Tombstones and Toolboxes

by Fred Voss

In the corner of our machine shop behind a 10-ton press
sits Howard’s toolbox
a toolbox Howard got from an old sailor 45 years ago
a beautiful hand-made toolbox made of hand-fitted pieces of wood without one nail
in it
a and a sunflower carved into its center front wooden drawer and painted yellow
6 years ago Howard retired at age 75
but still the toolbox sits
where he left it
on a steel cart and wrapped in clear plastic sheets
like any day Howard
might return to make that one special $30,000 aircraft part only he could make
one more time
and now we hear from the office that Howard died
and still Howard’s wooden toolbox with the sunflower carved into it
sits there
like it is too beautiful to roll away
still it sits
in its corner like a wooden tombstone grave
as if Howard’s tools inside were Howard’s bones
and I think
how when I finally retire with sore bones at age 75 or 80
I’ll drive my toolbox home
and place it in my garage with all its tools inside it
to preserve it
I have a wild dream
someday after I’m long gone my words will be world famous
and in a world of artificial intelligence and robots people will travel
thousand of miles to a museum
to open my toolbox drawers
and feel my tools
in the flesh of their palms and remember
me
a human being
who made poetry out of nuts and bolts and worm screws and vise jaws
in the days
when men still made this world
with their hands.

Image above: People Take Turns to Do the Difficult Jobs, by Chad McCail

Waiting for Huck Finn's Raft

by Fred Voss

I remember the old longhaired turret lathe operator
standing
on the sidewalk outside the big 100-year-old wooden door
of the old downtown LA factory
as I drove past him toward the factory parking lot to clock in to work
and the sun rose
his leg
propped on a red fire hydrant
his pipe
lit
he puffed
like some machine oil elder sage deep in contemplation staring out
at the downtown bank skyscrapers reflecting orange sunbeams
off their towering glass sides
in 10 minutes
the factory would explode
with the fury of 50 automatic screw machines and mills and lathes roaring
to meet deadlines
set by the factory owner
who had just raised our production quota
and said we’d either have to raise the number of parts we made per day 20%
or have our pay cut
and the smoke rose out of that turret lathe operator’s pipe
and he kept his foot up on that red fire hydrant
and looked out at the dawn sky
like he wished the world could be as beautiful
as the song of the bluebird
on the telephone wire down the street
and the days when machinists like us
had good union jobs
and the smoke rose up out of his pipe toward the sky
like the smoke rising up out of the pipe of Huck Finn
as Huck guided that raft down the Mississippi River
taking escaped slave Jim
toward freedom
in the dawn’s light
once the Summer of Love and the Age of Aquarius
were supposed to bring us machinists peace and music and love and happiness
now
I pulled my old Toyota into the parking lot and got out
and took one last look
over at the turret lathe operator’s smoke
billowing higher and higher into the scarlet sky
waiting
like all of us machinists
for Huck Finn’s raft
to save us.

Steel Brotherhood

by Fred Voss

47 years ago in the steel mill I remember
a steelworker picking up 2 steel shanks
and knocking them together
so they rang out in the steel dust air
until a second steelworker across the football-field-big steel mill building
picked up 2 steel shanks
and knocked them together in time with the first steelworker’s knocks
WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP
echoing between tin walls
rising to tin ceiling
penetrating through office walls
into the company president’s ears
a 3rd
a 5th a 20th a 30th steelworker putting down cutting torch or hand grinder or welding rod
to pick up 2 steel shanks and bang them together and join
the chorus
sending chills up the spines
of the supervisors
thus the union
spoke
once or twice a week
whenever that chorus of steelworkers broke out banging steel shanks together
spoke
in our bones and hearts
roared
sang in a language of banged-together shanks universal
as clanging steel
and soaring spirit midnight shooting star
and charging lion turning earth and curling wave Woody Guthrie
date-picker campfire guitar string
and Beethoven heroic kettle drum boom
let that steel shank chorus
come again
let it rise up to the skies
and save
blue coral foot-wide amazon butterfly bright orange Bengal tiger growl
Paul Robeson fearless Joe Hill notes red-hot cutting torch sparks
green green Walt Whitman leaves of grass
and us men
banging together steel shanks until they ring out
in brotherhood.

Fred Voss, the worker-poet from Long Beach, California, has sent us the poem below, with the following message:

Here's a poem I wrote this morning, I hope you like it. Things getting crazy here in USA with Trump a 34-count felon cheered on by the Republican party, as if he wasn't obviously a wannabe dictator. Totally irrational voters cheering on a madman intent on taking away their freedom and giving anyone who doesn't kiss his ass the shaft. But if the rich weren't screwing the poor so badly I don't think this would be happening. Anyway, I hope you are well and that Labor Party wins the next election and England keeps its senses while we try to right the Ship of State over here.

Running a Machine is the Easy Part

by Fred Voss, with Workers image above by Peter Kennard

I finish locking a block of steel into a vise
and look over to see the machinist at the next machine
has put some razor-sharp cutters in the top row of the cutter-holding rack
so that the cutters stick up where I might slice open my arm on the cutters
and I angrily slam the cutters back into the lower row of the cutter-holding rack
where I like to keep them so the cutters won’t slice open my arm
and the machinist walks over to slam them back into the top row
all my life
in machine shops there has been violence
screams
in faces knives under noses cold-cock punches
thrown out of shadows rumours
of guns in car glove compartments and once
even a life-like model of a hand grenade placed atop
my toolbox
by a Korean war veteran who knew how to make bombs
“I see you’re still an asshole!” I scream
at the machinist from the next machine and he says,
“People don’t talk like that to me,” and glowers and says,
“You’ve crossed a line with me.”
My heart pounds
and I begin to tremble with fury and I walk across the shop
into the Human Resources office and tell what’s happened
to the Human Resources lady and she calls the supervisor into the office
and the Human Resources lady and the supervisor listen to me tell what just happened
Human Resources asked us machine operators working on the shop floor to come to them
if we experience any friction out on the shop floor that could lead to dangerous violence
and I wait to hear what the Human Resources lady and the supervisor will do
black belts bikers PTSD Vietnam veterans ex-soldiers with lethal weapon hands survivors
of race riots or San Quentin cells men who wait for spacemen to contact them through chips
they think the spacemen have planted in their brains
out on a shop floor that feels like it’s a million miles
from where we sit in plush swivel office chairs and look across a big shiny conference table
at each other and talk rationally
and the Human Resources lady and the supervisor thank me for coming to them
and warning them and I walk back out onto the shop floor
where machines rattle and pound through 10-hour or 12-hour shifts
and men earn barely enough to live in tiny slum apartments
remembering how their fathers used to own big houses
with 2-car garages
and I take a cutter from the top row of the cutter rack
and lock it into my machine’s head
and begin to carve a 4130 block of steel
and wait for my heart to stop pounding and my hands to stop trembling
and try to figure how best to keep my arms away
from razor-sharp cutters in the top row of tool racks
out in this other world
where no one sits in a plush
swivel chair.

Working Till We Drop

by Fred Voss, with image from Les McConnell

I am pouring water from a faucet into a bucket
to mix it with the coolant in the bucket and pour the water and coolant into my machine
when Clarence
who works with hand-grinders in the deburring department looks over from his workbench
and says, “Hey Fred, you know I read in the paper that a person should have a million dollars
saved up before they retire….
I have a little money in my 401k but not anywhere near that….
and social security….you can’t live on that….
guess I can’t retire yet Fred….”
and I think of all the times I’ve heard men in factories say
“I’ll have to work till I drop”
and then try to laugh about it
and Clarence tries to laugh but it sticks in his throat and he says,
“My sister worked as an accountant and she made good money and saved all her life
and she’s doing fine retired but you know….they tell you when you’re young to save for retirement….
but I didn’t….and I tell my son to save for his retirement
but he isn’t….”
and I shut off the water because my bucket is full
what are we supposed to do
eat nothing but lentil soup
all our life
watch our teeth fall out of our mouth ride to work
crowded together with strangers on a bus pretend sitting in a lounge chair in our backyard
is travelling to an exotic vacation spot
while the 401k experts from financial companies scold us about not saving enough
as they casually scoff at the idea of our thinking we can live on social security
and make jokes about the scarcity of rich uncles and smile in their shiny new suits
while we squirm in our ragged torn T-shirts barely making enough money to get by
“Yeah, well, I guess I won’t be retiring anytime soon either….” I say
and carry the bucket full of water back to my machine
and open a drawer to my toolbox and pull out my big blue union button
from the days long ago before they shut down the big aerospace company I worked at
with 54,000 other people
and hold the button in the palm of my hand
like it is pure gold
I’ve read in the paper how unions are beginning to stand tall again
as men and women across the land walk picket lines
and win
and I look at the image on the button of workers standing together in a ring circling the globe
locking hands
to hold each other up
so we will never have to work
till we drop.

Midnight Boxcar Poetry

by Fred Voss

Sometimes I feel I should tell all the men in this building
I write poems
about them
their smiles
their hammers their larger-than-life laughs bouncing off
the 70-foot-high factory ceiling like they should be heard
by all the world
but somehow
it would be like putting a beautiful wild Bengal Tiger
in a cage
clipping the wings
of an African Grey parrot skimming the tops
of Brazilian rainforest trees as a rainbow
appears
telling the pool player in Van Gogh’s hellish The Night Café
he will be in a painting
someday worth 10 million dollars
a meteor can’t help streaking across a sky
a cat doesn’t know how
it leaps from a 12th-storey window
and lives
a Joe Louis punch
was born before the first poem
was ever spoken
would you tell Marlon Brando to look into a mirror
right before he yells, “STELLA!”
in A Streetcar Named Desire
when I walk around my machine gripping this wrench
among all these men real and natural as Niagara Falls
I never read
Shakespeare or Shelley or walked the halls
of UCLA PhD school in English literature
and I look over at the man at the next machine
as a drop of cutting oil drips from his brush
onto the razor-sharp flutes of a 5-pound tool steel cutter in his fist
40 years ago he rode a boxcar
across midnight Arizona sands to get
to this machine shop
when he was 19 and homeless and could barely read a word
but how can I ever tell him
all the poems there ever were or ever will be
shine
inside that drop of golden
cutting oil.

A Machinery Handbook Will Never Solve This Problem

by Fred Voss

A machinist is hired and rolls his rollaway toolbox
down the machine shop aisle and parks it beside a workbench and steps up
to a machine
10 or 20 feet away from another machinist
at another machine
at first
the machinists enjoy comparing each other’s tools and work histories and talking
about each other’s jobs at steel heat-treating foundries where they saw thermometers reach
700 degrees
or worked on parts for space shuttles
or made lenses so surgeons could do angiograms
as they compare how level each other’s milling machine table is
and talk about thousandth-of-an-inch tolerances on blueprints
mutually admiring
each other’s expertise with indicators and inside micrometers and lapping compound
but it’s not long
before they find out one is an ardent supporter of Trump
while the other
thinks he should be put in prison for life
one burned his draft card in protest of the Vietnam War
while the other was a Vietnam War Marine veteran who fell in love with the smell
of napalm
it’s like some arranged royal marriage between different countries
where the bride and groom
have no choice
and nothing in common
both machinists needing the job and loving their machine
and the steel and brass and aluminum they cut
so expertly
both with a 1,500-page Machinery Handbook atop their toolbox
but one a fundamentalist Christian who believes Man’s sins will cause the world to end
in 12 years
while the other hopes he can make enough money as a machinist to someday run a whorehouse
in El Salvador
one with a beloved brother who’s a homosexual cop in San Francisco
the other a homophobe who steals company tools whenever he can
one who believes he was hypnotized and taken aboard a flying saucer and given a physical exam
by a beautiful female alien doctor
the other adamant that people who believe in UFOs
should be put in mental hospitals
maybe if the machinists are lucky they will find they both love
The Doors
or rock collecting or doing yoga in the park every Sunday morning
maybe they can admire each other’s photos
of their cute grandchildren
but it will never be enough
to stop them cursing
the way job ads can bring strangers together
for life.

Halley's Comet Burning Over Mark Twain's Head

by Fred Voss

I didn’t have to go to war in Italy like Ernest Hemingway
I just walked into a Los Angeles steel mill and picked up a cutting torch
and found my battlefield
between tin walls
with men
who gave their lives to machines that could chew off their fingers
and never got
a medal of honour
men who couldn’t stop shaking in their fingers and jaws
from 20 years of 2-ton drop hammer blasts
in their face and ears
but never wore
a purple heart
or got an article about them in any newspaper
men
fighting a war against steel bar and blast furnace flame and brutal boss
with whiskey in their thermoses and steel toes
in their boots
I didn’t have to go to sea like Melville
to meet my Queequeg
from a Polynesian island with tattoos all over his skin and a harpoon
sharper than a Sandy Koufax
fastball
there was Gus
from a San Quentin cell who could lay down a weld bead
smooth and fiery straight as the path
of Halley’s Comet
burning over Mark Twain’s head
Gus’s touch with his welding rod
magic as Jackson Pollock’s brush dripping coloured paint
all over a famous canvas
but unknown
as any bum on midnight skid row
my war heroes
men
with graveyard shift steel dust laughs of gritty survival that rang out off tin walls true
as Marlon Brando On the Waterfront muscle or Charlie Chaplin little tramp grin
men like shadows
caste by a blast furnace flame
against a blank
tin wall
when they should have been the faces of human triumph
on flags
waved 'round the world.

Trying To Go Home

by Fred Voss

“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 pedalled 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.

Whippoorwills and Welding Rods

by Fred Voss

When I first started in a machine shop
I didn’t even know how t use a file
“Didn’t anyone teach you how to use a file Fred?”
the foreman from Texas
asked me
when he saw me push a flat file back and forth like a scrub brush
across the sharp corner on a block of steel
instead of leaning into the file and pushing it forward with each stroke
I hadn’t lifted a hammer since I was a kid in my Dad’s garage
I could recite Hamlet’s “To Be or Not To Be” soliloquy
follow Sir Gawain into the medieval English woods looking for The Green Knight
write a dissertation
dissecting T.S. Eliot’s poetic imagery
but the calibration marks on the barrel of a micrometer
were a foreign country
the danger
and the laughter in a steel-cutter’s eye another
language
and the foreman rotated his fists in the air like a boxer
as he walked between our machines
according to some law of the Texas streets that wasn’t
in any book
and my mother’s hopes of a PhD in English literature for me went up in smoke
with the floor-quaking smash of a 2-ton drop hammer
and the twinkle in the eye of the Texas foreman yodeling
the lyrics of a Hank Williams song
about the loneliness of train whistles
and whippoorwills
beautiful as Shakespeare
and ex-cons picking up welding rods to learn a way to never go back
to prison
and my feet in steel-toed boots planted on the same earth
where Abraham Lincoln split logs with a heart
that freed the slaves
my brothers on this steel mill shop floor
didn’t have college degrees
just fingers
to hand roses to beautiful women who loved men
with muscle
and hearts that won battles with blast furnace flames
and stinky 1-ton steel bars
and I leaned into that flat file and pushed it forward again and again
smoothing the sharp edges on that block of 4130 steel
and smiled at that foreman
as if Walt Whitman were about to leave his open road and throw open that steel mill tin door
and stride in to ask
for a job.