Another Cynic

You've heard the tale
Of Diogenes, the Cynic,
Who walked the streets of Athens
In daylight, clad in a dirty toga,
Carrying a lamp.

When he was asked
"Why?"

He responded
"I'm just looking for an honest man."

Meet Rich Hanson, the Cynic.
He's just looking for "hope."

Weathering

The scent of antiseptic sterility,
The hard steel exam table, morgue cold
To the touch, left me feeling none too bold.
It tends to shrivel one's vitality,
This search for rogue cells that can kill a man.
The refrain, "my body, it's been a good friend,
But I won't need it, when I reach the end,"
From Cat Steven's Tea for the Tillerman
Drifts through my mind; the scan is reality,
A jolt, a reminder of one's mortality.

Like a stray dog the years dog our footsteps,
Impervious to our kicks and curses.
Youth cocksure becomes age that rehearses
Humble prayers and turns to sacred texts
To prepare for an audience with death.
The inexorable onslaught of time
Testifies as mortality's witness
As endurance ebbs to shortness of breath.
As if being wracked for some crime unknown
Strong limbs with arthritic stiffness groan

Volcanic passion thrust forth an island
Of sea-defying smugness, basalt proud.
Time-weathered now, a reef on which gulls crowd.
Presaging a water-shrouded shoal of sand.
If we could just choose to halt time's ravage
Of our island at some youthful time of desire,
Our proud landmark outcrop that waves savage
Could rebuff them to harmless spray and aspire
to an eternity.  But perish we must.
Time's relentless waves beat us into dust
Just as islands to sand, and iron to rust.

The Mother Jones Trilogy

(Three "Spoon River" Poems)

Alexi Rakowski

I was handed a sign to hold that demanded
An increase in our pay and an eight hour day.
When the strike-breakers came the cops accompanied them.
They bulled their way through us, their brass-knuckled hands
Brandishing clubs or socks filled with lead weights.
A blind rage took hold of me and I swung my sign
At the head of one of the helmeted hooligans in blue.
In Russia the Czar used his police as agents of repression.
In Lady Liberty's land the rich have bought them as well.
How can you respect authority that can be purchased
By selfish men to do their evil bidding?
How can you respect laws that are written to protect scabs,
Yet can also be used to punish union workers?
I took a club to the head and came to in jail.
I heard an angry woman cursing out one of the guards
In language that a stevedore would have blushed to have heard.
Her voice softened though, as she knelt beside me
With her pail of water and rags and began to clean my wound.
"You're an angel," I whispered gratefully.  "A humanitarian."
"I'm not a humanitarian," she corrected me sharply.  "I'm a hell-raiser.
"Hang in there, son.  Get well and return  to the fight."
Her care and encouragement forever wedded me to the union cause.
I later found out that this ministering angel was "Mother" Jones,
Whom mineowners called "The most dangerous woman in America."

Scottie Walker

My co-workers never had much use for me, contemptuously
Referring to me as an "ass-kisser,"  or "company man."
I always knew though that I was better than the "tunnel rats"
That I had to work with.  I was forced to leave the mines though,
When some of the men discovered that I'd been turning in names
Of union organizers and those miners sympathetic to joining one,
To management.  I feared that if I stayed after my role leaked out,
That they'd find my body someday in some branch tunnel,
My head caved in and a bloody chunk of anthracite beside me.
There were men now who hated me and wanted to see me dead.
The company brass took care of me though, getting me a new job
As a Pinkerton dick.  How I loved my new uniform!  Two rows
Of shiny brass buttons, a badge, a gun and a billyclub.
As for the men who had little use for me as a co-worker,
You think I didn't lay it on them when I got the chance to?
Let me tell you this, you ambitious young men:
You'll rise faster if you ally yourself with capital.
You do its bidding and you'll reap rich rewards.
You join a union and all you'll get is a club to the head.
I rose to become Chief of the State Detective Bureau.
I had a grand mansion on the hill with the other rich folk,
And the boys at the club addressed me as "Mr." Walker.

Mary Harris "Mother" Jones

I could have given up when I lost my husband and children
To a yellow fever epidemic, then my dress shop to the Chicago fire.
Instead, I remained to help work to rebuild the city.
Soon the laborers that I worked alongside became my family,
And like any doting parent, I wanted better lives for them.
Better lives that could only be attained by union solidarity,
By organizing to work together to seize what the business interests
Would never deign to open their wallets to give them.
Management didn't know how to deal with a resolute woman.
They couldn't beat me into submission as they did the men.
I fought for labor's children too, as if they were my own.
Challenging the legislators, like those in Georgia,
Who had just passed a bill to protect the songbirds,
Yet offered no such protection to the mill-shackled children
Who worked brutal hours until all song was drained from them.
I was an advocate for the miners.  When the owners would close
Mountain roads to me, I would ascend to their holdings
Via deer trails or by wading up mountain streams.
I became the "Mother" who urged her boys to read and to stand firm.
Nothing daunted me.  I even took the cause to Rockefeller himself.
My "thank you" was the fifty thousand miners that gathered
At Mount Olive, Illinois, to consecrate the imposing monument
That they'd raised money to erect at my gravesite.  A touching tribute,
But I wish they'd spent that money on their children instead.

Black Hawk's Bones

(Words in italics are those recorded as having been uttered
 by Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kai-Kiak, known to white settlers
 as Chief Black Hawk)

He had lived too long.  He'd watched a never-ceasing wave
Of settlers move in, unearthing the graves of his ancestors
With their plows, putting up fences, debasing with their liquor,
Demeaning with their laws or damning with their religion.
Theirs were not his tribal ways, theirs was not his God.
The Earth is our mother - we are now on it
With the Great Spirit above it.  It is good."
"It has pleased the Great Spirit that I am here today."

"Rock River was a beautiful country.  I fought for it.
It is now yours - keep it as we did - it will produce good crops."
The elderly Sauk statesman, whose bones now ached as though
He'd waken from a sleep upon frozen, unforgiving ground
Gazed out at the white, mostly unfamiliar, some hostile, faces
Who had come to hear him, not out of respect, but curiosity.
"I was once a great warrior.  I am now poor."
"It has pleased the Great Spirit that I am here today."

"I have looked upon the Mississippi since
I have been a child.  I love the Great River.  I have dwelt
Upon its banks from the time I was an infant."  Not entirely true.
He and his people had been driven west, until a yearning for home
Moved him to lead his tribe in an effort to reclaim their heritage.
"White men came year after year to cheat them and take away their lands.
I have done nothing for which an Indian ought to feel ashamed."
"It has pleased the Great Spirit that I am here today."

Their doomed quest was met with military might, a pursuit
That chased his people down at the Bad Axe River, where cornered,
They were picked off by sharpshooters who showed no more mercy
Toward squaws and children than they did toward braves -
Firing at them as though they were rats rather than human beings.
"A few winters ago I was fighting against you.  I did wrong, perhaps,
But that is past - it is buried - let it be forgotten."
"It has pleased the Great Spirit that I am here today."

The ultimate dishonor came soon after his death.
The old Chief's bones were dug up, stolen, cleaned and varnished
By a shyster intent on displaying the skeleton for profit.
Black Hawk's son appealed to the white man's justice
That had failed his people so often in the past.
Asking that the bones be retrieved and the thief punished.
They were recovered and identified by Black Hawk's widow.
"It has pleased the Great Spirit that I am here today."

Bones however engender no respect, unless considered
Saintly relics.  Black Hawk's were not viewed as such. 
The box of bones eventually was lost track of, rumored
To have been incinerated in a Burlington office fire,
Or more likely, buried without ceremony in a potter's field
That section of a cemetery reserved for the indigent,
Those too poor to pay for a marker of remembrance.
"It has pleased the Great Spirit that I am here today."

Such an ignoble end to such a noble life,
To have such a forgiving spirit callously discarded,
His remains lost to history, giving us no Canterbury
To make a pilgrimage to; no gravesite to visit,
No bones to become the objects of our veneration.
"He is satisfied.  He will go to the world of spirits contented.
He has done his duty.  His father will meet him there, and commend him."
"It has pleased the Great Spirit that I am here today."

Packing House Patriotism

The inexorable movement of the chain of death
Suddenly clunked to a halt
The  morning of September 11th, 2014.
A scratchy announcement blared
From the seldom-used intercom system.

"We are observing a moment of silence
In memory of those who died
At the hands of terrorists
Eleven years ago today in New York City."

Hog carcasses, still warm from having passed
Through the singers, polishers and showers,
Drip blood and water into the drain troughs
Steam rises from the "hot pots" that we use
To sterilize our knives in.

For a minute silence reigned
As some of us paused to reflect;
Others just enjoyed the respite from drudgery.

Then the chain began moving again.

At 10:40
The Kill Floor took their scheduled break,
Shortened by a minute on this hallowed anniversary,
To compensate for time that had been so generously
Donated by the line workers
Without their consent
To honor the dead.

Corporate America will proudly
Wave the flag and pay vocal homage
To the Nation's fallen heroes
With as much show as anyone;
Just so long as doing so doesn't slow production
Or cut into their bottom line.

Those Moments

I've not yet found a way to summon them
At will, but I'm grateful when they do appear;
Those moments that occur far too seldom
In my life, and always when I'm alone.

Scaling a gentle rise in an Illinois field,
Surrounded by billowing prairie grasses
That bend to confide their secrets to the breeze;
Following a trail into a North Shore forest
Suddenly hushed, as though fearful of my presence;
Or hiking along the Lake Superior shoreline,
Watching the waves caress the pebbled beach
Only to see them gently rebuffed.
They retreat, only to muster the resolve
To approach the indifferent land again.
This eternal ritual of sea and shore's
Unrelenting courtship and rejection
Lays its soothing hand upon my soul.

I sigh,
Breathe deeply
And as I exhale

My sadness
My despair
My bitterness
All my unfulfilled yearnings,
All my shortcomings
Pass from me for some moments

Until the glimpse of a plane,
The distant honk of a horn,
The far away bark of a dog
Or the intrusion of another human
Into the scene wrenches me
From these moments of epiphany.

I become resentful and sullen again,
Like a weed pulled from its nurturing soil,
Its naked roots dangling, futilely longing to return
To the sustenance that it had been plucked from,
Despairing as to whether it can ever find it again.

Don't Lay Away Your Todays for Tomorrow

Don't lay away your todays for tomorrow.
See Paris when you're young.  Fall in love there.
Rent a gondola on the Grand Canal,
Climb above the clouds to Machu Picchu,
Take time off to find yourself if you need to.
Wander a quiet wood or walk the shore
Of a sun-catching lake on a May day,
Or just sit in a park and feed the squirrels.

The "boss," the punch clock, the unfulfilling tasks
All become shackles that render us "wage slaves."
Working towards those ends may be virtuous
To some, usually the employers who peddle
That line, but most of us who pursue our dreams
Discover that the prize that we've desired
Has eluded our grasp or has been wrested from us,
Rendering our lives  exercises in futility.

When you visit a nursing home, "listen."
Mournful sobs plunge past despair's deepest depth
Into realms of more pitiless sorrow.
Wretched warehoused souls who wait upon death
Can never forget, and most deeply regret, .
Having laid away their yesterdays for today.