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Grandpa told me
you can take any piece of shit
frame it, hang it
in a Worth Avenue gallery
or a Palm Beach home,
and people will call it art.
He said this long
before symbols on a screen
were mistaken for reality.
Grandpa got rich
in the last century
making dresses
for women
the way Henry Ford
made Model-Ts.
He understood
about machines;
the parts uniform,
interchangeable—
said we end up spending
our lives maintaining machines
and eventually forget
what they're for.
1 comment:
You are so fortunate to have had a role model like your grandfather, such a success story on the one hand, but also someone who seems to have had the right values in life. He pops up so often in various forms in so much of your work; it's evident how much of an influence he was on you and how much his values resonate with yours. I have read the last stanza of the poem over and over many times ... it's a profound, inscrutable sentiment, perfectly articulated. I also love the line "making dresses/for women/the way Henry Ford/made Model-Ts". A very good poem!
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