“Not my world alone,
but your world and my world,
belonging to all the hands who build.”
- Langston Hughes,
“Freedom’s Plow”
“That electronic technology
that chains us today
in the prison of
unemployment lines
what could it do
in the hands
of the people”
- Lew Rosenbaum,
“Ode to a Cell Phone”
We are sitting in a classroom
writing poems about technology
& our relationship to it…
reaching for words
to describe our lives
their limitations & possibilities
striving to capture the feeling
of riding a train through underground tunnels
– the sound of it, that low metallic rush –
& people all around, on our phones,
connected through the World
Wide Web
millions of invisible waves
travelling through the air,
bringing music to our earbuds,
images & words to our screens,
joining us in a vast global brain
of 7 billion
(miracle of miracles!)
this planetary network
of warp speed connectivity
from which we almost
never
look up
to actually
see
each other.
We are trying to describe
the strange loneliness of this,
our age…
but also,
the comfort of silence,
the kindness of time spent
in transit, locomoting
from one place to another,
with nothing in particular to do,
& the gentle rocking of the train’s
motion,
this soothing place
of being alone
(together, yes)
in a quiet kind of intimacy
that I actually enjoy,
here,
writing the poem,
pencil in hand,
scribing in this ancient system
called a book,
stitched by a friend of mine,
with a cover so soft
it eases my soul into a dream
in which my hand begins to fill these pages
with magical lines & dots & circles
that mean things:
“human”
“history”
“time”
“evolution”
(sometimes
i like to think of myself as a
kind of tool
for a greater process
not god,
necessarily,
– unless you like
to think so, as I do –
but you, & us, & everyone,
our species & our mother,
earth)
these hands build
poems, songs, beats, workshops,
concerts, culture,
sandwiches…
they write, they strum, they type
these words
composed by billions of tiny
invisible hands
firing in my brain,
which wonders, now,
what your hands do,
& your brain?
& whatever the answer,
i say
bless the hands!
& bless the brain!
bless the work that is yours,
your contribution…
isn’t this what
makes us human?
not the labor,
but the way we share it?
not our stuff,
but the world we create from it
together?
Listen,
people…
Allen was a copy editor for Sun
Times, for 23 years,
until he & 600 others got
squeezed out by technology…
Lew was a manager at a branch of
Barnes & Noble
fired for not wringing the last
drop of sweat
out of his workers
Diana was a teacher
slowly shoved out of her classroom
by ready-made materials
from Pearson & Scholastic,
by “data analysis” & test prep
so much for her
hours of conversations
with students in
her Beowulf unit
about real-life
heroes
like the Freedom
Riders
& Water
Protectors
now she must look for new ways
to teach & learn.
but,
Listen –
who, do you think,
is replaceable
in this story
really?
what
is truly
obsolete?
& what if they
– the millions newly deemed disposable
–
themselves replaced
the few who have no vision?
Imagine, friends, for just a
moment,
the computers
taking over the jobs,
& us taking
over the computers…
Friends,
to be honest,
I never wanted
to be shackled to a classroom
having spent so many days &
years
abhorring them,
but still I’m here
in a different school every day
talking, listening,
trying to master the art of
dialogue
because, you see,
this is my most precious tool
&, I think,
our most invincible
weapon
& this is why I’m writing,
speaking to you,
family,
i want to imagine with you, perhaps,
this very place, the same, but
different,
i want all of us to visualize
doing the things we most love:
reading, writing,
telling stories,
dancing, strumming a guitar,
painting, gardening,
walking through a forest with the
dog,
biking along the lake,
or hiking dew-wet mountain trails,
swimming in the ocean,
studying stars
or history, or
Torah,
teaching our youth
how to live, how to learn,
how to break
dance,
how to make
medicinal blends of tea,
or maybe, simply,
sitting quietly with our
grandparents,
sipping coffee, making pancakes,
listening to records, or Spotify
playlists,
watching movies, playing soccer in
the yard
with our nieces & nephews,
with all our relations
(We are all related… )
Relatives,
here is a corner
of my imagination,
take it.
stretch with me
as wide as possible:
let’s flex our
collective mind
into a portrait
of you & me
doing all of these
things
freely, meaning,
without any money
& without coercion
simply because we
are
what we are –
can you imagine
a grocery
store where nobody has to stand outside
panhandling for food?
a street where no one has to sleep,
or choose between medicine & lights
& heat?
& nobody having to stand in the
way
of bulldozers coming to turn up the
graves
of their great grandmothers &
fathers
& no people killed on the
street by police
& yes, let’s say it, no police
do we dare picture it?
Comrades,
close your eyes, if you want –
& imagine waking up in bed
knowing every person in the world
has slept warm & safe last
night, & every night,
& every morning eating
breakfast
with every single one of the 7
billion,
drinking your coffee knowing
that any human hands growing the coffee
beans
have worked the land with dignity,
& possess all the time in the
world
to rock their own babies to sleep
try to imagine the taste
of food made without the torture of
people,
land, animals, or water,
& maybe even
passing a whole day through
from dawn to dusk
without once worrying,
or working a job,
other than what flows
from our own beating hearts
… a never-ending summer vacation…
an eternal Sabbath…
My people,
what would you
give
if you could give
anything?
if you were free
to receive &
to give
all of nature
the way the river feeds its neighbors,
& the forest shelters the owls?
the way the rain waters the
prairies,
& children, freely, play…
oh, the days
we’ll spend in the sun,
& the dreams
we’ll dream by night
which we now
cannot
even
dream!!
dream!!