"In These Times."My sister's out of work and my brother's
out of work and my other brother's
out of work, these are facts available
over the phone or in person, just as now,
three clouds travel north, one
above another, smallish, amoeba shaped,
and the bottom cloud just died,
and the top two have joined forces
and left me to fend for myself
under a new sky.
How vague is that, amoeba shaped?
That could be anything: cigar shaped,
Manhattan shaped, could be libor, t-bill, jobs report,
which arrive as theoretical entities, words
from a tele-prompter repeated by newscasters
and converted to waves beamed to satellites
and bounced to my set to be reconstituted
as their basset-hound eyes of concern
when the day's dollop or wallop of woe
is mashed and rehashed by people
making good scratch for telling us how bad it is.
There's little to hold in what they say.
That's what a job is: a pencil to hold, a scalpel,
shovel, "A Statistical Analysis
of the Probability That Anyone Will Read
the Statistical Analysis," even such slippage
is a mind-hold that keeps some someone
from drifting off into irrelevance.
My sister's out of work and my brother's
out of work and my other brother's
out of work, these are facts known to many
and more many every day,
there but for the grace of a W-2
go you, as I'm employed by this poem
that's about to lay me off, I remember that
when the question of what to do
gets intellected about.
Jobs to do because there's work to do
because this whole to-do's
a stop-gap measure to the zip
or heaven to come, about which
we haven't a clue.
A little Keynesing now or a lot of keening
later, when the phone rings
and maybe it's you whose house
is no longer your house, whose car has
just been slicked away by a guy
tatted-up all goth and penitentiary,
you whose kid needs grub, me
who has to mumble through
some version of
could you, I don't know, maybe send me,
I hate to ask, a few bucks?
If you never had to make that call,
let me kiss the inside of your skull, let me intercede
on the part of the burned field
for the grass,
on the side of the cadaver
for the walk under moonlight, I'm only praying
you listen to the theory
that how we get to be alone
is how we work to be together, since there are stars
inside your thumb, your breath,
and how you say yes or no is how they shine
or go out.
Weekly Poem: 'Contracted'
