A Poem About Loathing “The Man”

ASSHOLES & ELBOWS

(This poem appears in the Summer-Fall 2009 issue of Struggle: A Magazine of Proletarian Revolutionary Literature, edited by Tim Hall, to whom I owe thanks.)

“I wanna see assholes & elbows &
That’s all I wanna see,”
Says the little boss-man efficiently

“Work needs working, everybody knows, &
That’s all I’m gonna see,”
Says the frumpy boss-man angrily

See the workmen, sweaty workmen,
Exhausted, delirious, grinding away &
There’s the dopey boss-man, gathering his pay

In the dingy factory, will it ever end?
Lines of assholes & elbows toiling away
Except the fat-cat boss-man, laughing up the day

“Chris Truman”: The 4.0 (Part 2 Of 2)

As Truman worked his way through school, he had learned to cope with the mental jabs from his classmates. Somewhere along the line in his high school tenure, he decided against “fitting in,” and began to study in earnest. His late push toward respectable final evaluations enabled Truman–at his father’s urging–to complete an application for admission into Pinehurst College, a small liberal arts school known for its commitment to academic excellence. Another major plus–it wasn’t far away, so he could commute daily from safety of his parents’ home.

After a short wait, and much to his surprise, Pinehurst accepted Chris Truman and he accepted his fate. Life would never be the same, even if–as a young adult–the poet continued to fight the many demons from his youth. Bullying stays in one’s head regardless of the bully’s physical absence from his victim’s life. As adults, we fight battles whose roots can be traced from infancy–we re-live our childhood traumas well into old age. Even the heaviest subconscious trash floats to the top of our vast emotional oceans eventually.

Though he didn’t know what to expect, from day one in his post-secondary career, Chris Truman was desperate to make his name known. He demanded attention–from his professors, his classmates, his family–and achieving the ultimate perfection of a 4.0 grade-point average, he assumed, would garner him a bounty of recognition. The Void that permeated his entire being yearned to be filled–not from within but from without. Truman’s bruised self-esteem, hopelessly dependent upon others, needed constant care. Never mind that the light of one’s true self-worth emanates from the inside–the poet was desperate to learn from other people the length and breadth of his importance in academia. A simple degree in English Literature and Composition wouldn’t be enough–Chris Truman had to finish perfect.

The 4.0 became his obsession. He chased it. He ached for it. He lost sight of himself because of it. Pinehurst College, with its emphasis on do-it-yourself, liberal learning, became for Truman a place of great distress, for it was there that his desire for approval ran wild. In class after class, he strived not for knowledge in itself but knowledge as a means to earning another “A-plus.”

By his third year at PC, he was completely out of touch with his intentions in attending the school in the first place. Truman, in following his father, had thought himself fit to teach literature and writing to fertile high school minds. But his daunting pursuit of perfection prevented him from procuring such a lofty profession. He was a full-time student (and part-time Gem Foods Store stock boy) who wished nothing more than to conquer college–what might lie beyond his studies was of little concern to the scholar.

This lack in foresight would, after capturing the elusive 4.0, render the orderly-conscious Truman a total mess–spiritually, emotionally, physically, and financially. True education failed to commence until the moment he received his diploma in May 2002. The phrase Summa Cum Laude–emblazoned beneath his name–would haunt Chris Truman forever. No degree in abstraction could halt the impending doom of concrete reality bearing down his back. In less than a year, the very instrument that facilitated the 4.0–his mind–was about to implode.

“Chris Truman”: The 4.0 (Part 1 Of 2)

Intelligence can be measured in many ways, but two types of knowledge stand out. There are the traditional “book smarts” which many highly educated people possess, and there are the conventional “street smarts” that people with more real-world experience often have. Although the stuff of life–the fast-paced, fleeting raucous of everyday existence–is often a poet’s field of study, most writers (of all persuasions) tend to engage in go-nowhere cerebral exercises. Chris Truman–the Great Internalizer–was no exception.

As a child, his scholastic abilities were plenty, and Truman soon found himself plucked from the teeming mass of his “average” peers and placed into elite-filled, “advanced” courses. From the very beginning, he felt out of place–after all, smart little boys are far down on the Coolness Spectrum, even in grammar school.

Other factors contributed to his alienation. Truman’s overactive brain prevented his underwhelming body from excelling in sports, the arena in which boys prove the extent of their God-given boy-ness. Pen and paper–not baseball bat or hockey stick–were his favorite tools. Despite the lavish praise he received from his teachers for scoring high marks on his weekly spelling tests, Truman was an outsider dying for recognition from his peers, who hit home runs and scored goals with ease while he looked on from the sidelines–awed and disgusted at once.

But Truman’s troubles went beyond simply being a nerd. A few deeply disturbed classmates–struggling to complete their work in rudimentary courses–took out their frustrations on him. They mocked him for answering a teacher’s question correctly in class. They copied off his papers in language arts. And math. And science. Bitter about their own misfortunes and intellectual shortcomings, they beat Truman down–not physically–but mentally.

Thus scholastic success, like many things in Truman’s life, presented the poet with a paradox. That he valued achieving good grades and learning as much (for his young age) as he could–these were undeniable truths. That his intelligence soon found itself equated with abuse by his less-than-talented, jealous peers–this, too, he could not refute. It was a contradiction that Truman, as he approached college, would carry with him–zipped up safely in his trusty backpack, along with heavy textbooks, cheap click-pens and scribbled lecture notes.

NIN With Gary Numan (YouTube)

Excerpt: “The Education of Chris Truman”

Below is an excerpt from a true story I’ve been working on lately. It is intended to entertain and educate its readers, some of whom may see themselves in my text. Enjoy!

***

A fruitful life required structure, routine, discipline–a steady diet of predictability, but Chris Truman, like a sick but stubborn child, refused to take his medicine. As a schoolboy, he took comfort in the scattering of materials–books, papers, folders, pencils, all the tools of learning–across his desk. Order left a foul taste in his mouth–he craved the Random, the Haphazard, the Mess. Clutter, lack of form–he could manage. Organization, submission to form–over these stifling forces Truman had little control.

But was this really the case? Did Chris Truman–that tireless Seeker of Truth–find pleasure in his failure to cope with the complexities of life? As he grew older, his obsessive-compulsive nature suggested not. The desire to control his tiny universe, by the age of twenty-nine, would overwhelm him, to point where holding a job rendered Truman a nervous wreck.

In truth, Chris Truman’s adult life reeked of over-control, over-thought, over-preparation. When driving, he desired to know, well in advance–for the sake of his sanity–if the lane he occupied was closed for construction further down the road. He feared having to change his position at the last second, as if all at once he’d forget how to operate his vehicle, and cause an accident!

But life, at any age, is full of accidents, mistakes, missteps. Still, that Truman was fallible–like every other human being in the world–frightened him. He demanded to be “perfect,” when “perfection” was throughout human history the only non-option. When each one in an endless succession of psychoanalysts explained that “many perfectionists succeed only in perfecting their Depression,” he heard but never listened.

Controlling the Uncontrollable–this was Chris Truman’s futile, self-made mission in life. Even as a schoolboy, he had created the disarray on his desk–he was in control of the chaos, admired it up close, like curious commuters crawling past a horrific highway crash–if only for a moment. In reality, he loathed–to his core–disorder of any sort, and thus produced many fruitless years trying to prevent imperfection, to squash his innate humanness, to deny himself true experience. Armed with this knowledge, one was expected to press on and make a living.

But deep thinkers abhor shallow answers. Neither a Big-Bang-believing scientist nor Genesis-professing priest, Chris Truman was simply a poet desperate for material. He laid Science next to Religion, and found faults in both. Each discipline failed to explain why he was mired in the stuff of life, and how he might survive his short time on earth.

Theories attempt to explain things but end up confusing real people staggering through real life. Abstract thought crumbles under the massive weight of concrete experience. Despite this conclusion, cold abstraction remained his most loyal friend, and friends would much rather play than work.

Thus far Truman’s philosophies had held him back from himself. Thought protected him from action. Staying in his head meant his sensitive ego was safe from the grim realities of life. Drowning in big ideas, one thought he knew something about living until he looked closer, and knew the thought wrong. Truman was a riddle he couldn’t solve–of this truth he was certain.

An interesting but tragic paradox had emerged–Truman, in becoming an adult, had strived so hard for Order that his entire life had spun out of control, to the point that he had reverted to childhood, and lacked tolerance for responsibility. The scared adult, shrinking from life, had fostered the rebirth of the needy child. He accumulated years but not maturity.

Any satisfaction derived from this realization was short-lived, however, for the poet still lacked a profession. When would Chris Truman, in dire need of income and stability, finally succumb to the system? When would he find–and keep–a job?

A Poem About Lost Love

FALLING STAR

her music beckons me,
urges me to sing along

she speaks in waves,
hot thoughts, like lava,
bubbling to the surface

she’s my motivation,
the metaphor in my poems

she’s my main idea,
my well-developed thesis

used to climb and climb
until she reached her peak
then tumble dizzy down

my loaded rocket
soaring through her liquid skies

but like a one-way boomerang,
she won’t come back
no, she will not come for me

she’s my focus,
the theme in my symphony

she’s a falling star
I failed to catch

All I Know–Part 7 (Conclusion)

A list of what one knows is bound to present problems.

Since personal truths are fluid and all truth-holders are in constant flux in an ever-changing world, what we profess to “know” will not sit still. There’s a larger issue here, though. We have very few original ideas but instead retain the thoughts of others, incorporating their voices into our mental frameworks. Even the words I’m using right now are not mine alone because they have been spoken and/or written by many people before I existed. (I learned this concept from reading Mikhail Bakhtin.) My point is that many of the ideas expressed here are not wholly mine. They aren’t “stolen” from others, however; they’re simply interesting thoughts floating through the breezy skies of my meditative mind.

All I Know–Part 6

Writing is a way of knowing.

Rather than merely recording facts and figures in prose form, astute writers actually learn something important about their subject matter and life in general. When I defend a thesis in an essay, I assume responsibility for the point(s) I am trying to convey. My writing is an expression of me, and in order for others to process it, my words/sentences/paragraphs must be devised carefully so that my readers may “see” my thoughts and determine if my ideas “make sense.” If my writing is fused with my thinking, I gain mastery over a small portion of knowledge, becoming an active member in the conversation of mankind. Not simply a discourse about something we know, writing is knowing.

All I Know–Part 5

Our areas of expertise influence how we view the world and our place in it.

Doctors see life in medical terms, just as lawyers look through legal glasses. This is known as “professional deformation,” and it’s a concept that demonstrates how our specific training and personal strengths and preferences often blind us to alternative ways of perceiving things. A related point here is the notion that “the view contains the viewer,” or that the physical and psychological qualities that make up who we are–our gender, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, age, personal histories and experiences, education, political leanings, favorite sports team, etc.–are implicit in our interpretations, and this affects how we see the world. Taking this principle a step further, we discover that objectivity is impossible because we cannot avoid our subjective selves. In being myself, I always encounter myself.

All I Know–Part 4

Free will is more vital than freedom.

Prisoners understand this concept quite clearly. The courts have taken away their freedom by placing them in jail cells, but no one can lock up a person’s free will. We each think our own thoughts in our own heads and are free to make our own choices. An inmate, who by definition has been denied freedom, still may choose how he views his situation and what he might do to survive his confinement. These choices are available to all of us, no matter how much freedom we possess. In the end, freedom is contingent upon many factors, but free will knows no bounds.