1-Blue-Collar Tents
Blue-collar tents
"It is not too late"
he confided to his comrades,
despair in their eyes as they fingered
dark blue ropebruises abbraced
about thin and unmeasured necks.
One, a soft-spoken scapegoat for the bosses' son
mourns:
"I am lost. My bones and my teeth are lost;
I've been in this longer than some of you kids were in school.
Every time I see him, anger wells up in me,
and I taste hateful bile in my throat.
I've given him 17 years of my life,
spent that time alone, cause I work all the time.
I'm 36, I've spent almost half my life here,
it's all I know how to do.
17 years, and where am I?
Making 6.50 an hour and time and a half on overtime,
little more than you kids.
That cur of a son of his,
every time he opens his mouth,
demeaning my work, docking my pay for mistakes,
laughing and dismantling my manhood.
You may all look forward to this,
for every time I see him,
my mind is at home with tne sheep -
shorn, eyes frozen terror like mice petrified
amidst the confident, calculating gaze of a serpent:
the farmer's son standing on the threshold,
arms spread out, the figure is looming hypnotic,
cold wild eyes smelling out the fear,
hearts run wreckless, pulses at a frenzied sprint,
legs frozen;
a hand on the belt, a step over the threshold,
and it is settled. Someone is going to get fucked."
And with heads nodding, and words
hurling themselves against glass eyes,
one youth, with shaven head and a lazy gut
gazing at his future in the air,
hearing funny silence with an echo in his ear,
"I lay here hiding from my life
in the tall grass, in the shade of a birch, in a field
some 500 miles from where my wife is bearing my child
I lay here hiding from my life;
you know, she's not really my wife, no...not yet,
but she will be, you know
I can be good, get the bread, give her everything
she's never had, as she now gives me child
some 500 miles away, where I cannot be right now,
and I'm realizing that now, as the whole ponderous weight,
alla' that god-damned responsibility chains me to the ground...
I've become an adult, but i'm still not a man,
since as you can see, me -- here...
some 500 miles away from where my wife moans in pain
with my daughter, without me, because as you can see
I don't have the cock and balls necessary
to say, "no sir, you know I can't come to work tomorrow.
Because I think it's going to be the most important day of my life."
Some moments of silence in contemplation,
consideration of culpability and in whom it lies,
realization that survival is completely relative,
and that there are no morals to real stories.
And now, driven to his quiet, controlled rage,
the strongest, a massive black man with fire
on the surface of deep-set coal eyes
stands up in inspired rage,
casting a cautious glance over one shoulder,
then the next,
Then speaks,
"Look at you.
No fucking balls.
Your woman is gripping onto a nurses hand, not yours,
and you whine like a pussy.
You see me here every day,
but you never seen me on the street.
On the street I get respect - I got the same dignity as any man.
But I never see the street.
Look at yourselves now,
look at me.
No pride, no value, all expendable.
Boss tells us so every time one quits and another takes his place.
He don't even learn our names, he don't need to.
I do the work of three men, don't matter.
Just like this, you work, you depend,
like kids depend on a drunk dad.
Since we depend, he treat us like shit,
cause we got no place better to go.
'Much control as I got, may s'well be slaves.
Look at my skin.
It means nothing, we're equally low.
I see a brother on the street, I give him a quarter,
and I see more pride in his eyes than I got now -
I see the eyes of a free man.
A begger, a hobo;
they depend on people without being slaves."
Looking around, silence choking their ears;
they heard each other swallowing,
and knew it was pride.
Thoughts of new beginnings,
of what life was and was not.
A sadisctic voice tore through the silence,
casting their thoughts to the wind like pulled weeds,
"lunch break's over, slapdicks!
Quit jackin' each other off and get back to work!"
They went back to work.
They were dead even as they stood.
edit: fixed last line of poem
"It is not too late"
he confided to his comrades,
despair in their eyes as they fingered
dark blue ropebruises abbraced
about thin and unmeasured necks.
One, a soft-spoken scapegoat for the bosses' son
mourns:
"I am lost. My bones and my teeth are lost;
I've been in this longer than some of you kids were in school.
Every time I see him, anger wells up in me,
and I taste hateful bile in my throat.
I've given him 17 years of my life,
spent that time alone, cause I work all the time.
I'm 36, I've spent almost half my life here,
it's all I know how to do.
17 years, and where am I?
Making 6.50 an hour and time and a half on overtime,
little more than you kids.
That cur of a son of his,
every time he opens his mouth,
demeaning my work, docking my pay for mistakes,
laughing and dismantling my manhood.
You may all look forward to this,
for every time I see him,
my mind is at home with tne sheep -
shorn, eyes frozen terror like mice petrified
amidst the confident, calculating gaze of a serpent:
the farmer's son standing on the threshold,
arms spread out, the figure is looming hypnotic,
cold wild eyes smelling out the fear,
hearts run wreckless, pulses at a frenzied sprint,
legs frozen;
a hand on the belt, a step over the threshold,
and it is settled. Someone is going to get fucked."
And with heads nodding, and words
hurling themselves against glass eyes,
one youth, with shaven head and a lazy gut
gazing at his future in the air,
hearing funny silence with an echo in his ear,
"I lay here hiding from my life
in the tall grass, in the shade of a birch, in a field
some 500 miles from where my wife is bearing my child
I lay here hiding from my life;
you know, she's not really my wife, no...not yet,
but she will be, you know
I can be good, get the bread, give her everything
she's never had, as she now gives me child
some 500 miles away, where I cannot be right now,
and I'm realizing that now, as the whole ponderous weight,
alla' that god-damned responsibility chains me to the ground...
I've become an adult, but i'm still not a man,
since as you can see, me -- here...
some 500 miles away from where my wife moans in pain
with my daughter, without me, because as you can see
I don't have the cock and balls necessary
to say, "no sir, you know I can't come to work tomorrow.
Because I think it's going to be the most important day of my life."
Some moments of silence in contemplation,
consideration of culpability and in whom it lies,
realization that survival is completely relative,
and that there are no morals to real stories.
And now, driven to his quiet, controlled rage,
the strongest, a massive black man with fire
on the surface of deep-set coal eyes
stands up in inspired rage,
casting a cautious glance over one shoulder,
then the next,
Then speaks,
"Look at you.
No fucking balls.
Your woman is gripping onto a nurses hand, not yours,
and you whine like a pussy.
You see me here every day,
but you never seen me on the street.
On the street I get respect - I got the same dignity as any man.
But I never see the street.
Look at yourselves now,
look at me.
No pride, no value, all expendable.
Boss tells us so every time one quits and another takes his place.
He don't even learn our names, he don't need to.
I do the work of three men, don't matter.
Just like this, you work, you depend,
like kids depend on a drunk dad.
Since we depend, he treat us like shit,
cause we got no place better to go.
'Much control as I got, may s'well be slaves.
Look at my skin.
It means nothing, we're equally low.
I see a brother on the street, I give him a quarter,
and I see more pride in his eyes than I got now -
I see the eyes of a free man.
A begger, a hobo;
they depend on people without being slaves."
Looking around, silence choking their ears;
they heard each other swallowing,
and knew it was pride.
Thoughts of new beginnings,
of what life was and was not.
A sadisctic voice tore through the silence,
casting their thoughts to the wind like pulled weeds,
"lunch break's over, slapdicks!
Quit jackin' each other off and get back to work!"
They went back to work.
They were dead even as they stood.
edit: fixed last line of poem