poetry

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The Body at Work

“That the body plays a central role in work is perhaps an obvious statement, yet it is easy to lose sight of human labor in a capitalist system centered on service, global outsourcing, and automated assembly…laboring bodies experience ailments and annoyances that are often hidden because they are experienced in isolation” – Ed Slavishak

When the worker is asked
To complete the task,
The body slaves away
For a measly pay.

In the big blue store
With the bright blue vests,
17 year old
Ken Kaneki rests.

School then work,
Day and night,
Week after week,
He does everything “right”.

He’s the star employee,
The best on the team,
But what does that
Truly mean?

His feet are aching,
He can barely walk,
But yet to every customer
He must talk.

Work through the pain,
Keep up your pace,
And never ever
Let your smile leave your face.

7 miles a day,
He walks across the store.
Pulling carts, stocking cases,
And watching the door.

Up on the ladders,
With boxes half his size,
His balance unsteady,
And dust in his eyes.

Down on the floor scrubbing,
He’s on his knees.
His body is screaming
“Help me please!!”

Work through the pain,
Keep up your pace,
And never ever
Let your smile leave your face.

Now in the present,
His joints are weak.
And every now and then,
The future looks pretty bleak.

Countless hours spent
To prove your worth,
But where’s that “family” now,
When you are hurt?

You are replaceable
Like a cog in a machine,
And in the end,
Your efforts were unseen.

4 years in a place
That worked him to death
And now his sanity
Is all he has left.

With the job of 6
And the pay of 1,
After 4 years
He’s glad to be done.

But when he looks down
At his physical form,
He can plainly see
That it is worn.

His body shows signs
Of labor intensive times,
And he bears the scars of physical labor.

Now that he’s free,
He can clearly see
That the odds were never in his favor.

He must push on
In his tired state,
He must succeed
Before it’s “too late”.

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The Body in Poetry.

 

The video is Andrea Gibson preforming her poem, “I Sing the Body Electric, Especially When the Power’s Out”. I thought this was fantastic because it does self-consciously reflect the ways in which we take our bodies for granted until something is wrong. She points out that she wrote the poem when her body was hurting her – this is a reflexive way to recognize that the body exists. Her poem, however, extends pass that and praises the body as a machine in poetry. The imagery really counts towards her overall message. Body parts are representative of their function and ultimately, their worth.

The body does so much, but we also picture the internal features as something much more pristine. The use of heart beats keeping rhythm, of the mouth as a fire escape, and the smoke in her lungs points to the ability of the internal body to ampify our natural processes. What resonated with me the most were the lines about her injuring her body and the doctor assuming it was for attention. I feel like that’s one of the ground rules we’re expected to take about the body: we’re blessed to have it and should appreciate everything it does, so those who do modify the body are transcending the whole “body is a temple” concept