Dear Dirty America

DDA

Doorman

September 05
11:00 2012
ERIC CHAET
Picture: Hotel Panorama, Hong Kong
(originally posted at 100 Peculiarly Useful So-Called Poems)
Good morning, sir, good morning, ma’am. 

Yes, I’m wearing a different uniform, 

different gloves, different hat. 

I’ve cleaned the glass of the door— 

I discovered a new solvent. 

Isn’t it glorious, how the glass 

is so thoroughly transparent, 

yet transmitting sparkle from the Sun? 

Yes, you’re right, it’s a different door, 

different frame, different hinges, too. 

Notice, in fact, that the building 

into which I’m ushering you 

is a different building 

than the one you routinely enter. 

Please, take a good look 

at your reflection in the glass— 

that’s the last you’ll see of it. 

It won’t survive the walk across the lobby. 

Someone else will step out of the elevator 

on a different floor, different company, 

different industry, different agenda, 

different obstacles, different opportunities, 

different priorities, different purpose.

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. 

You can contact him at the Leave a Reply box on each page of his website, 100 Peculiarly Useful So-Called Poems, <http://www.ericchaet.wordpress.com>.

Find Chaet’s book, People I Met Hitchhiking USA Highwaysand read a review written hereSee also, There’s still a little breath in the old American RevolutionOn Job Creationand Stalin.

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