JC spoke to me, and asked for a work poem ...

Jason asked i put up some more mill poetry ... so i looked around and found this one, written in Sept. 1997. probably not what he was looking for ... but it's the one i found that sort of captured the way the papermill felt when i first started. (Still no contact, though that is supposed to be addressed in mid-June and neither side seems to be very concerned at the moment, so that means ???? - and still the containerboard division is for sale, but haven't heard any updates on that in a couple of days. most likely that will be a 6 month project to get sorted out.)

headed back to the paper mill tomorrow (the joyous night shift!!), loads of overtime over the next couple of weeks ... so updates may be a bit spotty, all depends on that ever elusive thing called sleep ... anyway, here's today's poem, for Jason and all you other working people of the world!!



WORK POEM

can't buy heaven on a papermakers wage.
i tells you, lucky to get 4 wheels
& a roof sometimes, but, hey, it's
better than flippin' burgers - & that's no shit!

we (feeling more like Lazerus on rotating
shifts, than St. Paul)
pray to gods with our own terminology.
most days seems like he either deaf
or missing his dictionary.

slitter section bombed out - again.
so we override the computers
& set them by hand - the way
real papermakers did before they let fags & dykes
into the work place,
or so said the retiring backtender.
we not exactly saints, each seeking
cannonization before their own deity.