Games & Branches
I live among those who play games
& imagine that the games are what the games represent—
winners & losers of games speeding past graveyards
burning up the residue of the large dinosaurs
while the small surviving dinosaurs observe them
from the depths of the sky & naked branches of trees.
The leafless branches of trees
during the dark, cold months
used to fill me with dread—
rather, drain from me the opposite of dread.
But now they seem to me like the thinning hair
of the survivors—so far—of the only battle there is—
taking careful notice
of the futile parades & displays of the deluded
& beyond them
of the manouvers of my adversaries
& allies, however partial their understanding & competence
while I refine my goals & tactics
& mend my equipment, material & spiritual
& regain my strength & momentum.
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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