FRED VOSS

BUDDHA INSTEAD OF BLACK WIDOWS

The first factory I worked in had a row of chopped Harley-Davidson motorcycles
like hump-backed black widow spiders parked by the employees in front of the factory
I drove my beat-up 1963 Ford around the block twice then swallowed hard and applied
for the job
violence
has always been part of being a machinist
clay-and-steel-dowel-pin model of a hand grenade made and left
atop my toolbox by a Korean ex-soldier machinist who thought
I worked too fast
knives in parking lots blackbelt machinists aiming their boots
at other machinists’ testicles coldcock punches striking
like rattlers
yesterday
“FUCK YOU!”
screamed by another machinist into my face as he tried to bully me
into putting a cutting tool holder
where he wanted it
I have been reading the Buddhist Bible for 20 years now
Zen
instead of blackbelt kick
or Jack Dempsey right cross or 4-inch blade
in pocket
Zen
keeps my fist around a wrench
instead of in the face of the bully who screamed in mine
my heartbeat calm
as the turning of the earth I turn the next nut
down around the threads of a bolt with fingers steady
as the flowing of the Mississippi and the falling of a paycheck
into the hand of a man who needs one
to stay alive
as Mark Twain guides his steamboat around a rock and puffs on his pipe and smiles
some men wear leather and ride chopped Harley-Davidson motorcycles 100 mph
down the freeway some men take kickboxing classes
or slide a gun into the glove-compartment of their car
or pop high-blood-pressure pills
and scream, ‘FUCK YOU!”
but at 71 years of age after 50 years working these factories
Buddha lets me close my fist around this pen
and turn punches
into poetry.

A NEANDERTHAL ON MARS

I like using my hands
turning doorknobs holding tuning forks Columbus
held a rope and turned a sail when he dared
drop off the edge of the earth
and so I stood in front of a machine and learned to make things
out of steel
with my hands
wrench hammer saw file pliers vise handle
in my grip
Pasteur put his hands on a microscope and found bacteria
Galileo held his telescope in both hands and made the earth
go around the sun
I drop steel blocks into vises and turn it
into poetry
that grips hearts and minds the way a Neanderthal once gripped
his club
and the roots of 2,000-year-old redwood trees grip the earth
as all the rivers
run into the sea that holds them in its hands
the gold dust in the prospector’s pan
the butterfly wing in Darwin’s palm
the windmill blade that will turn air into electricity
and save the world
clamped between the chuck jaws of my 50-foot engine lathe 30 years from now
when the bones of my hands that turned that lathe’s handle
lie
underground
and that black nevermore raven lands
on Poe’s palm
and Baudelaire runs his hands up and down the hips of his beautiful actress lover in Paris
let others tap computer mouses in offices
I have held manhole cavers
and the spars of airplane fuselages in my grip
just like the Neanderthal
or the first man on Mars picking up
a rock
and I have held these poems in the palm of my hand
one moment
before they each flew off
toward the sun.

Fred Voss has had three collections of poetry published by Bloodaxe Books (UK), the latest of which, Hammers and Hearts of the Gods, was selected as Book of the Year 2009 by The Morning Star (UK) and was reprinted by Pearl Editions (Long Beach, CA). It is available on Amazon, along with his first novel, Making America Strong.