Anthem For Humanity
ERIC CHAET
(originally posted at 100 Peculiarly Useful So-Called Poems)
Humanity! Humanity!
Spiral thru the cosmic sea!
Hues like stones & pottery,
stunning truth & flattery!
Some are drunk
with unearned strength,
unaware of right & wrong;
some are sad & reel from blows
& strive to readjust with song!
More aware than chimpanzee,
ant or star-fish, grass or tree!
Susceptible to vanity,
wrath, & generosity!
Flags & borders, schemes of fools
make your thumbs & minds the tools
of war, instead of victory
over drought, flood, injury!
Humanity! Humanity!
Spiral thru the cosmic sea!
Child & elder, woman, man—
plan, & humbly act your plan!
Eric Chaet, born Chicago, 1945, South Side, beaten, denigrated, sinking, swimming—servant of a refractory nation and species, sweating laborer in factories and warehouses, wearing jacket and tie in offices and classrooms—“so-called poems” published and posted around the world, sporadically, for decades—author of People I Met Hitchhiking On USA Highways (read a review) and How To Change the World Forever For Better—perpetual polymath student, synthesizer of specialists’ insights and methods, solo consultant regarding space exploration and accidents involving obsolete industrial machinery—album of songs Solid and Sound—hitchhiked back and forth between the Pacific and Atlantic, sleeping out for years and subsisting on water and sunflower seeds, stapling a series of 1500 posters he made to utility poles, inciting whoever saw them to seize the responsibility for their own lives—governing without coalition or means of or inclination to coerce or confiscate, from below, approximately invisible.