week early, for some reason. most
of the guys like the idea
of a one-hour lunch-break
& can't even vaguely appreciate
the glory of judy -- twenty-one years
in this bleak fiberglass factory
where assholes on the floor
rule by conspiracy & baseness
& assholes smile. bosses
love assholes.
the bosses & assholes
have easier jobs than judy
can even imagine -- she's sweated
& her entire dilapidated body
has been broken out in red splotches
so she lives like that,
suffers with the old, sore knees.
i think of things assholes
have spouted all these years about
judy -- these assholes who make up
houses on the streets,
farms,
trailers,
these assholes with new suv's
with a big bank-roll savings
these assholes
who cushion themselves with the
baseness of the union,
who then create the union.
judy has been one of the lowest
paid workers in the plant --
an injection operator,
dinosaur injection machines...
assholes drive jitney
assholes have 2 hour cure-times
& spend free time fucking with
us sitting ducks -- i'm a press operator,
i'm like judy.
it's what judy does
but won't do
anymore -- after her body
has been
ravaged by age & industrial
management & union
games...assholes
are everybody but us
parts operators
i say it
loud & nobody wants to listen
but tonight
at 3 in the morning
i'll sit with
judy but not for long,
i'll walk out of there
by myself
& meditate upon
real life.
the plain truth
it is 4:15 a.m. &
i'm making a good manufacturing wage
for erie. i've been doing this,
working 3rd shift in an erie factory,
one of two, over 20 years,
& shit not only flies it loops thru
hoops of stratospheric fire ignited
from prelapsarian gases some
400 trillion years ago. at the same moment
the same ignorant workers think
crass ego walls them from
bosses fish-tailing upwards
who grow so resentful of crass ego
industrial hatred
is civil war, is class war,
& amerika is doomed.
amerikans are doomed.
this is a good thing,
this doom.
stupid kid employees blind as idiots
& old, jaded, angry workers will
not unite
no fucking
way -- it's a wide abyss,
it's
useless,
useless.
judy
i'm half-dazed walking big strides
from the time-clock to the back door
with judy to my right waddling
on bad knees wearing her bright, yellow hat
with black words TAKE THIS JOB
& SHOVE IT! jackie gave her,
& i realize never again will i
walk with judy inside this ugly, stupid factory.
retirement -- judy at 62 looks 82.
we're the first ones out the door,
she opens it before i can open it for her.
it's daylight late march.
at the end of the sidewalk i whisper
her name, reach to touch her hand,
& we suddenly kiss there
as i whisper bye.
taking tonight off work
thinking how i intentionally
let the image of delbert leaving
the shop burn in my mind,
never again to see delbert
except possibly in the obituaries,
remembering that final, strong handshake.
my last image of judy
this morning being
the side of her face in her
little red car leaving
the factory parkinglot
forever. then i imagine
the rest of the shift,
a few of us with 20 years
to go before such a thing like
retirement,
& all the fucking
ignorant amerikan factory-rat kids:
those without history
& pain &
meditation,
& cons,
union
liars -- they stay --
it's like a
concentration camp
& the good, true,
honest,
ethical prisoners,
for the most part
are first
slaughtered --
who remains, who endures
are those
who say
yes yes yes
when the
gun-barrel is
kissing their asshole.
what a disappointing
array of
hanger-on employees --
nobody is left
to cheer
for --
not hillbilly,
that old
country-suspender fuck
with a mouth
spitting
snuff-juice -- retired --
no more heroes
exist
in the near future
just old losers
& young, brash
retards.
men
& women
have lived whole lives
in jobs
these shits
desecrate with idiocy.
no poem is required
no poem is required to evoke
the timbre of this exact, sensory moment
with my eyes on a 17 inch screen in a small
room plateau'd over night expanse of lake
erie -- my fingers on the keyboard
banging.
laughter from downstairs.
ann knitting amerikan girl doll
clothes for addison. sound
of this computer hard-drive like
grinding automobile transmission
heard by a head on lsd.
hollow reader,
no poem is required
for anyone's real
benefit. nobody wants
the intensity of personal truth
blaring into human language.
it's too much
for a creature to
carry too many centuries into earth history.
look,
god
is dust.
somebody says
jesus
then we atom-bomb hiroshima.
gray column
puffy gray cloud column
of human ignorance.
what
a
cock
man
really
is
a
piece
of hard shit
shit
from a
star,
a face,
a noble voice saying
"poetry..."
old age
i think there are things i'm forgetting
what i want to say. i'm not saying
forty-something is old.
well, maybe i am if we consider
cave-dwellers thousands of years ago
crabbing up sandstone cliffs for safety from
tigers & lions &
bears -- goddamn babies dropped
accidentally,
off backs of girl-mother cave-dwellers
oh neanderthal panic instinct
when we lived into our teens, if so very,
very lucky,
or not -- if the experience of life
is pain & abrupt
ending -- view of slaughter,
then blackness
of the galaxy.
my teenage mind of mentalness.
my diseases, my decaying sections
of flesh,
my natural deterioration.
earth day (part two)
hip people chant
oh mudda erth
oh mudda erth
earthquake rumbles
swallows thousands
& there is screaming
from the gates of hell.
we spray the area with
disinfectant.
the black dirt
is slightly
green.
slightly,
every so slightly,
numbs the tongue.
beware
beneath the title of this poem
one cannot imagine what might be
written except it can't be
something gentle. expect a sinister
attack into yr thinking.
an infection.
a green vein in yr brain.
what can a poem do?
fuck you, that's what a poem can do.
a poem can fuck you in the ear
in the tunnel cunt of yr head
& hell, men, you might like it.
ladies, oh, just
close yr eyes...
wake up, old world
friends, i am wearing one dollar
reading-glasses. plastic black ones,
don't laugh. they work just fine.
i can see clearly now tho i do not see
much to crow about. oh, the amerikan
government, surely, certainly,
is more enemy than friend
& we must live in an underground
cave, but that's ok,
they know we can't bite.
poets are ineffective
because poets read poetry, &
few, if any,
others of
our society
have
the least
if any
interest
in what the poets
of the land say
this is the way
it is.
we are free.
hangovers
i think i remember my name, my face,
my self. yes. not opening my eyes
i realize i am prone in our bed
& it is dark. crack eye, 5 a.m.,
& i definitely attest
to a barrage of clear bottles
of newcastle brown ale:
i breathe the ale from
5 hours ago, & cheese
& anchovie pizza,
sex-site surfing
& stumbling, too drunk at midnight.
christ,
look at all the poems
surfacing this morning.
is soberness
a goddamn
dam? shld it all be continuously
dam --
dam the virus
of amerikan plenty,
yes.
turn away,
rise all damaged &
wrecked,
sore & stupid,
& compose amerikan versification.
just move fingers
zombie-moving
fingers.
gulp coffee.
gulp water.
gulp medicinal smoke.
& buddy,
write
glorious, unfettered poems.
everybody
eventually
recovers, & we
do it
again
& again,
thousands
of hangovers
& poems.
the president of the company is coming
oh christ, i surely sigh,
it's a sigh of such wisdom the thought hurts,
& suddenly there's oil-dry
around bottoms of dinosaur machines
as if somebody
beyond the poor fuck (like me) who
cld so easily slip
into the 300 degree presses
cares. who the holy fuck
are they kidding --
but another fuck
blind, deaf, & deadly with power.
i'm reminded of the little plastics
shop i worked in in the 80's,
big news,
mister fuckme, the owner, is flying
into town
& they'd give us buckets & brooms
& squeegees
& we'd spend 3rd shift simply
cleaning for mister fuckme's
appearance in the morning.
mister fuckme didn't come around
much, but when he did, the office boys
stocked up on his scotch,
acted all happy & friendly.
as soon as mister fuckme left,
he'd stay a few days,
hell wld break
loose again. it was a horrible
hole.
scum of
erie
passed thru,
hordes
who pass thru
plastics shops in
erie
for a little
better than minimum wage
it's a
wave of scum,
but these kids now:
i swear my generation is
last
of honorable factory-workers.
we are the
end.
worst of old fuckers,
worst of new idiots,
& we're
trapped in the middle.
we make a
living making
things
against multitudes who
do everything
but
& they
fuck us because
of it,
because we're the end of the line.
well, fuck you,
at least i am, & a
few others
who carry on
despite all
futility -- futility,
there's
a worker's nemesis.
fuck christmas
don't even call me scrooge.
don't smile that christmas smile,
that soft silver icicle shine
of a smile from 40 years ago.
the holiday is damaged beyond repair.
i am damaged beyond repair.
jesus christ was a broken man.
christianity is economic.
santa deep-throats a roomful
of amerikan businessmen.
snowflakes shoot from penis.
then they gangbang santa
on a big table. in return,
santa is meek & a voracious
consumer. jesus is a frozen
toddler. coins & bells &
insects the size of deer.
japanese marketing. strings
of deepest blue lights wrap
a white house at night.
inside that house
ridiculous sodomy occurs.
9:37 a.m. on the eastern front
bombs simultaneously explode
in each state capital of our nation.
there are no injuries
inflicted -- not one animal is even harmed.
well, some worms & ants
& bugs & microbes & paramecia
are
vaporized,
but otherwise,
simultaneous bombs explode in each
state capital of the united
states of amerika one day a year.
the fbi
is reading this poem.
the fbi is checking
our yr computer files
firewall
or no firewall.
we are all
so guilty.
four & twenty blackbirds
four & twenty cups of ACTUAL coffee.
we laugh thinking back to instant
crystal days. maxwell house,
dark brown sand. taste of distant surf.
sound of very distant waves,
little lappings like a puppy drinking
while wagging its excited tail.
coffee is a dog like that,
young, a fur rectangle with legs
& big paws:
wet, alert
eyes, tongue big as a hand
swings, it's tarzan,
soaked & swinging &
dripping across the floor.
four & twenty bluebirds
django reinhardt on a saturday morning.
we rise, i've had one coffee. ann is fixing
breakfast i see,
kind of dancing at the sink.
cold air has returned to erie
overnight. we had all our windows open
& i vaguely recall half-rising
in bed pre-dawn since the wind was gusting
the curtains open like really
loud ghosts -- we had ghosts hovering
over our feet
& snuggled up. you're like an
oh so warm water bottle, ann.
a warm water bottle of soft flesh.
django is a holiday continuing
on cue, with sunny eggs & buttery
baked
potatoes, wheat toast,
et
tu.
four & twenty redbirds
we haven't clicked on the news yet.
saw a breaking-story alert about an
earthquake in the northeast overnight,
but look, it's april 20th,
raining, chilly,
& i'm hungover from gulping
green bottles of grog
yesterday evening. we went prone
with a fan blowing over our nude,
walrus-like bodies
because it feels so good
when drunk, when happy, when celebratory,
but next thing i know it's night
& we're both shivering
& it's storming outside.
i gotta piss.
shut off the fan.
piss. decide to check the board
in the nude after closing all
windows -- well, you know about
that. eventually slip
back to ann
who sleeps a solid
14 hours! she's filled
my red cup of coffee.
things are obviously
cooking on the stove,
cracklings,
is she making us
homefries?? aha!
i thought baked
potatoes,
but no, HOMEFRIES!
oh baby
turn me the
fuck on.
i'm
getting
hard.
i'm hungry.
i'm waking up.
let's eat.
we'll watch
cnn -- maybe
the whole appalachian
range
split
open.
four & twenty yellowbirds
nineteen seventy-five
franconia new hampshire
behind the college acres of
white mountains woods
knee-high snow i trek without direction
morning, before i meet ann in that
white light flash of fate, i heave
thru snow thru trees i'm so alone
i am making my slow way up the side
of a hill
when i decide to pull a joint from
my coat & i lean against a tree
& i light the joint & begin smoking
when a little yellow bird suddenly
flies onto a branch near me.
i look at it, it looks at me.
i suck my dope thru slitted eyes
thinking this is something:
just me & this yellow bird
me stoned on the side of a hill
in the white mountains of new hampshire,
it's something, i remember thinking.
i'm surprised how long the yellow bird
seems to stay, nearly a whole doobie,
then it tweeps away, down the hill.
pretty cool, i recall thinking,
goodbye birdie.
then a few other yellow birds
flap down to the same tree.
more follow, & more, more, it's
like a swarm of yellow butterflies
flying thru the woods overhead.
i'm stoned knee-deep in snow
leaning against a
tree.
four & twenty greenbirds
the parliament of birds
is a sufi quest
ann informs me.
we are synchronicity
with our weavings
of minds. two ropes
of skin touch,
electrify, light up
within the darkness
of human biology.
phosphorescent
eels: we are really green
really
glow.
end of the world
we'll be the last to know.
behind our walls the world will drop
& shear down like world
trade center towers.
gray ash instead of air,
but our curtains are closed
& we haven't looked outside.
portishead is playing very loud.
ann is washing dishes.
besides the devastation
of losing our family & friends,
we are ok as the final
adam & eve --
old dope poet & his plath-like lover:
we are cocoon'd
for eternity,
wrapped in cotton,
boxed in wood:
there is no world,
no end.
four & twenty orangebirds
give us bad eyesight
to watch oranges rolling
thru black-green trees
high
wealthy
in cancun
notice
creative
decay begins to abound
upon mint-blue
waters of
a wasted day, sea-foam,
sounds of scissors
& comings & goings of
trucks,
bills we haven't
paid -- our meek
power of money, the world
rolls
over
us
don't
look
close yr eyes
four & twenty fuckingbirds
four & fucking twenty fuckingbirds
ooze from a black tree
like robin-shit on a pine-branch.
pine-sap in yr hair, on yr cheek,
on the back of yr hand.
it's the 1960's & you can't read this
poem -- i'm a little kid.
i can barely write sentences.
once my sister kathi & me
wrote on a wall with crayons
then had to scrub
it all off -- other details
i don't remember.
it doesn't matter.
life was a whole
different experience,
indeed,
a whole different life;
we've been dozens of
people.
afternoon shadow prayer
it is a clear day
with ann refusing
to a tonal refusal
of explicit intent
she is NOT going
outside today
come hell or high
water, whatever.
she's out there every
other day & she likes
saturdays like this,
busy cooking,
cleaning the place
a little, maybe
doing wash.
if i want to go
to walmart to buy
work t-shirts,
i can go myself,
she insists.
i throw up my
catcher-mitt hands
in a pose
backing off.
a pan bangs
in dishwater.
all the way
from here
i hear her
breathe --
no, that's
the fan
on the floor
billowing
her flowery,
thin,
ripped,
sundress.
"fuck," she
snaps, wiping
puddle islands of
spilled soapsuds
up.
intellectual laziness
press triple dose tiny triangle
egg-shell white pills onto palm
of my tongue in low-light kitchen,
swallow like swallowing chirping
canaries, fan of tail-feathers
clump from side lip. i'm a skeleton.
you're a skeleton too.
we're lucky we cum
or at least remember the electric feeling.
soft bone drips yellow butter droplets,
& salt sifts across us all with the breezes
of daylight. i'm a movie.
you're a movie too.
it's a miraculous situation
being poets, being wide-eyed,
being
here
listening.
nobody
needs to lift
a finger,
life
is all
morphine'd & incredibly slow.
motion
has
stopped, our hallucination
has frozen
earth's
spin -- & everyone
everywhere
is holding
their breath
this
exact
moment now.
exhale.
the worst
is over.
tell me what
you think
you see.
before a word
forms jaw-
bones break off.
e.s.p.
imagine you
looking at the television
in our dark livingroom
perched on an old brown recliner.
nick nolte film. i forget
its title, i hear it, i hear
nick's cigarette (then-cigarette)
dialogue. a smooth-voiced woman
soothing his admission.
that's us. i'm a rough-throated
cop on that edge of recklessness
& you are julie christie,
you are the softest bardot.
you scratch my balding head
until i drop
to sleep. life is a movie.
we are a long, epic movie.
we are the three stooges
& there is just
us two. spread out.
i'm moe.
i'm groucho.
i'm andy kaufman pissed off.
i'm a paper photograph
amidst trillions of paper
pictures. a man,
a woman,
tumbling towards 50 years/revolutions
around the particular sun
which is our eye.
we are so specialized
we might as well be human,
creatures of error &
beauty. ripples of flesh
tumble from my ribs,
sag like a walrus over my belt.
i'm alarmed
but i'm no spring chicken,
nor are you.
earth is old, but sturdy & strong.
we continue.
we carry on.
we step or we
stop. we look around.
it is a regular
day in heads of
surreality -- only we note
what clashes, what meshes,
what drips from glands
of golden stone &
blue sand into
tree-tops scattered with cows' quarters,
bleeding like rain
mist in darkness,
in the chill of late
march. nick nolte is always
whispering.
he's always
put on the spot
isn't he -- he's got FORTITUDE.
fortitude
is the molding
of one's life
into an oyster.
not a slug,
an oyster
with a
perfect pearl.
it must be a good movie
or else you are
sound asleep.
i am using esp:
yeah yeah yeah
look, if i'm writing this poem
as a means to make money or be famous
in amerika, it's a pretty
miserable poem. i think cyberspace
is the heaven of poetry,
land-bound by paper &
people with buying
power. i think admitting
our illusionary
truth is a form
of religion: formless design
of sufi. accidental
perfection. happens all
the time, the snapping
of things in their right
spots.
poetry
shld be
in the
air -- tenuous, dangerous,
as lost
as moments of
death &
breath human centuries long.
next thing
next thing i know there
are tomato seeds still
slimed under my tongue
& i'm tent'd
under a hot,
heavy blanket
birds
tweep
jets growl
glowing,
i think
about being wealthy
my hand
wipes
the grass like a small rake
i hope
catholics don't think this is the end
i hope catholics don't think this is the end of the world, this is the time of
apocalypse. i hope catholic-believers scoff at references to the book of
revelations as reflective of modern time, & the end is here very soon.
rapture. amen. that sudden swelling of light within each of us either bursting
white or turning to a torture of flames. christ, let's lighten it all up. let's
float stoned upon a layer of stratosphere, orbit of self like a spinning ring
of saturn. no catholic vision of god exists, it is all illusion -- as much as
all human mental activity is illusion. miracles occur. we all know the next
moment might be horror, but most naturally will simply continue like this,
aloft over earth on a saturday evening.
sunday morning blues
we have a thin, blue-yellow box of fish-
sticks in the freezer, & not much else.
we've bought single rolls of toilet-paper
these past 2 weeks
as things run out & tho we can afford
to shop, we don't, we hold off, we
work hard, stay exhausted, find excuses
not to venture within quality market
pushing a big silver cart.
yes, we're a little eccentric, ok,
it's true. soon we'll emerge
from our red jeep on a rainy april
sunday morning, waddling thru
the supermarket's puddled parkinglot,
grabbing two carts,
& it's ann to the right side of the store,
me far left,
& we more or less
need everything.
you sit here
you sit here
you think what in the fuck am i doing
you shake yr head, bad-eyes-&-sore-teeth head,
you have yr shoes on
you're ready to go
you sit here
more than astounded
by existence
you have to rise
you have to stand, balance'd
you have to walk
you have to drive
you sit here
more than
astounded
blasted by the future
time
chris is almost 7 days old.
big black baby alien eyes
peep open -- eyelids of an infant
like the purple skin around the yolk
of a boiled egg. meanwhile
yellow, yellow sun drips from trees.
crows screech-chalk dawn's slick blackboard.
there's a daylight moon,
somewhere. ice-chip in blue-mint sky.
all this & i'm still slow with two mugs
of italian roast caffeine, corrugated
caffeine. horizontal corrugated caffeine
walls when the floor is a wall, & the ceiling.
well it is. an hour is a wall.
everything is inter-related,
ticks, tocks, a time without
end until the human brain
is blown dust. revelations are throw-
away.
nothing is as important
as the concept of importance
& who gives a flying fuck about that?
we manage
with sore joints, some mental anguish,
middle-aged insides,
especially intestines of middle-
aged amerikans. good thing
we remember
better, younger days.
baby we have lived a luxurious
janis joplin life -- a jim
morrison existence of
eventual honor.
respect is absolutely
mutual,
a balanced universe
where things
work
out.
yesterday
ann
says the phrase
"our 2 grandkids"
& i feel
one hundred & forty-eight years old,
& those are revolutions around
the planet jupiter years.
ori on a 747
scotch,
he says softly
when questioned
by a smiling stewardess,
please.
she nearly asks for i.d.,
but smiles wider,
softens her blue eyes
as ori displays
a fatten'd money-clip of new
one hundred dollar
amerikan bills
from his zipped shirt pocket.
scotch,
the stewardess
repeats,
smiling very
wide as
the moment
stretches
to ori
sipping
scotch,
one after another,
all the way across
the atlantic ocean.
poem for the workers
the
union is a piece of shit
manned (ahem) by those less
honest than those they supposedly
represent, & baby, we're talking
the brownish scum in a bottom-filled, wooden
rain-barrel. look how they
pad the jobs: listen to them reason.
look what they do on the job.
well, we of course have exceptions,
there's grace there, but over-all
us who sweat & run production
are the sitting-ducks, the abused.
the company
simply
licks its
lips.
the company
is a
piece of
shit.
poem for the workers (part 2)
amos is a god.
i'm surprised he doesn't seem to realize
running the 600-ton
is basically physically handling
a ton of mix & parts
a shift. a couple THOUSAND pounds.
no,
few men can
do the job -- & amos has
for decades.
he's had all the assholes
as his helper,
& if amos doesn't originally
break you he'll
eventually break you --
few men
can do the
job as helper, too, on the 600-ton.
i was amos' helper
10 years ago
& now i run the press
& i have survived
such ridiculous, scum-boy
helpers, too.
i like they
still fuck
with me, the ones still remaining,
because i
am master
of patience.
i owe
a few pieces of shit
total hell.
oh yes,
they'd
love me on first shift!
all those
old fuckers
like dan...tom...(i'm just
using
first
names,
fictious
first names
& this poem is a fiction too
tho
amos is
a god.
men
stand
alone.
what
has the union
ever done for amos?
mother-
fucking
fuckers.
poem for the workers (part 3)
they have their
conspiracies, alliances,
symbiotic concerns.
i don't give
a flying fuck
about them. they know
what
i
think of them as men.
it's
a goddamn
shame it comes
to
a poem
here.
put a working-class poet
in a backwards factory
of retards & back-stabbers
& look.
this
poem.
this
is not
slander,
nor is
the issue
freedom of speech.
i stand
with you,
un-united.
get
over
it.
30 years
in amerika's
factories
& i don't
want to
talk --
i look around
me & see
pieces of shit.
not so
much
lately -- a few new
guys
are
pieces of hope
if the creepy
union assholes
don't get to them.
they
usually
do -- well,
they
always
do.
ha ha
it's so
funny.
it's
intense
reality is
what
it
is.
keep
yr anal sex
jokes up yr asshole.
& the logics
of conspiracy
can minus me
out of
the e-
quation.
there's the
buzz
of realization
i
am
old,
& the
other old
fuckers
moan
& groan
too -- what's the point.
a moment
patti smith
loud in the livingroom
ann i can see in the kitchen
looks like she's sauteeing mushrooms
"i'm kicking into june
cleaver mode," she announces
in the doorway.
"look out."
she chuckles
with a bottle
of newcastle brown ale
in her fingers like
the top
of my
cock
she
dibs
me
like a
baseball bat
i conclude
it's the electricity
in her
hands
peppered
within her
skin
& mind
makes
me
hard
like this
it used to be
it used to be
old people crack'd
discarded in
amerika --
our silver hair
is sparse
i want to
constantly
wear old
man's fedora
we search all
erie for a
fedora
the one i have
is like
indiana jones'
perfect for
erie autumns.
life is glum.
we aren't even
mammals,
we're glands.
we're not
harmonizing
hunter &
hunted,
prey
or pure murder.
watching arnold
on tv
i believe
we are all
safe
forever.
after waking
i don't know
where
i am.
in a room
2nd floor
sick
too sick to work
i might
upchuck
i might
spew shit
i don't
feel right
not right
at all
i wonder when
the mental whips
will slash
across my
anxiety
as a production-worker
in a fucked-
up company.
it used to be
i cared more
about the honor
of industrial employment.
it doesn't matter
all the honor of a poet
is at-
tacked
it's not
my game. i think
about my father
at my age now.
the marriage
to my mom disintegrating
like maggots
of minutes in saucepans
of foreverness
that hate stink
that screaming
that pounding of things
horrible
he found happiness
again
with helen
for that
a blessing
five years older
than he was
when a third
of my dad's heart
petrified
into dead muscle
steel-mill
stress
he sent me
to college
but i am a
fuck up.
how wld i
approach him
man to man
age to age
& i'd be a
poet
buried by
amerika.
ghosts
i'm hugging my syrian grandmother,
sitto, i feel her as i
embrace; her peppery cumin smell,
her hands smelling of butter,
her hair, mushrooms. she's
sitting in a low chair
& i bend.
two days ago my dad
in a hospital bed,
tubes & machines
everywhere, opens his
eyes
looking at
me -- that's how i
wake
these days
my dead relatives
spin
into
my
daylight
dreams
& stay
thru gray october
hours
then
it rains
cold rain
spattering
hundreds of
thousands
of fallen
leaves in
grasses &
on concrete
might
snow
i see
grandpa
androla
& uncle
tony too
they don't
seem very
different
dead
admitting this
there are more admissions
of truth than i as a poet
recognize or accept to burn
into paper, brand into skin,
tattoo dozens of eyeballs
it isn't necessary
i purge it all any
more --
that was my previous downfall,
i was not
ashamed
i sat in a small
dark room
slamming cans
of beer & inhaling
pipes 6 in the evening
with the 6-speaker
stereo pounding out
old bob dylan
i'm always
behind
the times
always
i don't know fuck
what the thrust
of new amerika
is
east-coast lag
is like
10 years
15 years in erie
we might all
already
be ash