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 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.
I could offer this in Hegelian or Satreian terms
of engagement before the void, but really,
if you're alive, and sentient,
you're an existentialist in that you know
most of what awaits is neither breath
or the electro-chemical dream of you
you carry forth and mix with fellow soothsayers
of the eternal mysteries, know intuitively
that work is money, honey,
but also and maybe moreso, is your hands
kept busy with needle and thread, hammer and scythe,
memo and counter memo, is you
joining the thrum and hum that is all there is
except what there is not.

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's
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 burn out.

I know a woman about to lose her house.
It's not missing, she's certain
where the water shut-off valve is
and which stair squeaks when she goes up
at ten to rise at four. I promised myself
I wasn't going to do this, no one listens
to this kind of poem anyway,
it might as well be a sermon or the side
of a cereal box: "The Lord
has heard my cry for mercy," contents
may have settled during shipping. Now
she has to "Self-Store" her stuff
but doesn't have the geld to do so,
and her brother's stuff from his re-poed house
is already in their mother's basement, so she's sold
what she can and given the rest away
or left it on the street for neighbors
to pick at through January. Ever watch
the woman who backed over your cat
hold one of your dresses
across her winter coat, pinning it
with her chin and turning
as if in a mirror before rejecting
your sunflowers, dropping them
into the curbside thaw and moving on
to a pair of black pumps she'd be a fool
to wear, given the apples of her ankles?
Now caption that image "Redistribution of Wealth"
and write down on a piece of paper
how you'd change the world. You never
have to show that paper to anyone, not even
yourself, the god you are inside or pimp, the ax
in case of, the glass, to break, if fire
is emergency, is now. It's hard
being a Wobbly these days, liking the head
of Marx if not the fist grafted on, there's nowhere to go
to belt out "Look for the Union Label,"
an admittedly crappy, anachronistic song
I miss like I miss the sense
of being together in this, there was Rockefeller
and there was the rest of us, there was Aristotle
being right, we are political, we are animal,
we are lost.