No, the supremity of having been split off from A larger entity by being spit out From pussy lips while Reeking pain and havoc Like a living tongue pulled From aperture and den Is not sign enough That he is meant To be sustained As an integral part of the world, Unique and indispensable. Thinking about how much longer He will need to play out the day That issue is not his, and never has been. "The job was done" He could say, later, After the storm. Hand-limp, His broom dance sweeps Upended under an empty park bench-- Dirt caught under The tongues of his feet-- So his paycheck Will come in the mail And become bank figures He can suck from To keep he and his woman Housed and fed, and well enough To legally rape each other in embraces, Forgetful of their lives. The man has a son, and stands nights aching behind an assembly line, Sleeping the days away While his son goes to school. The son thinks his father Is thoughtless and dirty And his mother a grease-bitch For marrying him. The son grows up Between his college books, And begins to put it together: A society of men Wanting to take a variety Of stimulating produce-- Though some were more the makers Than the takers; The image of rightness In a man putting his hormones To the making of a company In a family; a family That needs a provider to survive; A man honorable and trapped And there are nights He awakens, gagging at the Sudden thought of a man Next to him Who had engaged his body In a lower form of sharing. And he wonders if embracing a world Of ideas can be done When all things cannot be believed; If humanism is Energy vented To avoid futility; And what grossness He would have to justify next-- All on those nights When self-perspectives Are swept under in change. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Man of Coal You knew it was coming: Twenty-three years and the mine Would notice you one time, Photocopied. A voice below bellows Your name, Dave, Into the settling air of coal dust. After you shut off the engines And descend beneath the dragline's skeletal Nose which canopies like a skyscraper on Its side in mid-air You confront a face You cannot see in the descending sun. Shadow-still, Enormous might engulfing over you To the height of The dragline's triple-tank wheels, You see him-- The heels on his leather boots Locked in the train-track grooves of dirt. As he hands the notice to you Its stiffness shakes In your calloused hand. You know that what is left of the day Is becoming cold; and despite the smell Of dirt there is a scent Of watermelon in the damp air, Although you do not know it as that smell Or that there is a smell at all, really. And yet a faintness of some half-knowledge That touches its weight lightly in your mind Drags itself into places you cannot touch.