Before I started looking for my job in corporate America, I was a day laborer. I was a dishwasher, landscaper, even a bouncer. I can't say that I'm a blue collar worker though because I never made a life out of it. I never depended on these grueling jobs for my sole source of income, and I never reached a level of skill that would distinguish me in any of those professions. What I can say is that I gained a strong sense of admiration for those who spend a lifetime doing jobs that most of us would prefer to farm out to other people. Some of them hate their jobs, but a majority of the people I've met in these professions do it with a profound sense of passion. I admire the guts, the resolve, and the determination that alot of them possess despite the fact that they don't bring home massive paychecks. Also, to be truthful, they take alot of crap from a lot of very annoying people. So today I am paying tribute to them in one of the few ways I know how. The manly art of poetry...it's manly damn you! Don't judge me!
Economic Infantry
Working-class people
Hang out in working-class places
You can tell them by the wear
On their working-class faces
Working-class people
Who gave up on dreams
Work for new reasons
And the working-class seems
To be just working for tomorrow
And maybe another chance
Waiting for someone
To give their working class a glance
They’re tired of the working-class struggle
Taking place from pole to pole
And they’re tired of the working-class shovels
That dug them into their working-class holes
They don’t want a new world
Maybe one with softer beds
And they won’t let a stylist
Touch their working-class threads
There is no working-class botox
No necessary chemical peels
Ain’t no beauty in the pain
That the working-class feels
There’s no working-class poetry
Their time is quite spoken for
Leave at dawn, return at dusk
Stumbling back through working-class doors
Yet they are the vanguard
The advancing front line of mankind
Who eat all the artillery
While the rest, rest behind
The factory workers and auto repair men
The miners, landscapers
And bouncers who scare men
The tailors, the day laborers
The dishwashers and cooks
Those that toil in freezers
Hanging meat through metal hooks
Grave diggers
Construction workers
Dock workers and dredgers
Ah, the mere infantry of life,
Poor beggars.
Francis - nice poem, but as an English graduate, I would expect you to know that a lot is two words.
ReplyDelete