All That Is Solid
by Sam Friedman
All that is solid
melts into air,
the woods I played in
with Tom and Geoff—
cleared, cut, erected, sold;
the slide rules we played like tubas—
now antique curiosities
like the mechanical calculators
which kerchunged kerchung whirr kerchunged
when we divided one by zero
six machines at a time.
The Thousand Year Reich,
the eternal Cold War,
even the Empire on which the sun never set
now melted into air, less solid
than the smog
which may itself melt.
Job security,
social safety nets,
freedom from search or seizure,
every privacy,
melt into memories
until these memories also melt.
Mighty Woolworth's, mecca for toys and trinkets,
then for months of picketing
so that all could eat a solid meal
at those omnipresent stores,
now merely air,
less solid than the thinning soup
of a worker's lunch.
The certainties of an unchanging world
eroded by the unceasing search for a bottom line,
homes tended 9 to 5 by mommies, then ruled 5 to 9
by fathers of certain authority,
America as the icon of freedom
and defender of liberty—
all melted,
all merely the molten myths of reminiscence.
Only the eternal verities remain,
verities eternal for three centuries
or even less,
verities like a world ruled by clocks
(even though their hands, big and small, have melted into electronic digits),
like obeying bosses in return for paychecks
(now the electronic image of direct deposit),
like lives of exploitation
in a world where races are ordered,
layered,
know who's boss.
These verities have remained,
contents solid though their decorations changed—
working for pay,
white power,
corporate profits as the Great Helmsman,
all remain solid,
seem eternal.
But these centuries-old eternals
now hover in the air,
ripe for melting,
ripe for removal
by the angry hopes and remembered dreams
of workers, families, humanity
who reject being melted,
who choose not to become
airified,
who revolt out of love
for a past,
for a future.
volume 10(6)
This poem is copyright © 2006,
Sam Friedman, all rights reserved.
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