Dear Dirty America

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I Have To Get Organized!

September 29
11:00 2012
ERIC CHAET


(originally posted at 100 Peculiarly Useful So Called Poems)

I have to get organized!
The people I’m living among
impervious to my suggestions
are failing—
& I’m failing, too!

It’s not my fault—
it’s not even the fault of the people whose fault it is!

I have to get clear what I want to achieve
& what part of it & how much of it is feasible—
I have to match what I want to do
& my capacities
with current conditions & probable trends—
& I have to get clear
what tasks I must perform & in what order
& allocate my resources—
my time, body, & attention, if nothing else—
prioritize, design my strategy
make my method conscious & improve & keep improving it—
I have to prioritize
& reduce clutter & friction
& self-destructive attitudes, bad habits, & waste.

While continuing to align my well-being
with the well-being
of whoever doesn’t try to gain at my expense
I have to plan & execute.

Blaming others or myself won’t help—
I have to compete with the people I’m inclined to blame.

I have to leave in my wake
anyone who won’t accept what I’ve labored to offer
or help me in return—
however much I understand why they behave as they do
& sympathize—
even if they do flaunt it
when they imagine they have beat me out
in competition for this or that pathetic luxury
or for the respect or acclaim of some deluded group.

However justifiable what I’ve done so far
however even admirable whatever I’ve done so far—
I’m failing!
I have to get organized!

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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