"The Difference
by Steven Jesse Bernstein
(from the book More Noise Please!)

There are poets stuck
to the underside of the chair
by their fingers. If you
give them string they will
put it in their mouth and
it will come out sticky.
That is as close to being
spiders as they can get.
And, there are bugs
under my fingers, bouncing
them across the keys
like Mexican jumping beans.
That's as close to being
a poet as I can get.
The difference between me
and most insects is that I approach
the truly sexless, while
they approach the truly heartless.
The difference between
me and most poets
is I am really a spider."

[Bernstein had died just before i moved to Seattle, & i
went to a tribute reading for him without knowing who
he was.]

"Over the past 30 years the productivity of the people whose
brain and muscle creates the wealth of the world's richest nation
has grown by 66 percent. But the wage of the typical employee
– the median wage – has grown by only 7 percent." --Mark
Weisbrot (via Wood's Lot)