Dawn
Each day opens with a burst of light
when the sun’s rays burn through in the east,
as problems shoved in corners for the night
stretch tentacles and strain to be released
and all the world’s subsystems turn back on,
supplying tuneless racket everywhere;
familiar worries bask in the new dawn;
a thousand balls jump back into the air.
It’s morning in the vale of toil and sin,
the big coin-operated humming hive,
and everything is gathering to begin
another day when you are still alive.
Time to rub the dreams out of your eyes.
The sun is not done shining on you. Rise.
Pour Robot
In an aluminum foundry, I saw
a little train of boxes full of sand
running on a rail loop in a pit
that passed beneath an overhead robot
all bundled up in gray asbestos pads
which swiveled between a holding furnace—
where the bucket on its arm was filled
with glowing liquid metal to the brim—
and the pit and rail loop, where it poured
a measured dose into each passing box
as flames and sparks and big billows of smoke
erupted from the vent holes on the top
and cinders hissed and splattered off its pads.
The robot was all scorched and beaten up
like it had been brought back from a world war.
In the forgotten workshops of the past
this task was long performed by human beings
with ladles held between them on long poles,
breathing fire and brimstone, burned and scarred,
and in the shadows, I could see their ghosts.
B-Team Football Practice
I wore the storied red and white
of Calvin Coolidge Junior High
as a third-string member of
the tackle football team, though I
never appeared in a league game
except for one sad kickoff play
when our side gave up a touchdown.
I went to practice every day
and when the league season was done
they held an extra “B-Team” game
for those who’d rarely played, against
a rival school’s reserves. I came
to practice in the freezing cold
the day before. Coach called us “men”
and praised our true love of football
to show up in such weather when
we were only benchwarmers and
no one would come to see us play,
and said we weren’t the best athletes
but sure had spirit anyway,
or words to that effect. Inspired,
I asked myself, “Why and I here?”
and ended up skipping the game.
Thus ended my football career.
Technician
We never call it urine. Rather, it's
the "sample fluid" or the "medium."
A rose by any other name. We get
whole racks of it in erstwhile sterile cups,
brought in from scattered clients drawn to us
by federal law or basic nosiness.
Our labor is to test the stuff for drugs.
The work is stupid-proofed. You pipette drops
of fluid into sections of a tray
with different indicators. If you see
a plus sign, you make a note on the tag.
The hard part is not mixing samples up,
but even that has gotten easier
since they went with the bar codes on the lids.
We have our jokes, like any other job,
bring us another round, this Bud's for you,
the hoary quip about how business stinks,
and stuff you pull on new guys, like the gag
where you get them to ask the boss about
the protocol for floaters in the cup.
It helps to pass the dreary clocked-in hours
without much thought, since thinking doesn't help
in our business. You know that when you get
a positive, and make that little mark,
you're kicking off some distant tragedy.
Somebody's probably going to lose a job
and end up broke, with all that promises
in our indifferent society,
but you don't dare to hint at sympathy
for those poor bastards, or at least their kids,
or ask what difference any of it makes.
That brings a blast of screw-the junkie talk
from your beer buddies, or suspicious looks,
or shrugs and the disquieting response,
if you're so smart, how come you're working here?
That question burrows to the heart of things,
where money rears its powdered, pig-tailed head,
and not the money that the firm collects,
but rather the stark paycheck I accept
which makes me party to it, and my doubts
unseemly. I am in up to my neck.
I’m not the one good pirate on the ship.
But now I'm thinking way too much again.
I doubt the slaves who made the pyramids
debated Pharaoh's building policies;
they stacked their stones and had their cakes and ale.
Their tasks were set by painted courtiers
who sneaked through corridors and whispered deals
in some far capital they'd never see.
Why beat a greasy spot upon the ground
where there was once a dead horse long ago?
Most people cannot change the way things are
or argue themselves happy. This I ought
to understand. I dabble daily with
the nectar of obedience. It is
my lot in life. Bring me another round.
Acknowledgements: The Lyric (“Dawn,” “B-Team Football Practice”), The Road Not Taken (“Pour Robot”), Slant (“Technician”)
Pulsebeat Poetry Journal 