THE HUMANIST JOB SEEKER SIGNS ON THE DOTTED LINE ¤ ¤ ¤ THE HUMANIST JOB SEEKER JOINS THE MILLIONAIRES' CLUB FOR A DAY ¤ ¤ ¤ THE HUMANIST JOB SEEKER DAYDREAMS MYTHIC REPRISAL
Agreed: the company will supply
employee, who owes nothing
but the ink placed on paper.
Employee will be compensated
only when he persuades others
to tender their contracts
of indemnity for the certain loss
of life, property and health.
Bonuses will be awarded
for performance above quota,
which is staggered skyward
from one year to the next
until Everest is topped.
Otherwise, all obligation ceases.
Pleasure need not bear.
Even dragging blackberry bramble down
a hill seems good work to these half drunk men
who scramble downtown to sign on by seven,
board a bus at seven-ten and at eight bear rakes
like soldiers who'd never surrender their guns.
The Humanist Job Seeker joins them on site
in his baseball cap, boots long since hiked to ruin
and tattered jeans he once thought de rigeur
in seminars on mything plantation economies
and subverting strategies in postmodern power,
none of which seems nearly as handy
as the pair of leather gloves he finds by a stump.
Two hours into a labor that makes him bless
a milk jug of cool water and any conversation
that allows him to catch his breath, he learns stories
worth some sweat. Like Ray's, a peace-time veteran
off Mad Dog now and under his first roof
in twelve years. Or the hint of one Bill has
about the twenty-five year old tough who told him
he'd let him know when he had enough
and kept boxing Bill 'til he went down cold.
Or Carter, who just had a hundred dollar day
and belly laughs at telling one woman he had to stop
by a bar to break the bill for bus fare.
Most of the chatter's about drinking, bad teeth
and the geography each man names home.
The Humanist Job Seeker's never been to Neosho
and only driven through Odessa, so he listens,
and takes lunch to quiet a sun glare headache.
For six more hours, he machetes finger thick vines,
pitches and lifts bramble--glad at last to trope
refuse into cash and glory in the meter of work
that offers no easy metaphysic to comfort.
The fantasies come in the calm
between planes of tourists unloading
their money, baggage and wrinkled brows
on a city mainly strange to their miens
but home to the humanist job seeker
who earns that home in proportion
to the hours he can indulge
the aches and pains of nobles abroad.
But no narrative of murder, revenge
or dismemberment comes to his mind
until even his most compensatory grin
and empathetic sigh are rebuffed,
and then not until his ankles swell
under the load of their impatience
for service Hercules couldn't render.
Then, though, even as any watershed
can flood when snow melts quicker
than the mountain can swallow
or a storm comes on fierce and sudden,
the pressure builds beneath his scalp
and something has to give vent
to violence churning. That's when he fancies
his co-worker, Diana, returning the leer
of another customer astounded
that he was to wait five minutes for a car.
She fixed him a gaze that says he's sighted
by the tip of the arrow she'll let fly
for the sin of disturbing a goddess
at her bath. If he only had the sense
of a stag, he'd fly from her ill temper
and sacrifice an ox as amends.
On the other side of the dazed scholar
stands a woman likely to be ignored
as Cassandra for her foresight in protecting
against the caprice of the gods who hurl
cars into trees and who set thieves to prowl.
But her prospect is oblivious to good counsel
when it costs to listen. He'll suffer
the torment of Sisyphus as he shoulders a debt
crushing in its compounded interest
after his hubris hurls him into a head-on collision
outside Boise and no witnesses to plead
his innocence. Finally, he robes himself
in the destiny of the young Zeus who waits
to unman Cronos with a scythe
and so avenge all his kind consumed
in the fire of self-important indignation.
And from that just act of reprisal
that has him tossing balls into the sea
he'll see a rougher beauty born
than Aphrodite's, more contestable
than Helen's, less sacrificial
than Eurydice's: more like Jason
sewing dragon's teeth or Odyssean
as a firebrand darkening the eye.
