Organ Grinder

photo: ralph murre

Organ Grinder

by Ed Werstein

            One donor can save up to eight lives.

                                    -Donate Life Website

But who except an organ grinder

would want these?

Sixty-five year old eyes

cataracted, full of floaters,

astigmatized.

Who would want a graft

of this old skin

easily bruised

paper-thin?

Dry, pocked joints

without cushion

that grind and pop

ache and bind.

Ears ringing with bells

that aren’t there.

Brittle brain.

Heart long past its warranty.

~ first published in Red Cedar

Teaching Women How to Fly

Teaching Women How to Fly

by Ed Werstein

-          On December 14, 2010, more than 30 workers died and

100 were injured when they jumped from upper floor windows

to escape a garment factory fire in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Your great-grandparents marched

for safety, "Bread and roses!"

after the fire forced the women to jump

from windows at the Triangle shirt factory
in New York City  in 1911.

Your grandparents fought and died

for safety, "Bread and roses!"

at Flint in 1937.
Held the GM factory for weeks

to win their union.

Your parents picketed

time and again

for safety, "Bread and roses!"
to protect their unions

in what has become the Rust Belt.

And now women are flying again

falling from factory windows in Bangladesh

while you wait in lines at Walmart

to buy the shirts they were sewing

on the day before they died,

died to make the owners richer.

Owners whose ancestors owned
shirt factories in New York.

Owners who now are looking

for other women,

in even poorer countries,

to teach them how to fly.

~ first published in the Blue Collar Review

Opening Poem . . .

artwork: ralph murre

Opening Poem in a Still Unwritten Collection of Workplace Poetry

by Ed Werstein

Let me just start by saying

not to plagiarize

but more to pay homage

to the great Factory poet

that like the Continental Can presses

waited for Antler

the Briggs and Stratton machines

waited for me.

They waited while I altar-boyed and baseballed

farm-chored, catholic schooled and seminaried.

They waited while I anti-drafted and anti-warred

and when they saw their opening

they called me

to labor.

They hid their misery and enticed me

with a ticket to the union ball.

I don’t know whether to blame myself

or my muse for the fact that

the machines worked me over for 22 years

but, unlike his muse who led him

from the can presses dancing

and bleeding ink

after a few short months,

mine was hitting the snooze alarm

every god damned morning

while I got up and went to work.

And only now, long after I found my own way out of hell,

she (lazy bitch that she is) taps me

on the shoulder, points to the past and says

Oh, look at that!

Why didn’t we ever write about that stuff?

Well, go back to sleep, you Melpomene come lately

I can take this one solo

and if it turns out to be a rant untempered

by your flowery musings, so be it,

because factories ain’t pretty
and no one who’s never been there
knows the tedium and the pain

and you, for your part,

slept through it.

~ first published in WHO ARE WE THEN? (Partisan Press)

Memo on a Parable

Memo on a Parable

by Ed Werstein

To:       The Shepherd
Re:       Your Lost Sheep

Let’s consider this from his perspective.

Maybe he had a mind of his own.

Maybe he was tired of conforming,

of every time his eyes wandered

feeling the crook of your staff

round his neck.

Maybe he just wanted to be

alone for awhile,

to not be a part of the fucking

flock any more.

Maybe he was sick and tired

of your mid-night advances.

Maybe he was an artist

searching for a tar pit

to dye in,

the original black sheep.

Maybe he didn’t want to be found.

Maybe you were just afraid

of what songs he’d sing to your flock

across the hills at night.

~ first appeared on The Camel Saloon

Austerity

photoart: ralph murre

Austerity

by Ed Werstein

The text of this poem has been appropriated as a payment of debts owed.

What if, like other states, the state of poetry were in default?

Poets everywhere would be in debt.

A word lifted here, a phrase there,

a borrowed reference

and pretty soon it would start to add up.

The lenders,

wildly rich with words

piled high in library vaults

(words like money, gold,  jewelry,

estates, off-shore bank accounts,

portfolios and Porsches),

would lend to us

at ever-increasing interest rates.

We would continue to write,

but eventually our words would

disappear as we wrote them,

repossessed.

We would be left with only titles,

signifying not our ownership

but our mounting debts,

and these few words:

austerity, crisis,

foreclosure, unemployment,

hunger, poverty, war.

Words that would never be taken from us.

~ first published in New Verse News

The Center, Not Holding

photoart: ralph murre

The Center, Not Holding                     

                        after re-reading Yeats' The Second Coming

by Ed Werstein

Here is what has been revealed so far:

That tide of anarchy
stemmed in its infancy

might have been preferable

to this.

The shapes of tanks and missiles

dim the sands of two deserts

with the blood of both the innocent

and the invaders,

sending even more

indignant desert birds

into flights of terror.

Here at home,

blind falconers on Wall Street

cannot control the economy,

which is only one of many things

falling apart.

Those who have convictions,

are full of the passionate

intensity of polarity.

Meanwhile, the hungry falcon

spirals out of control

in search of more prey,

its hooked beak, sharp talons

and beady eyes,

now focused firmly

on the middle class,

the center that is not holding.

Darkness drops

as the rough beast

of deep recession,
having devoured Bethlehem

and other steel towns

decades ago,

slouches on and on.

~ first published in The Blue Collar Review

Sleep

artwork: ralph murre

Sleep                  

by Ed Werstein

taps me on the shoulder
and says she wants

to take me to bed.

I tell her I'm just

going to finish

this chapter and then
I'll join her and

she'll get what she's after.

Sleep is impatient

keeps poking me
insisting I pay her

some attention.

I think she is jealous

of my books.

Sleep slips a mickey

into my herbal tea

and has her way with me.

I wake at three and realize

she's left me again.

She's thrown my book

on the floor

and hasn't even bothered

to turn out the light.

~ first published on Your Daily Poem

REVISION

Revision
by Ed Werstein

How do you know when it's finished,
or at least finished with you?

How do you know,
when each time you see it
you cross out words,
change them,
sometimes changing them
back to what they were before,
and next time back again.
The same two words
. . . . . . . . . . . . . leap-frogging
. . . . . . .leaping over
. . . . . . . . . . . . . leap-frogging
each other
there on the page.

And because you're probably not ever
going to be finished with it,
how do you know
when it's finished with you,

the way she was finished with you,
while you went on,
each time you saw her,
hoping for different words
to come leaping from her mouth.

~ first appeared in Echoes