artwork: ralph murre
Opening Poem in a
Still Unwritten Collection of Workplace Poetry
by
Ed Werstein
Let
me just start by saying
not
to plagiarize
but
more to pay homage
to
the great Factory poet
that
like the Continental Can presses
waited
for Antler
the
Briggs and Stratton machines
waited
for me.
They
waited while I altar-boyed and baseballed
farm-chored,
catholic schooled and seminaried.
They
waited while I anti-drafted and anti-warred
and
when they saw their opening
they
called me
to
labor.
They
hid their misery and enticed me
with
a ticket to the union ball.
I
don’t know whether to blame myself
or
my muse for the fact that
the
machines worked me over for 22 years
but,
unlike his muse who led him
from
the can presses dancing
and
bleeding ink
after
a few short months,
mine
was hitting the snooze alarm
every
god damned morning
while
I got up and went to work.
And
only now, long after I found my own way out of hell,
she
(lazy bitch that she is) taps me
on
the shoulder, points to the past and says
Oh, look at that!
Why didn’t we ever write
about that stuff?
Well,
go back to sleep, you Melpomene come lately
I
can take this one solo
and
if it turns out to be a rant untempered
by
your flowery musings, so be it,
because
factories ain’t pretty
and no one who’s never been there
knows the tedium and the pain
and no one who’s never been there
knows the tedium and the pain
and
you, for your part,
slept
through it.
~
first published in WHO ARE WE THEN? (Partisan
Press)
