Dear Dirty America

(originally posted at 100 Peculiarly Useful So Called Poems)

Every inner turmoil absorbs attention
& requires temporary or final resolution
before progress can be made—
likewise every conflict between or among individuals
likewise every conflict between or among groups of individuals
likewise genders, age groups, nations
people with different physical characteristics, ethnicities
different histories, creditors & debtors, aggressive, diffident.Meanwhile how is education best organized & implemented?
How is food best provided? Clean water? Clean air?
How are wastes best disposed of?
How is medical care to be provided?
Who is to provide what infrastructure? On what terms?
Who is to police what behavior?
What are the terms of engagement?

Who is to pay? For what? How much?
Who has the authority to decide these questions?

Should a person give up on humanity as a whole
& concentrate on his or her own well-being?
Or is one’s well-being inextricably
bound up with the well-being of nearby neighbors
& neighbors however distantly removed
& speaking other languages & otherwise occupied?

Shall I concentrate on progressing as one among everyone?
Or mainly look out for myself?

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.

“Like” Dear Dirty America on Facebook