Industry 08.01.13

In dusty, crusty, rusty must,

We while away in industry.

 Marching forth each day to pay our way

In hard earned misery.

Broken backs hauling coffee sacks

Sending us to surgery.

12 hours on feet making food others may eat.

On the line our pride and dignity.

Whether it be mopping floors or building doors, 

We while away in industry.

For all this time that is not mine,

I give its power to those bossing me.

Those at the top seem not ever to stop

Wanting more and more greedfully.

Challenging shirk, work is home or home is work

Blurring lines of true community.

I see not the goal of hauling that coal

Rather than spend my moments with family.

How to happily survive, live, grow, and thrive

If we're whiling away in industry.

Industry: 07.31.2013

fingers stained
skin pricked
sun-tired

small prices
tiny, really

for this: to close my eyes in the dead quiet of winter and put the juicy warmth of summer on my tongue. 

small prices
tiny, really

for this: to collect the sweet prize of an afternoon's labor and hide it somewhere safe until I need it.

small prices
tiny, really

for frolicking in my squirrel skin

Industry 07.28.2013

When I was a kid, we woke up one morning to find our pet birds, Peat and Repeat, had been eaten alive by ants. Bones wiped clean. The tree outside the nearby window swarmed with them, a sight not uncommon in the Philippines, where we had been living. Even as a child, I understood that Peat and Repeat were gone because the ants had rallied for a common goal: dinner. Individually, they were small and relatively harmless; together they were fatal. I had nightmares about the ants creeping through my parent's window, and leaving a bed full of bones.

Two decades later, I lived in Florida: a state with a climate that is ripe for fire ants. In the mornings, I'd sit on my porch and watch them build mounds on the sidewalk as I pushed my hashbrowns through the dregs of ketchup on my plate. I'd watch as they gathered still-sticky popsicle sticks, overripe cherry tomatoes from the garden, and oozing dead beetles to pull into the center of the mound with industrious precision.

By mid-afternoon, without fail, the humidity would peak and the sky would open, washing away the mound, scattering tomato seeds and beetle legs across the sidewalk.

By nightfall, they had rallied together for a common goal: home. Individually, they were small; together they were unstoppable.

Kind of like us.