Dear Dirty America

National Weather Service, NOAA (via 100 Peculiarly Useful…Poems)

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

Nature is being assaulted by human enterprises
& unconscious perseverating behavior—
get used to it.

Those who have moral scruples
are disadvantaged in competition—
get over it.

Those without moral scruples have the advantage.
Those with lucky connections have the advantage
Likewise money or what only money can buy
or pleasing those with money.

All else being equal, skill is an advantage—
but all else isn’t equal, get over it.

All else being equal, truth is an advantage—
but, since all else isn’t equal, falsehood is an advantage.

Wisdom is an advantage
except among the unwise
who are generally suspicious
of anyone appearing to imagine their wisdom is superior—
get used to it, get over it, don’t be sour or bitter or beaten.

It is the way it is, but change it—
get used to it, get over it—
never allow yourself to pretend it isn’t so.

When you’re overwhelmed by it, survive, get stronger
get more capable, change it.

Be like nature, change, be unpredictable—
then you can be wounded, but you’ll storm back, stronger.

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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