The man has a son,
and stands nights
aching behind an assembly line,
Sleeping the days away
While his son goes to school.
The son thinks his father
Is thoughtless and dirty
And his mother a grease-bitch
For marrying him.
The son grows up
Between his college books,
And begins to put it together:
A society of men
Wanting to take a variety
Of stimulating produce--
Though some were more the makers
Than the takers;
The image of rightness
In a man putting his hormones
To the making of a company
In a family; a family
That needs a provider to survive;
A man honorable and trapped
And there are nights
He awakens, gagging at the
Sudden thought of a man
Next to him
Who had engaged his body
In a lower form of sharing.
And he wonders if embracing a world
Of ideas can be done
When all things cannot be believed;
If humanism is
Energy vented
To avoid futility;
And what grossness
He would have to justify next--
All on those nights
When self-perspectives
Are swept under in change.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
Man of Coal
You knew it was coming:
Twenty-three years and the mine
Would notice you one time,
Photocopied.
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