Fred Voss

A SPARKLE THAT CAN’T BE STOPPED

There is a sparkle in the machinist’s eye
at 6:00 am
as he steps up to his machine and grabs
a wrench
the sparkle in his eye
when he was 4 and believed he could dig a hole to China
put on a cape and fly
like Superman
Christmas morning
the star you wish on is in that sparkle
the ants deep in the ground and a boa constrictor dropping from a tree
in Africa the hero
throwing the man up to his neck in quicksand
a rope
or putting on a pith helmet
and braving tigers to walk into the heart
of the densest Indian jungle
there is nothing
the machinist cannot do
with the razor-sharp edge of a tool steel cutter and a block of steel
or aluminum or bronze gripped between the jaws of a lathe chuck or milling machine vise
a tug on wrench a blow of hammer a turn of machine handle
a squirt of brown cutting oil a flex of muscle a bite of apple
a dig of steel-toed boot
into concrete floor a groan of steel
a trigonometry table a drill diameter chart a laugh
bouncing off a 70-foot-high tin ceiling
nothing can stop him
with a 2-foot scale a hex-nut or bolt
a crowbar or micrometer in his fist
kings presidents geniuses at drawing boards and formulas and speeches
stand helpless
as the polar icecaps melt and the earth burns
but a man
with a 4-year-old’s sparkle in his eye and a wrench in his fist
is always ready
to talk to an elephant
sing karaoke to “Blueberry Hill”
board a spaceship to the edge of the universe
watch 17 clowns climb out of a Volkswagen
fall in love with a belly-dancer or Marilyn Monroe
build a tower out of bottlecaps and glass
or make
a new world.

TRYING TO GO HOME

“I’ve got a Bridgeport milling machine in my garage,”
a machinist would say
and another machinist would nod
and say he had a Le Blonde engine lathe in his garage
as they dreamed
of the day when they could have an engine lathe and milling machine and surface grinder
and air compressor in their garage and make their own parts to sell and be
their own boss
no longer
have to look in the paper to find jobs in machine shops owned by strangers
no longer
be ruled by a clock as they dropped a timecard into another man’s timeclock
at 6 am
they could wait
until the slant of the sun’s rays through their bedroom window
or the sound of foghorns on the sea
or the crows cawing on telephone lines
felt just right
deep in their bones
then slip
into a leather apron and step
into their own garage
where their father’s antique standing orange radio from 1939 sits
and hope the radio station broadcasts a Dodger baseball doubleheader
like the ones their father used to listen to
no longer
would they have to stare at blank tin machine shop walls
or listen to a foreman’s screams but look
at their own photos of the Yosemite Valley in the spring tacked to their garage walls
as they make ribbons of steel spiral off steel round stock clamped in the jaws of their own engine lathe
“All I need is an air compressor and a surface grinder
and I’ve got my own machine shop in my garage,” a machinist would say
as he dreamed of the day he could stare out his garage window
at the tree
his father planted in 1952
instead of the graveyard or the bowling ball factory across the street from the factory he works in
tread
the garage floor his father and maybe his grandfather walked
remembering the tricycle he once pedaled around the street corner
outside his garage window as an old man from Norway in a 3-piece suit dropped chocolate candy
into his palm
instead of having to thread through 18-wheeler trucks on L.A. freeways
driving to a strange city
where a boss’s scream can get
so loud
a man can barely remember
he had a father
at all.

MOVING AHEAD 5 CENTURIES

I stepped forward
into the steel mill and left the PhD in English literature my mother wanted me to get
behind
and the gears in the machines in the steel mill moved forward
popcorn popped
in the popcorn machine in the SEARS ROEBUCK department store on the corner
of 4 th Street and Long Beach Boulevard
I left Hamlet pointing his dagger at himself
behind
trains were hurtling forward bringing bars of steel to the steel mill
butterflies floating through their 5-day lifespans
Chinese dry cleaner workers getting steam in their faces waiters
carrying bowls of steaming soup to movie stars in Hollywood without spilling a drop
and I left naked King Lear shaking his fist at the gods
to cut a raw block of steel
in a vise on a machine table moving forward into razor-sharp teeth of cutters
as needles
of 2,000-year-old Sequoia redwood trees
and passengers on New York subways soaked up sunlight
and read newspapers and my mother told me
I was not her son
because I’d rather hear the hours ringing with Bernie the surface grinder operator’s
wild laughter
than spend time with Lady Macbeth
feel alive
as a horse shaking its mane on top of a hill
than contemplate Hamlet’s palms holding Yorick’s skull
switchmen were keeping train tracks from derailing trains
butchers watching needles of scales they had just slapped red meat across
the bus driver with 100 schoolchildren lives depending on his turning of a steering wheel
driving forward through heavy downtown traffic squinting his eyes in morning sun
the toes of tightrope walkers the diaphragms of opera singers
thumbs of traffic cops the man with the torch
feverishly cutting a woman out of her traffic-accident-crushed upside-down car
the ballet star on stage balancing on a big toe were not for one second looking
into the past
as trains blew their horns heading into train stations
and I put one foot in front of another carrying a 100-pound block of steel
toward my machine table
let mad Lady Macbeth
try to wash those red red drops of imaginary blood
off her hands
I had plenty to do
washing very real steel dust and black machine grease
off my hands.

I DIDN’T WANT TO LOSE MY HANDS

I went into the steel mill and grabbed a cutting torch because I didn’t want to lose
the laugh I had
and the twinkling of the brightest star in the sky when my father pointed it out to me
when I was 4
I never wanted to earn my money sitting at a desk holding nothing
but a pen
or a computer mouse in an office cubicle
where I could never shout at a tin ceiling 70 feet above my head
I didn’t want to lose my hands
that fed grass to cows
wrestled with my father like I was champion of the world
pointed at shooting stars like I could put them in my pocket
when I was 5
and walked with dinosaurs and believed a carpenter could carve a son out of wood and call him
Pinocchio
I didn’t want to lose the 20-year-old cat that slept at the foot of my childhood bed
like the most loyal friend in the world
or my toy train that steamed through cities where nothing
was impossible
so I went into a factory where men spit sunflower seeds over engine lathes and smiled
like they were still 4 years old
when they could put on a coonskin hat and become Davy Crockett
or a cape and fly like Mighty Mouse
why grow up
and sit at a desk when the cutting oil you brush onto a razor-sharp cutter
can feel as magical
as the oil in Aladdin’s lamp
because you are so far away from an office and work out on a shop floor where men can dance
like Zorba the Greek or bounce opera notes off tin walls
like Pavarotti
where men still have the hands
they had when they were 7 and grabbed a baseball bat to become
the next Mickey Mantle
or dipped a pan into a mountain river sure they’d find
gold
why settle for the world as it is
when you can pick up a hammer and wrench
and know
you can make
anything.

ALL THE ROSES ARE BLOOMING

At last the rains come
after all the news about polar icecaps and Greenland ice sheets melting
and wildfires raging
at last a day-long hard steady rain is falling
and a machinist throws open the 8-foot x 12-foot steel overhead door
and the machinists set down their hand-grinders and micrometers and let go of machine handles
and walk to the open door
they have spent their lives next to steel harder
than granite
built muscles
in their backs and legs and arms and fingers lifting and grappling
the steel
until they can knock a man out with one punch
but now
all they want is the softness
of a raindrop
as they stick their heads and hands out into the cold air and rain
and smile
and for 5 or 10 minutes they don’t want to cut or grind or polish
one more steel engine ring for a rocket to Mars
or rock-hard steel tooth for a bulldozer bucket
to knock down a hill
they want these soft soft drops
of pure water
they will never machine or measure
drops
of life like a hundred dollar bill laid into the palm
of a homeless man
love
that can let a man hold his wife in his arms on his golden wedding anniversary and feel
why the grass is green
and the rivers shine under stars
and the machinists reach out and let the raindrops roll down their arms
and Debussy
turns moonlight into piano notes Toulouse Lautrec
turns off the gas and paints a can-can dancer kicking her leg like all the roses are blooming
Jackson Pollock covers a canvas with drops of paint strong
as a lion’s charge
as Leonardo’s Mona Lisa smiles
because the raindrops have made a lake in the middle of the street
and somewhere deep in their wild hearts the machinists are praying
the last lions on earth
will bend down to drink from it
and never
go extinct.

Fred Voss (born Frederick Wilhelm Voss on July 8, 1952, in Los Angeles CA), an American poet and novelist who has written about the lives of American machinists working in factories for over forty years.