Norb Blei’s “Memoir” Dispatches, #8 on Eric Chaet

Posted on 02. Jan, 2009 by in Literature

Author’s Note: This is the last of the “end-of-the-old-year, beginning-of-the-new-year dispatches.” I accomplished most of what I set out to do for this annual, memorable time-span in the culture, when most Americans appear anxious to fine-tune their sense of spirit. There were two other pieces I wanted to offer, which I will re-think and present sometime this month.

This New Year’s Day poem by Eric Chaet is a ‘commission’ of sorts, a call to a friend, neighbor, poet, thinker, whose work I have both encouraged and shared with many readers for more than a few years. Now that the lights and music of the holiday season are fading… the New Year’s hats and horns put away… I thought Eric might be the right writer at the right moment (Day 1, 2009) to set the course for the oncoming journey.

Eric writes what I consider an ‘essay-narrative-poem of political/philosophical dimensions.’ Not everyone’s cup of tea perhaps, but not something everyone can bring off with Eric’s grasp of language and idea. Poems of this expansive nature seem to start small… and roll, gain momentum like a snowball.

The only ‘suggestion’ I made to him was: “Not too long.”

Eric knocked off the poem in record time—and fired back: “Thanks for the assignment—hope this ain’t too long…”

“Thanks. Wonderful,” I replied. “Yeah, a little loooooong. Let me live with it awhile.”

Eric answered: “Shorter than Crossing Brooklyn Ferry or Song of Myself, tho.”

I smiled to myself and dubbed him, ‘Wisconsin’s Whitman.’

— norbert blei

HAPPY NEW YEAR, AMERICA
by Eric Chaet

America, it’s wonderful that the illusions are being dispelled,
yes, it’s bad that people will starve and freeze to death,
and die for lack of medical attention
and at the hands of their fellow desperados—
I’ve been grieving about that for years in advance—
and it’s bad, too, that disillusion doesn’t lead immediately to enlightenment,
to sanity, justice, compassion, harmonious development,
that not everyone sees the light simultaneously
or even at all,
that some will go on screwing things up
from high office or low position, your neighbor, or you
tearing up the Earth from short-term selfishness, wasting everything,
egotism, compulsive greeds and lusts, radical insecurity posing as tough,
setting young men to killing other young men—and women, too—
congratulations, you get involved in committing mayhem now, too—
but it’s wonderful that the illusions are being dispelled,
that we’re not digging our graves deeper and deeper
while singing “Whistle While You Work,”
that more and more people are forced and others becoming willing
to face the flaws in the program, to stop feeding cancer,
maybe even to stop praising the Founding Fathers for five minutes
and start founding something themselves, appropriate to the situation,
without sacrificing the advances the rebels made
when they opposed the tyrants of their time,
the British investors and their world-wide imperialist Company
backed by war-ships and hireling troops
many of whom were shooting their fellow young men
because they saw no decent opportunities at home,
their old way of life torn out from under them
for more efficient raising of sheep on what had been common lands
for the new steam-engine driven textile mills.

Happy New Year, America! Happy New Millennium!
Happy Future Forever, America, and not just America—
Happy New Year, all humanity—
young men and young women, and infants and elders,
and ancestors and those yet to be born—
mandarins, sophists, tyrants, drones, insiders, and soldiers,
the pious, the addicted, the despairing hiding out of the way,
those capable of thinking for themselves
and those in a position to take some time to think
who still remember how, or who finally discover how to think,
and those just doing what is immediately necessary
digging their way out of the collapse
and finding new sources
of heat, food, air, water, companionship—
fixing the plumbing and roof—
people on every continent, in cities and hinterlands,
farmers, builders, mechanics,
artists and scientists—
clear-headed, with integrity, or imitators competing for attention or loot—
politicians and middle and upper management,
gamblers with or without understanding of probability and history,
animals living in what’s left of the wilds,
on the margins or underground,
or way South or North, or under the surface of waters,
husbandmen and their cattle, too,
housewives and women determined to make it
among skyscrapers and warring militias,
rabid ideologies, tepid hypocrisies, traditions,
gravity, friction, and brilliant ideas and inventions,
sprockets and chains, furnaces, electric lights,
genius books, songs, concertos, improvisations, analyses,
and holes into which the dollar-wise and soul-foolish
suppose you should adapt yourself,
every profession, every sort of worker,
and those between jobs, with or without purpose,
police and drug-dealers, too—guards and also prisoners,
those living where they were born and those far from their birth places,
those tangled up in laws and courts—
Norman conqueror common law
and statutes enacted by heroes, fools, and weasels,
my apologies to the weasels—
and those wearing robes and collecting fees for filing and arguing against motions—
those who cling to the legal order, and those who rebel against it!

Happy New Year, Happy Future—
and may the transformation to sanity, justice, and lovingkindness
be less and less convoluted and postponed.

May each and everyone who reads this–including me—
participate and contribute—wisely, not just trying to keep up—
not over-estimating or under-estimating his or her own or others’ capacities,
and may everyone develop and deploy new capacities,
learning from others, also innovating beyond what others have known and done,
and may suffering therefore be minimized.

May everyone experience joys
such as a child who has recently learned to stand and walk
experiences, upon climbing up and standing on a small stool.

Find more of Norb Blei’s Poetry Dispatches at www.poetrydispatch.wordpress.com and his latest publications at Blei’s Door County Times.

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