Dear Dirty America

Photo by: Purnima Koli

(originally posted at 100 Peculiarly Useful So-Called Poems)

I imagine I have an audience—
tho many times it seems no one is paying attention to me
& many times it seems to me I have nothing of value to tell anyone
& I’m tempted just to distill some of others’ cleverness
& pass it along as my own
so that people will tell me how wonderful I am
tho I’d be just a moon reflecting some sun’s light.

But I imagine I have an audience
I imagine that what I am saying will have effects
good or bad, wise or unwise, trivial or profound.

I imagine I have an audience
composed of people a lot or a little like I am & have been & will be
& also very or a little different from who I am & have been & will be.

I imagine I have an audience
who judge for themselves what is useful, what not
of what I say—
what is completely correct, partially correct, or false, or foolish
who discard this, incorporate that for use
as I have figured it out & expressed it
or modified, customized for their own use—
as a result of which they survive, thrive, achieve
with more or less frustration, suffering, grace, failure or success.

I imagine that they’ll have a powerful impact
on the agenda & destiny of the human species—
I imagine I have an audience.

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 Highways, and read a review written here. See also, There’s still a little breath in the old American Revolution, On Job Creation, and Stalin.

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