Believe I’ll Have Another: For the Working Class

I do not write about puppy dogs, though I’d write about the stains they’d create on your floor. The carpet they’d ruin and the plywood they’d rot. I don’t write about popsicles and kids and the ice cream man who drives through your neighborhood. Though I’d write about the one who steals your child and why he is the way he is. And the fear your child feels from not being taken care of when they bought ice cream from the sicko who cruised your neighborhood. In other words, I don’t lie about how fucked up our world is. I write about it and the ones who others pretend do not exist. I write about redemption. Loss. Revenge. Struggle. Survival and the values that have been squandered at the workings, the blue collars morals or shirtsleeves.

I don’t write about hit men. Though I tell of lawmen who’ve lost their way. Of their lives and the empowerment they abuse.  I have to say when I write it’s about what I know. What I’ve seen disappear in this flood of stupidity that some call existence. I don’t sit behind a computer all day in a cubicle. Typing and facebooking or tweetering. I sit on a fork truck. I have an iphone, a moleskin notebook. These are my vices. My weapons to siphon blood. I text and I write between pulling shipments and movement of new product to rows while one boss runs around like a chicken with a club foot, though he’s cool outside of the district we recognize as WORK. I watch my chief who crosses the gambit with the flagrance of fouls that’ve been placed upon us, the heavy loads of add ons and customers who need product right this fucking minute. Though the last minute problems have been there every day of every week since I was bumped to the warehouse.

Same old shit different day.

I run bills in a concrete office. I deal with cool-country-boy-truck-drivers with a tire iron beneath their seats and possibly a child duck taped in their home, at least I can imagine that with 90% of them for my fiction. I also deal with hillbilly felons who navigate trucks and can’t take directions any better than their mothers took being seeded and giving birth to their simple temperament asses. It’s a trade of ego or macho-ism.      

But I dig those cats, can understand their situations. Only I wish they could understand mine. Those types I kill with kindness. With words like, “Nice tatts, who did those? Really you were in prison? I’d have never known that with the web on your elbow, the tear drops below your eye. The four leaf clover on your forearm. Your channel-lock teeth. Or the short fuse you seem to have cause you gotta wait to get your 53 foot LTL loaded and I’ve never met you but you seem to give me attitude so I’ll just phone your dispatch and explain your digression. Really we’re in the same boat. Your job sucks and so does mine. We’re only renting our time and our bodies for a fee. The other side of the coin is you did time. I paid for your body to be fed and do ungodly things to other mother fuckers for a pack of cancer sticks. And by the way, you’re welcome!”

I think about my boss. The second marriage he goes home to. My chief and his second marriage. The kids they’ve seeded but are flawed and loved. Then my own marriage. No kids. Single dog. Brunette beauty of a wife. God Damn I LOVE Her! The 3:30 am mornings I wake up to write before anyone’s day begins and the days we’ve each had. Venting our egos at one another. This world and the people we encompass with frustration. The weights I lift. The pavement I push and the beer I drink at the end of each day and I believe I’ll have another….

 

For Charles Bukowski       

 

I rarely vent to others about my day job but here's a day in the life of me:
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