Works
The Milk of Human Kindness
Dreamstreets Press, 1986
To Buy
Cover art by Debbie Hegedus
The Milk of Human Kindness
Every chosen charity’s
an unchoice—each
belly-full of milk
a belly empty-bloated.
Hands warm with earth
and harvest, nuzzling for eggs
from feathery purring hens
turn cold to cull and kill.
We stage pour ethics with small
company or small class.
May I reach into the blue light
of your being? Do you feel
the living warmth of my grasp?
All things eternal flow
through us, as the rain
flows back to the sea, because
complicity is abstracted:
the violent world whose blood sweetens
my wine, whose bones whiten by bread,
hides its snakey hair and head.
While the night stays out of my heaven,
my heart won’t turn to stone;
my milk will flow.
Welding Car Door Hinges
Welding wire charged
crackling flash and sharp shadows
human beings
in coveralls and space helmets
smoke and steel
arc star bright and white hot light
framed in visor's green glass dark
wire draws a sizzling bead
a burning worm
blind
along a seam
joints turn: fingers wrist arm
shoulder
waist
legs and
shoes
hear: each weld's special note
a bow drawn across a string
2,592 times
per nine-hour shift
Model Change
The autoplant's been down three weeks for model change:
retooling, repairs—an annual chance
for me to catch up on life and drink some beer.
Today, late summer lush and leafy,
it rains relentlessly.
I can't help but feel
a sort of back-to-school oppression,
back to cliques and subordination,
rolling an old stone uphill again,
this time at forty-one, not fourteen;
this time not four years to graduate
but fourteen till the stone drops
one last time: 30 Years and Out!
I dream sometimes of school
as someplace where cornerstones
and columns are set for
"sound body and sound mind."
But these years have been stolen temple stones
and acid rain, exploitation,
misuse and disuse, dammit!
When I grow up and retire
I'm hoping to reclaim my life
like Greece reclaims its marbles
from the former empire, but I'm fearing
how my feet may stumble in the ruin
of my ancient burden,
rubble clacking sharply
in the hard gloom of some September rain.
All photographs and text © 1986-2008 Phillip Bannowsky