Gandhi & Chance
when I was born
wore garment round lower vitals
of cloth he’d spun
while thinking how to move people
thru slag of inert idea & outrage
with song & firm step
along dusty roads in hot suns
taking chances among desperate unknowns.
I found out about him
& delved into his doings
3rd floor downtown Chicago Public Library
traffic blaring thru Prudential Building shadow
under flocks of Grant Park pigeons
years after his death
& still his focused life drives me
& Woody Guthrie’s dead
& several unknowns of the species
I’ve encountered
who’ve died many times since myself
& live to testify.
Eric Chaet, The Turnaround Artist, born Chicago, USA, 1945, raised on rough South Side, pre-computer factory, office, & warehouse jobs. Some teaching, some independent self-taught technical consulting. 1974, Old Buzzard of No-Man’s Land, poems, Toronto, Canada. 1977, Solid and Sound, vinyl LP of songs, Lee’s Summit, Missouri, USA. Mid-80s to mid-90s, silkscreened, hitchhiked, & stapled 1500 cloth posters to utility poles along American highways. 1990, How To Change the World Forever For Better, brief prose philosophy, Greenleaf, Wisconsin, USA; 2nd edition, 1994. 2001, People I Met Hitchhiking On USA Highways, mostly narrative prose, De Pere, Wisconsin, USA. Lives in Wisconsin, industrialized dairy farms & cows, remnant cheese & paper factories & factory hands & outlaw mammals & birds, post-construction boom, reactionary politics & obsolete machinery, a smattering of professionals & millionaires. Poems published, over 50 years in many USA states, plus Brazil, Cuba, Ireland, Scotland, England, Spain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Nepal, India, China, Singapore, Korea, & Taiwan, often in translation.
Reach him via Contact box at bottom of any page of his website, 100 Peculiarly Useful So-Called Poems, <http://www.ericchaet.
wordpress.com>.
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