Let's Start With A Good German

Thoughts on my grandfather, fodder and fame.

Fodder & Fame sounds like a title a poet might choose. I've been writing mostly poetry for a long time now, not even sure I can write prose, a column, or ramble on in a way that anyone might be interested in reading, but I thought I'd give it a shot. Why not? My pal Chris told me yesterday that he actually made a few bucks doing it! This was shocking information to me, a confirmed poet, who knew the “hard truth” attributed to Robert Duncan: There is no money in poetry, but then there is no poetry in money either. So at the risk of someday taking issue with that dictum, I am going to take this little blog for a spin around the block, see if anything comes of the idea. If nothing else I can use it the same way I have co-opted facebook for over the last decade and post my excursions into the madness of the poem: where anything goes and fuck those who have a problem with that.

For me, fodder & fame, are words that frame the human extremes of fear & love, nightmares & dreams. Oh to be a rich and shameless rock-star! To be loved by everyone! Sitting on top of the world! And on the other hand, we want to avoid at all costs the fear of merely existing unseen, unheard, and devoured by time—another brick in the wall—or worse yet (and fear more!) not existing at all! Constructs, limits, the bullshit borders of an American mind. At one time the American Dream had a basis in reality. My parents and those of the Greatest Generation lived it post-World War II. Boomers like myself born into it expected to advance those accomplishments of home ownership, higher education, financial security, and retirement. Alas, the same craven drives of greed and power have managed to push us to the brink once again after chipping away for seventy some years at the New Deal policies that had saved our economy, our country, and those greedheads' asses from the wasteland decade of the Great Depression and built a social democracy that granted American workers a chance, a pull at the gold ring, the American Dream.

And it's a head-scratcher for me: what makes them think their world won't come crashing down (again!) when none of us can buy their digital-plastic shit? A consumer economy demands consumption. If 60 to 70 percent of the population can't buy (as my mother would say) “a wrassling jacket for a flea” the wheels of commerce will stop turning. Not to mention the deprivation that will transpire at our landfills and in the oceans (wink, wink). An economy built on consumption, novelty, and greed is the best thing we can continue to do if we want to help Mother Earth clean up this mess we've made. Her plan? Simple. Climate change. Elimination of one whole Hell of a lot of humans. As George Carlin used to warn us: “Save the planet?! You better fuckin' worry about saving your own ass! The planet will be doing just fine long after mankind is fucking dead and gone!”

So here we go. I've been packing this baggage around for a long time, watching the shit-show of big-money corrupting the system all over again: cutting taxes, deregulation, buying politicians and degrading the lives of the majority of Americans, the working class. They are able to do it because we let them do it. We have our own lives, we're busy, we don't have time. We act like it's a positive voter turnout when a sliver over half of the adults cast a ballot. They give us enough distractions in the form of intoxicants, entertainment, overly dramatized lies they sell as news to amp up our fears and show us who to blame—some other poor bastard who looks different than me, make “them” the threat trying to steal my job, my way of life, blah-blah-blah. Anyone except THEM, the real “them!” Those comfortable few who rule Wall Street, the banks, and you. Selfishness. Self interest. That is the root of the problem I believe, that and the system designed to preserve and protect their standing through “influence,” a kinder and gentler word for “corruption.” We are spoiled just enough to be comfortably apathetic as we continue to swirl down the drain.

Self interest, the individual, I always associated that with the Republican party, independence, self-reliance, the boot strap mentality. There really isn't an “I” in team. Though conservatism had its place for sure. Conservation. Frugality. My mother's father, a German immigrant, was a conservative, a true conservative. He lit the hallway of the apartment building he owned with Christmas tree bulbs. He picked through the garbage and peeled the labels off the used tin cans to burn in the furnace with anything that couldn't be composted, and he then pounded the cans flat and threw them into a drum he eventually hauled to the dump (since there was no recycling back then). The man bled conservatism.

At the same time, my grandpa ran a dairy during the depression. He delivered milk all over town. Most people paid on a monthly basis. Some couldn't pay. He still delivered milk. It was a small town. Their kids went to school with his kids. Times were hard and many were out of work. By the time the depression was over, he had about $6000 in unpaid milk bills that he tore up and burned. My conservative grandfather was a socialist. Contradiction? I don't think so, that's how I used to describe most Montanans fifty years ago (maybe I was as naive as I was impulsive). That's how I still believe human beings should behave, but not all people are like my grandfather. That's why we the people (through our representatives we elect, “that bad old government”) must step in and regulate those among us who would cheat and destroy in the name of unchecked selfish “success.”

Anyway, at nineteen being a smart-assed left-winger raised by a radical Irish Democrat, I couldn't help but tease or needle my ninety year old conservative grandpa one morning at breakfast. He was reading the newspaper at the time when the Watergate scandal had come into full disclosure. So after a long silence I asked this lifelong Republican what he thought about “his boy, Nixon, now?” I couldn't see him behind the paper for a couple seconds before he started talking and lowering the paper to glare at me, “You want to know what I think about it? I”ll tell you what I think about it. I think they should line the whole bunch of the sons-a-bitches up on the White House lawn and machine gun the bastards!” The man was solid. He was true. You could count on him, and I know he wasn't alone back then. I also know there are Republicans who walk that walk today, but too many are willing to back the fascist face of the party, mein trump, in the name of self-serving power. It's a disturbing and dangerous time in America.

Maybe I should call this piece Nostalgia & Rage, of course that's where most of the drivel I write comes from. And at the risk of repeating myself, here's a portrait poem of my granddad, my mom's dad, mentioned above. I hope we can make him proud of us and pull this off, rise to the occasion, and defeat the proponents of fear, deception, and destruction with the best we have to offer: sweat, compassion, cooperation, and love.

---

A Good German

Cigar smoke and wool strong with stale sweat

always transports me back to Grandpa Stahl's closet

where I would sit in the dark under hanging clothes

midst leather boots and shoes and listen

to muffled voices coming through the floor

or walls, maybe the upstairs vent, breathe deep

the particular oiled smells contained there,

feel the textures of fabrics, rough and heavy,

those satiny-slick linings, a wadded hanky

inside a breast pocket, hard nib of licorice

covered with lint, the prickly cool surface

of plaster walls against my cheek, Dutch Masters

boxes under his dresser filled with buttons, buckles,

receipts, and cigar rings. Somehow I felt closer to him

in there. Grandpa Stahl never played with us,

he'd poke or tickle us, pull or twist our hair,

pinch our noses, then holler “How Do!”

an inch away from our faces. He didn't have time

to play, so much work to be done it was never done.

He'd put away childish things, sorted trash,

burning everything he couldn't compost

in the furnace including the paper wrappings

on empty tin cans he'd hammer flat and toss

into a 55 gallon drum (the only garbage

he had to drive to the dump). In his eighties he fell

off the roof of his apartment building

fifteen to twenty feet up and broke his ribs.

That slowed him down a bit, but he didn't quit

his custodial job at the college. We followed

him around and watched him tiggle-up a broken

chair leg with wire and glue, screw Christmas

tree lights the size of his thumbs into a single

bulb adapter to light the apartment hallway.

If he ever attempted to sit down and visit, he'd nod off.

Grandpa Stahl was a die-hard Republican

because they knew how to manage money,

but after Watergate, he lost faith in that party

bullshit and told me, “They should line them all up

on the White House lawn and machine gun the sons-of-bitches!”

So I'm glad he's not around today to experience the current

deranged liar's insidious assent to the office of U.S.

President. It would have shaken his faith in humanity,

but it wouldn't have slowed him down. I can imagine

him explaining the necessity of keeping a sharp edge

on the blade invariably needed to castrate pigs, butcher hogs,

or cut up chickens in order to keep the family strong

enough to weather the inevitable storms.

---

Peace, ya'll. End of diatribe. We'll see where this goes. Glad to have you along for the ride as far as the road takes us. Don't be shy. Let me know what you think. Bullshit. Stories. That's what gets us through, what reminds us of who we are, our tales of joy and woe. Hopefully this triggers your own windsong of words!