Well, I teach in Buffalo, which is the home of the Language
poets, so I felt I ought to write a Language
poem to be in the swim.
So this is my version of one.
It's called "Manifesto."
"Is it a time for you, words of the world, to unite and resolve
not to work anymore for the bosses, who look upon you as so
many hands and feet, drudges and drones,
in a garment sweatshop, turning out code so rich, so elegant,
they make the ugliest customers appear respectable?
Isn't it time to gather under the flag I'm
standing under, after my little stint with lesser causes,
the flag of art?
Proudly it waves over a workshop where the management
puts its employees first.
No more crowding together in ill-lit basements.
Each of you will receive the elbow room you deserve,
by a bright window that opens on a garden,
happy in an establishment where means and methods are just
as important as any end.
"Accept no substitutes," that's the new motto
I've sewn in our union logo.
One sentence stitched with devotion says more than 10
pasted together to meet a deadline.
And here's a clause in the contract that says,
whenever you feel weary from overuse,
you can take off a month to get your strength back.
No more worry about replacement.
No scab of a synonym will be smuggled on to the payroll
to do the job only you can do.
Imagine it, words, no foreman ever again.
No chain of command if you work together as equals.
The noun "confusion," the companion of "muddle,"
the adjective "mortal," at its ease with "death-bound."
Each of you will be known from every other
by your own peculiar pointedness on my tongue, your own torque,
twisting the line, and pushing over the line between chop
and office, into the greener pastures, where
crowds press forward to touch your sharp inflections.
How proud I'll be, my colleagues, of your angles
and edges, how you won't let anyone file them down."