From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XXIII

Introduction

This is the twenty-third installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I of the series is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume XIV is here, Volume XV is here, Volume XVI is here, Volume XVII is here, Volume XVIII is here, Volume XIX is here, Volume XX is here, Volume XXI is here, and Volume XXII is here. The different volumes are unrelated, except by disposition, in the sense that they are all completed, published, and not debatable, unless you want to comment below (which would be a first). You don’t need to read the previous volumes in order, or frankly at all, for this one to make sense; in fact, it won’t make sense no matter what you do. That’s not really the point.

Which begs the question, what are albertnet Bits & Bobs posts? Well, imagine you’re cooking something tasty, like spaghetti carbonara, in a big hurry, so you’re kind of trashing your kitchen in the process. Now imagine you look down on the floor and see all these tasty tidbits—bits of bacon, a few peas, maybe a few blobs of crème fraîche—and you think hey, this stuff is still good! You’re way past the five-second rule but you don’t care, and as you clean up the floor you pop these tasty morsels in your mouth. You tell yourself this is good for your immune system. Well, these Bits & Bobs posts are just the literary equivalent of that. They’re taken from letters I wrote to family and friends.

The below dispatches all date from 1990. The first three are from my UC Santa Barbara days. The rest are from when I was at Berkeley.

February 1, 1990

Tomorrow will be my second day at the Associated Students Bike Shop, where I now work 4.5 hours per week. Like me, most employees work minimal hours, just enough to enjoy the privilege of buying bike stuff wholesale. We keep track of our hours on sheets in this binder, on standardized UCSB Work Study log sheets that have, for each day, a space for “Project” in which we’re supposed to write what we did. I guess this has its applications for jobs with some variety, but at the shop it’s a joke. My friend A— had written down “Ego Stroking” for Tuesday, and I thought that was pretty funny. I said, “Hey, do we get paid time‑and‑a‑half if our project is stroking the bossman’s ego?” The boss is this really ornery guy. He overheard some of this dialogue. “What’s this I hear about time‑and‑a‑half?” he yelled. “Oh, I was just joking,” I replied. He fired back, “Hey pal, there are some things in this shop we just don’t joke about.” Then another mechanic said, “You know, that actually isn’t true.”

March 16, 1990

I was pretty excited because I finally got something from the Admissions Office at Berkeley, which I’d been expecting for some time now regarding whether or not they accepted me [as a transfer student], so needless to say I was pretty nervous opening it up, especially after the bad omen of opening the other piece of mail, which was a notification from my bank that my rent check had bounced due to my unscrupulous financial records and the fact that my parents have been totally flaking on sending me cash, the upshot of which is that had to apply for yet another Visa card, this time from the Wells Fargo bank so that if I bounce another check in the future, which is really likely to happen to be perfectly honest with you, Wells Fargo will cover the check and put the balance on my card so I can pay it off when I finally get the money, which I’ve generally been able to do eventually, even if the amount is something large like tuition, which I also just wrote a bad check for after being disenrolled from UCSB for not paying on time, so now my attendance at UCSB next quarter is in jeopardy, which of course ties in to the future plans which seemed destined to unfold before my very eyes today as I got ready to rip open the envelope, my roommates C— and T— watching in suspense as well, because as any college student knows, a small envelope like the one I was holding in my hand is rarely a good sign when you’re hearing from a college because generally if you get accepted they send a huge packet of registration materials and whatnot, instead of the small envelope which I was preparing to tear open, fearfully, as I described my apprehension which was not exactly calmed by my spectators, who were saying pessimistic things, but for no good reason it turns out because upon finally ripping the envelope open and looking at the first line the first word I saw was “Congratulations!” which seemed an obvious indication that I had been accepted and was enough reason for me to say, “Yeah, I’m in!” while C— yelled, “Yes, he’s out of this dive forever!” which really hit home but eventually turned out to be perhaps a bit premature because after I had finished reading the whole thing I discovered there are all kinds of conditions that I still have to meet and which I’m really dreading because they mean all kinds of bureaucratic hurdles and also some dumb-looking classes which I’ll probably have to take next quarter before Berkeley will formally accept me, and meanwhile the whole letter was written in a very general terms, its tone more hypothetical than actual, which has me really confused, to the point that I’ve been trying to talk to the admissions folks on the phone but in vain because I keep getting this goddam answering machine where you’re supposed to press 1 if you want information on admissions, et cetera, but it’s pissing me off because I press 1 and nothing fucking happens (which is especially annoying since it’s running up a long distance bill which means trouble because I can’t afford this month’s phone bill because T— alone ran up over $100 in long distance which he can’t pay for right now, so we’ll probably have our fucking phone disconnected again which is just typical) so with all these weird requirements and classes it looks like I’ll really be busy next quarter, which sucks because all I really want to do is race my bike. [All this is excerpted from a much longer sentence.]

May 31, 1990

I decided to write you because I am too distracted to study anyway. For one of my English classes I’m reading a book of really weird short stories written in the ‘60s. The book, which I got from the used bookstore, smells like pot. Maybe that’s what I’m missing, because I can’t understand any of these stories. Some of them have no punctuation or anything and some are nothing but dialogue and you can’t figure out who’s doing the talking. One story is about zombies. You’d think that would capture my attention, but it’s just too far out there.

July 27, 1990

The reason I’ve moved up here [to the Bay Area] is that I’ve had this lifelong ambition to have a 415 area code. I don’t really know why; it’s just a personality quirk. It’s not too bad living up here, either; I mean, they have a university that’s actually supposed to be pretty good, and plenty of jobs. I’ve hooked up with a couple of employment agencies and I’m hoping they can get me some work pretty quickly before the fall semester starts. My roommate B—, who graduated last June from UCSB, works for a chemistry lab, and he just got this neat mug (almost as neat as the thrift store “Harris Dracon” and “Lincoln Title Company” mugs you gave me) which says “I passed the SYVA drug test.” I think it would be even cooler to have a mug that says “I failed the SYVA drug test,” because I could go out and sell pencils out of it on the street.

[Picture generated by Copilot]

The lingo is a bit different up here. I hear the term “hella” quite a bit, which means “very.” I also hear “shine” a lot, which means to decline to do something. Like, “This hotshot Subaru/Montgomery rider wanted to lengthen the ride but I was going backwards [i.e., riding poorly] so I shined and went home.” But the new vocab word that really threw me was “hosed.” I haven’t heard that term since my Colorado days, when to “get hosed” meant to have sex. But out here, “getting hosed” means the same as getting clocked (i.e., drunk). So my roommate’s friend asked me, “Have you seen B— get hosed yet?” I about had a heart attack, and figured the dude had to be some kind of perv. What a relief when we ironed that out...

July 29, 1990

The Levi’s 501 jeans that I’ve had since high school finally wore out. A lot has changed since the last time I bought jeans: you may now choose among standard, stone‑washed, acid‑washed, shrink‑to‑fit, pre‑shrunk, straight-cut, student‑cut, pre‑faded, colored, and corduroy. My old jeans were standard denim (was there any other kind in 1987?), and were a size 32 waist with a 40 inseam (effectively a 31 waist by 36 inseam, according to the bizarre sizing scheme Levi’s had developed for shrink-to-fit jeans). I guess I’ve stretched those bad boys out because the new jeans I finally settled on are 34 by 36. I might have chosen a larger waist, actually, but the longest length I could find with a 36 waist was 34 inches. This seemed really strange so I asked the sales clerk about it. It’s no mistake: even though they offer eight different styles, they only make jeans for either basically fat or basically thin people—nothing for people who are just all-around big. Anyway, I wore the jeans out of the store and I’m really impressed with them because they don’t feel new. They’re stone‑washed, which means pre-broken‑in. Who ever heard of such a thing? Everyone knows new jeans are like cardboard; that’s kind of part of their charm. But these ones, in addition to being slightly faded, with the tag above the right rear pocket already soft and unreadable, aren’t stiff at all. In fact, I’d almost swear these are used jeans. But I love them because three months always seemed like too long to have to break in a new pair. I guess over the last 140 years the Levi‑Strauss company has actually made some technological advances.

July 30, 1990

Concerning that missing invoice for the 3,000 gizmotrons . . . c’mon, you remember me, your old friend from Colorado? Remember, the really skinny guy who used to eat your family out of house and home? Ah, now you remember. Gosh, it’s been so long since I’ve written you that I almost forgot your address. I should include a disclaimer with my letters: “Please allow four to six years for delivery.” Anyhow, sorry for not keeping in touch. Let me catch you up on what I’ve been up to for the last two years. There was mainly a lot of hanging out and racing bikes and wasting time with friends. Oh, yeah, I also recall there were some college courses. (I guess this girl ruined me, too, but it wasn’t anything serious. She was easily replaced by a couple other girls who also ruined me.) Now I’ve moved to the Bay Area and, facing unemployment (not for the first time), I am trying to get temp work which means basically hanging around hoping the phone rings. For the last hour I’ve been trying to fix a typewriter cassette ribbon that had stopped working. I bought several of them at once, and they’re all defective, so I decided I’d better figure out how to fix them. As soon as I pried open the casing all these springs came flying out like a jack‑in‑the‑box or one of those cans that snakes jump out of. Well. I guess that’s about it. Write me back and let me know what you’re up to. For now, I’m going to sign off by quoting my old roommate: later days and better lays! (Disclaimer: I am quoting him ironically.)

November 1, 1990

I just opened a letter from the phone company stating that my service will be disconnected unless they receive payment by November 2. That does not give me much time to act. I will have to call first thing in the morning and give them Pathetic Excuse #27: “I just stumbled across my payment envelope—my stupid roommate forgot to drop it in the mail. Can I have a one-week extension?” I once got a whole month of extensions, for excuses ranging from “I didn’t get my financial aid” to “I ran out of checks.” Of course, doing business over the phone isn’t always so easy. Once I had to get out of this travel club (which I joined to get the free Walkman), but I failed several times to cancel because for every excuse I’d give (e.g., “I just don’t travel that much”) they have some pat answer I couldn’t recover from. It’s like they always do their homework and I never did. So finally I got a bit smarter about it: I called up and said, “I was just put on probation for a year and can’t leave the state,” to which the woman replied, “Yes, Mr. Albert, but . . . oh, wait … gosh, I’m sorry. I’ll refund your membership fee immediately.”

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From the Archives - Starving Little Student

Introduction

I just paid for another quarter of tuition, room, and board for my older daughter, a college freshman at UC Santa Barbara. I find it impossible to lay out that kind of cash without reflecting on how different her scenario is from my college days. About 31 years ago, I was also heading into my second quarter as a UCSB student, and realized that after paying for my tuition and books, I was basically out of money. I’d been saving for college since I was a kid, working all kinds of jobs (mostly in bike shops but also at a factory and a radio station) and now those savings had run out. Distraught, I wrote this little poem, perhaps as a hint-hint to my parents.

The Poem

Starving Little Student – January 1989

 Ooh, starving little student:

 Who’s toiled hard, and cries for rent.                  2

“Not I,” said the Dad. “I won’t share my

 Fortune with no stupid kid. I was just

 Doing fine now that I’m of you rid.”                    5

 Ooh, starving little student:                               

 And who will pay his college fees?

 “Not I,” said the Mom. “The entire idea              8

 Is utterly absurd. I’d be laughed at

 And scorned if your damn father heard!”

 And who will take pity in his heart,                     11

 And who will feed a starving student?               

 “Not I,” said the government. “I would

 If I could but I cannot I know; I need                  14

 All my cash for my missile silos.”

 Ooh, former starving student:                            

 Will no one give the kid a job?                             17

“I will,” said the Shop. “For all bikes                  

 Created return unto me; a wrench

 You will hold, a mechanic you’ll be.”                  20

Footnotes & Commentary

Title & line 1 – Starving Little Student

My poem is a rip-off of, or (as I saw it at the time) a tribute to, the Simon & Garfunkel song “Sparrow.” At the time, I thought the first line of that song was “Ooh, lovely little sparrow” but I have just learned it’s “Who will love a little sparrow?” I guess my error made this line easier; the more direct ripoff/tribute— “Who will starve a little student?”—wouldn’t make much sense. Not that “little student” really fit either; I was 6 foot 3 and about 180 pounds and had a very high—and thus expensive—caloric need.

Line 2 – cries for rent

This is a little joke: the original line was “cries for rest.” Speaking of rent, it was definitely my biggest expense: to share a one-bedroom apartment with two other guys cost me $250 a month, and tuition back then was only about $500 a quarter.

Line 3 – “Not I,” said the dad

Actually, if my dad had only refused to give me money, that wouldn’t have been so bad. But as I discovered when I applied for financial aid, he was meanwhile declaring me as a dependent on his taxes (even though I hadn’t lived in his household in over four years). Thus, I couldn’t get any need-based financial aid because it was assumed I was getting support already. Nice.

Line 4 – stupid kid

I realize these are ungenerous words to put in my dad’s mouth, and to be honest I don’t think he found me stupid. (That said, there is a long-running family dispute about whether or not, after I’d done a 130-mile bike ride as a teenager and got caught in a thunderstorm, my father said to me, “You’re not very bright, are you.”) What frustrated my dad was my choice of major (English). He was kind of ahead of his time in promoting the incorrect notion that anybody who possibly can should study STEM.

Line 5 – now that I’m of you rid

This clunky word order is a classic failing of my early poetry. I grasped at some point that poets are technically allowed to put the verb at the end of the sentence, after the object. In fact, I probably thought this made me sound all fancy and literary. Don’t worry, I do realize now how terrible it sounds. It was just a convenient way to get the rhyme and meter right. I should have tried harder … for example, I could have written “I won’t let you have a free ride—God forbid!” It’s tempting to just go back and fix it now, but that would be cheating. Plus, I want you to give me credit for progressing as a poet. (I know—like you care!)

Line 8 – “Not I,” said the mom

In my mom’s defense, she had remarried, and my stepfather—whom we called “the landlord” because that’s how she met him—was kind of a dick. She was loathe to ask him to help me out financially and no longer had her own income. (He was pretty loaded so she no longer needed to work.) To his credit, he did end up supporting me to the tune of $120/month for nine months out of the year. Not a huge amount of money, of course, but it was better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, and it obviously wasn’t his duty to give me anything.

Line 9 – scorned if your damn father heard

It was a very bitter divorce and in fact the idea of being my sole financial supporter did inflame my mom. It wasn’t uncommon for my brothers and me to fall into this parent-vs.-parent chasm. My brother Geoff never did get money from our parents, and was almost literally a starving student. He got by on meals that a friend of his would filch, daily, from her sorority house.

Line 11 – who will take pity in his heart

I lifted this line verbatim from the Simon & Garfunkel song, which is laziness at best and borderline plagiarism at worst. And as you’ll see, it makes no sense in context.

Line 13 – the government

This is easily the weakest stanza in an already unimpressive poem. It’s not like I was trying to get food stamps or something; government student loans would have been more appropriate to mention in the second stanza. And since when does the government—any government—have a heart? They operate based on policy, not feelings like pity. This is all great evidence of why I didn’t deserve a merit-based scholarship.

Line 14 – missile silos

And here it is, ladies and gentlemen: the very worst line of the poem. It’s a disgrace. First of all, common sense tells us it’s the missiles themselves, and the airplanes and aircraft that launch them, that make military spending so high. Silos can’t be a big part of that expense. Meanwhile, the meter is all screwed up here, obviously, because “silo” is trochaic (i.e., the stress falls on the first syllable) rather than iambic (i.e., stress falling on the second syllable) which is what’s needed here. Instead of lazily settling for such weak phrasing, I should have written, “Big funding for schools? A bad stratagem. We need all our budget for ICBMs.”

Line 16 – former starving student

I guess the idea here was that I would have to drop out of college. That’s a bit of exaggeration, of course. I just needed a part time job. God, what a drama queen.

Line 17 – will no one give the kid a job?

Factually, it really was hard for me to find a suitable job. I managed to get a bike shop job in Montecito, but my commute was 17 miles each way by bike, just to work a four-hour shift. For the first week I had the job, it poured rain every day so I’d show up drenched. My boss seemed to take pity on me and simply took me off the schedule without formally firing me. I passively declined to complain and the job just kind of ended. I really needed a job on campus, but those were mostly reserved for kids on the Work Study program. I was not eligible for this program because of my dad’s income level. Thanks again, Dad! I wonder how much he saved on his taxes with that little make-believe dependent trick. Probably like $100. (Note: I am not bitter.)

Line 18 – Shop

Why is “Shop” capitalized here and not “Government” in line 13? I guess it’s because I was trying to make “shop” a proper noun since I couldn’t make “bike shop” fit in that line. So, so sloppy. Please—don’t judge. I was under a lot of stress. I was broke.

Line 19 – return unto me

Another ripped-off line from the Simon & Garfunkel song, which of course doesn’t really fit because the job I ended up getting was at the Associated Students Bike Shop, which didn’t sell bikes. That is to say, the bikes were created elsewhere, so being taken to this shop for repair wasn’t a return in any sense. I should have worked with the idea that I myself was returning … as in, returning to my roots since this was the sixth bike shop I’d worked at.

It was a pretty cool job, though. Because this was through the Work Study program, the shop was required to be really flexible about my class schedule. Like, if I had a midterm or something I was automatically given time off. And I could be in the middle of a repair and when it was time to head to class, I could just walk away. I was also permitted, and to some degree encouraged, to show customers how to fix their own bikes. Why “to some degree”? Well, my supervisor hated it when I spent more time with the good-looking coeds than with our male customers. (This wasn’t just personal preference; for reasons of ego many of the dudes didn’t like being shown anything.) My supervisor bawled me out a lot for this attention imbalance but he wasn’t my manager so I just smirked.

“But wait,” you’re thinking (if indeed you’re still reading), “I thought you couldn’t get Work Study?” Well, my manager cut me a deal. He said the shop is supposed to pay half my hourly rate, and the University the other half. Since I didn’t qualify for the program, I couldn’t get any money from the University, but if I was willing to work for half the normal pay, he’d take me on. Score!

Line 20 – a mechanic you’ll be

What did I mean “‘a mechanic you’ll be’”? I already was a mechanic! That’s why they were willing to hire me! It’s a good thing I didn’t try to recycle this poem as some kind of class assignment…

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From the Archives - Unemployment Poetry

NOTE:  This post is rated R for pervasive mild strong language and disturbing themes.

Introduction

Since I started this blog seven years ago, I’ve posted 346 times (generally four posts per month).  It’s not easy to write that often, so I sometimes don’t.  That’s what these “from the archives” posts are for.

Lately I’ve been doing a hybrid version of this:  I post an old poem, then provide all-new footnotes and commentary on it.  (Pretend you found this in your Norton Anthology of American Teen Poetry.)  Today I go back to a poem written under extreme duress:  I’d just turned 18, moved away from home, and then hit the doldrums after entering my third month of unemployment.

Unemployment poetry – August, 1987

           I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU

I sit here letting time roll slowly by

My [word redacted] has become a bore.                        2

I cannot find a job, although I try;

And while I sit here, I’m becoming poor.

I buy the paper each and every day

And scan the ads for work I’d like to do.                       6

But each employer seems to always say

My years of working are, fuck you, too few.

Unless somebody takes a chance on me,

And signs me up with hope that I will learn,              10

A dumbshit’s all I’ll ever get to be;

Experience I’ll never get to earn.

     This vicious circle simply has to end

     fuck hopes and dreams                                                14

Footnotes & commentary

Title:  I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU

The title should not be construed as anything aimed at the reader.  I assumed when writing this poem that nobody would ever read it.  I knew back then (though I’ve evidently since forgotten) that nobody wants to read amateur poetry.  I’d read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and surely took note of the Vogon captain’s threat that he’ll not only fling the heroes into space to die, but that “if you’re very lucky, I might read you some of my poetry first.”

Frankly, I’m posting this poem here largely for archival purposes:  until now, it has existed only in the original hardcopy, on paper that’s gradually disintegrating.  If you’re reading this on April 15, 2006, or in the days (or perhaps even weeks) following that date, you’re in a race against my mom and might very well be the first living human to lay eyes on this poem.  (Dead humans, down in hell, may see it constantly; it may be posted in every corridor down there.)  If you think you may be the lucky first reader, feel free to e-mail me and see!

So why “I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU”?  Well, it was a dark time, and I was an angry youth, and had soured on soft rock around then.  I distinctly remember turning against Simon and Garfunkel (more on this later), and railing at the Peter Gabriel song “Don’t Give Up,” mainly due to guest singer Kate Bush’s contribution to the song, which (in my angry youth mode) I might have described as “menstrual.”  So I turned to punk rock, notably Fear, which I had on cassette.  This album had a very memorable song titled “I don’t care about you.”  (Sample lines:  “I seen an old man have a heart attack in Manhattan/ Well he died while we sat there lookin’ at him/ Ain’t he cute?”)  When I finished this poem (as you can see it was only very lightly edited) I realized it needed a title, and “I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU” seemed as good as any.

(A final note:  my favorite song on the Fear album in those days, due to my depression and frustration, was called “Getting the Brush,” which I’ve explored at length in an exegesis in these pages … click here.)

Line 1:  letting time roll slowly by

This may well be an unconscious tribute to the Simon and Garfunkel song “The Boxer,” which was probably on my mind, as it includes the lyrics “When I left my home and my family….”  My line “letting time roll slowly by” possibly alludes to “Now the years are rolling by me/ They are rockin’ evenly” (which you’ll find in the concert version of this song).

Line 2:  [word redacted]

The first version of this line read, “Relaxing has become a total bore.”  This line wasn’t exactly honest.  I mean, relaxing was a bore, but I later revised this bit to be more specific, and edgier, and more to the point.  That was all well and good for a poem that just moldered away in a 3-ring binder, but not for the Internet.  It’s a happy coincidence that “word redacted” fits nicely into a line of iambic pentameter.

Line 4:  I’m becoming poor

This is probably my least favorite phrase of the whole poem (and/or any poem ever written by anybody).  It seems somehow incorrect to say a person “becomes” poor.  I’m not at all sure poverty works like that.  Many people are born into poverty; some transcend it; some lose everything; but “becoming poor” … it just sounds wrong.  Besides, a middle class kid who knows he’ll one day go to college may be penniless, but doesn’t actually have to face the prospect of real poverty.  This is a sad example of the amateur poet picking words because they meet the rhythm and rhyme requirements of the sonnet.  Pretty lazy on my part.

Line 6:  scan the ads

Over time, fewer and fewer people will remember that, before the Internet, when you were looking for work you actually had to buy a newspaper and look through the classified ads.  These printed ads were billed per word per day, so they tended to be very brief and thus often cryptic; e.g., “Admin asst type 70 wpm WordStar filing phones $1200/mo neg/ xlnt benefits 3 yrs exp req’d.”  The name of the prospective employer was often not given.  You’d just dial a phone number, tell whoever answered “I’m, um, calling about the help wanted ad?” and hope for the best.  I wonder how many times I was rebuffed by some receptionist who didn’t even know her company was hiring.  (Probably never:  I’m just rewriting history to let myself off the hook for interviewing poorly.)

Line 8:  years of working are, fuck you, too few

I was living in San Luis Obispo, a college town, and there were probably plenty of people trying to get the lucrative office jobs I sought.  Likely there were even college graduates going after those jobs.  I just didn’t know how the world worked.  I also kept holding out hope that Spirit Cycle Works, the bike shop where my brother worked, at would eventually hire me, but I was deluding myself.  It was plain to see that Spirit was slowly dying.

In revising this poem, I was totally right to replace the word “alas.”  That might have conveyed how a prospective employer might have tried to let me down easy, except that almost nobody uses the word “alas.” I sure didn’t hear it from the manager at Sizzler Steakhouse where, in desperation, I applied as a dishwasher—and was denied!  The guy said, “You didn’t get the job.  But check back with me on Thursday because, this guy I hired?  I don’t think he’s going to work out.”  I think “fuck you” is a very accurate, concise summary of that message.  And the internal rhyme of “fuck you, too few” is probably the strongest thing about this poem.

Line 10:  signs me up

This revision makes no sense.  The phrase “hires me” is better all around.  Why did I change it?  Who knows.  I think I just wasn’t trying very hard—at this poem, or at getting a job.  At the time I was scared shitless about my future and a kind of paralysis had set in.  To be honest, I wasn’t rejected that many times … I just wasn’t applying to enough places.

Line 11:  dumbshit

Changing “bum” to “dumbshit” was a fine edit.  After all, nobody uses “bum” to mean “chronically unemployed person” anymore (nor back in 1987).  A bum was somebody who spent too much time on the couch or borrowed money without paying it back.  And of course “dumbshit” perfectly matched the overall mood of the poem.

That said, the idea presented here—that getting a job will keep you from becoming a dumbshit—is problematic.  As it turned out, the first job I ended up getting—working in a factory canning underwear—would not have prevented me from declining into dumbshit-hood.

Canning underwear?  It’s true.  I worked at a factory that made Hot Chillys thermal underwear, which was packaged in cans.  I still have one of them:

Full disclosure:  I only worked the canning machine for about a day.  The company made better use of me in the shipping department, which took more brains because the underwear wasn’t being made nearly fast enough to keep up with orders, so we had to ship partially-filled orders to every customer and keep track of how much product each customer was owed.  That was a pretty good job.  In fact, when Spirit Cycleworks let my brother go, I got him a job at the factory working right alongside me.

Line 13:  vicious circle simply has to end

This line makes no sense.  My situation was a bit like a Catch-22, in that I had to have work experience to get a job but couldn’t get that experience without a job—but that’s in no way a vicious circle.  There was absolutely nothing cyclical going on, nor anything vicious.  I certainly wasn’t going to get a job as a poet with clunky lines like that.

Line 14:  fuck hopes and dreams

This was a bold, decisive way to get out of the corner that line 13 had painted me into.  You can tell “fuck hopes and dreams” was added later, as it’s in the same blue ink as the revisions.  I must have gotten to the end of line 13 and just given up on the poem, and then came back to it later and hastily finished it off without worrying about meter, rhyme, or even conveying anything meaningful. 

This line, “fuck hopes and dreams,” is actually a cinematic reference, but to a movie whose title I cannot remember.  It was a really awful movie.  My brother and I rented a lot of movies in those days, most of them awful.  This line came toward the end of the movie when the main character, totally stymied by everything in his life, melodramatically picked up a gun, put it to his head, and uttered this line.  I can’t even remember if he pulled the trigger because at this point in the movie my brother and I started laughing so hard we couldn’t see straight.  My god that was a stupid movie.

When researching this commentary I looked up “fuck hopes and dreams” on the Internet Movie Database but couldn’t find anything.  Probably it was such a forgettable movie that nobody bothered to mine it for memorable quotes.  My search did turn up a movie called “Young People F---ing,” which earned a Critics’ Metascore of 39 out of 100, which is remarkably low (but not the worst I’ve seen).

So, it’s been a long time since I wrote my unemployment poem, but I’m pretty sure the last line was a way to tell myself, “You’re being silly and melodramatic, lugubrious even, like that awful movie, and it’s time to stop writing indulgent, woe-is-me poetry and go get a damn job.”  Which I did.  After the underwear cannery gig ended, I held down two jobs concurrently—one at a bike shop and one at a radio station, as an evening receptionist—which not only paid the bills, but helped me save up some money for college.  Looking back, I’m glad I had that unemployment experience, and the depression that went with it, just to get it out of my system—hopefully once and for all.

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