Two of my coworkers are
fucking.
They think no one knows.
They come in to work,
one takes the stairs
and the other the elevator.
They take long lunches
together but
say nothing to each other in
the office.
I want to tell them it’s
okay,
I don’t care,
no one cares.
It wasn’t too long ago
that people used to fuck at
work.
Fucking off meant just that:
you’d fuck off in the supply
closet,
or an empty conference room,
or the stairwell that no one
uses.
Now fucking off
means being on the Internet
or
texting someone from your
cell.
Even in the dotcom days
there were drunken company
lunches,
baristas who sold grams of
coke and eighths of weed
to anyone needing to take the
edge off.
Not much fucking but there
was plenty of porn.
A little more than ten years
later
it all sounds made up.
***
It’s a beautiful day in Marin
County
and if there weren’t a prison
here,
I couldn’t afford to stand on
this property.
At San Quentin
there’s a gun tower
between you and God.
Pray all you want,
but if you run
you will be shot
on general principle.
The sky is
low on the yard:
starts one breath
above the tower,
San Quentin
is a small island
surrounded by
the ocean of not here.
From the time the outer gate
closes
until I get to receiving,
I think about every stupid
thing
I could’ve gotten caught for,
How this would be a lot worse
than volunteering to run a
poetry workshop.
I want to thank you for coming in,
she tells me.
We don’t get a lot of volunteers in here.
This is the hardest class to get into.
Everyone’s really excited about coming here.
There’s just one thing—
you have to sign this waiver,
we have a no hostage policy here.
If you are abducted during your class
we will not negotiate for your release.
It’s just a formality.
And I think,
No, it’s not.
One more thing,
she says.
Here’s a whistle—
if anyone gets weird,
just blow this and we’ll be on it.
***
In a big meeting my boss
says,
Well that’s all water over the dam now.
I start to laugh and cover it
with a fake cough
and throat clearing.
That’s not the expression.
Water under a bridge is
normal.
Water over a dam is very bad.
That’s a disaster.
Everyone is going to die.
I know how to do my work,
but I don’t know how to
behave in an office.
The only job that ever came
naturally to me
was working in a bar,
bouncing, barbacking, working
the door;
it all made sense to me.
I understand how to break up
a bar fight,
but not how to participate in
a conference call.
This job is fine
until there are other people
around.
The boss says,
We’re not drinking the Kool Aid on that one.
It’s a reference to the mass
suicide at Jonestown.
and he’s talking about a
corporate policy
on office supplies.
In the sexual harassment
seminar
I was required to take,
they said I wasn’t allowed to
say anything
that was offensive to anyone
else,
even if it was on accident.
After 45 minutes of
explaining it,
and a half hour video,
they said,
Just keep the golden rule in mind.
Which doesn’t apply—
if I treat people like I want
to be treated
I’ll be fired.
***
At San Quentin
they tell me,
Don’t ask anyone
what he’s in there for.
Don’t give out your address
or your phone number.
Don’t give anyone
any articles of clothing.
And if you run on the yard
you will be shot—
if something happens
lie face down on the ground.
***
At work
they put up hand sanitizers
everywhere.
I think,
Who the fuck
will use this?
But people complain
that they empty too fast.
There’s an extra trash can
by the bathroom door
so people can throw away
the paper towel they use
to open the door.
I have gone to neighborhoods
I shouldn’t have been in,
bought stuff I was pretty
sure was drugs
from people I didn’t know,
and smoked them
with a pipe I made from
garbage,
and I’m fine.
Raw chicken, old mayonnaise,
rusty nails in the foot—
there are germs to be wary of
but it’s not the germs on
your keyboard
that are going to take you
out.
***
In San Quentin
loose tobacco is currency
and trust is the luxury of
free men.
There’s a guy
I think is mad dogging me
the whole first class.
A little while later
I find out
he’s just missing an eye.
One guy says
all he does
is eat sleep shit
work out and write poems
and jerk off
and I think
that’s what I call Saturday.
Another guy talks about his
teeth.
Neither of us had gotten
dental care
until the year he went to
prison.
and I started working an
office job
One guy tells me
he hasn’t been home for a
family vacation
in five years.
That sounds great I think,
a perfect excuse.
***
For most of my life
I thought the office job
was impossible for me.
I thought San Quentin was
more likely.
I have more friends who have
done time
than have had corporate jobs.
I’ve heard more stories
about cellmates
than CEOs.
I read poems to the convicts.
They laughed in the right
places,
got quiet in the right
places,
they understood what I was
saying.
I knew how to talk to them.
At work I agonize over
emails,
don’t want them to be taken
the wrong way.
I’m afraid of offending
people,
sounding snide or sarcastic,
or that I don’t give a shit,
especially when I really
don’t give a shit.
The convicts know what it’s
like
to hurt someone and feel bad
about it,
that losing a fight heals,
but winning one can haunt
you.
Free or convicted,
none of us really gets away
with anything.
In the ‘90s I was temping.
Fight Club
came out.
We were talking about it,
I said, How the hell would you find
that many guys who had never been in a fight before?
The
room was quiet.
I was the only one.
It totally ruined my next
ecstasy trip
I was in the Cat Club.
They were playing T Rex:
70s music 80s clothes and 90s
drugs.
I was almost thirty,
still figuring out why
my life wasn’t normal.
Until then I thought it
was just me.
I thought
there was just something
wrong with my brain
that I couldn’t take it
I tried to tell this girl
who looked like David Bowie.
I said, We are all normal,
it’s just our lives that are fucked up.
She looked at me and smiled,
pointed to her ear and
mouthed,
I can’t hear you.
The convicts know what it’s
like
to be small
and have to protect yourself
the best you can.
That fear and small
are forever connected.
They know what drugs make you
feel big,
and that big means not
afraid.
***
The workshop was only two
weeks long.
I went back to work.
One of my coworkers
accidentally
forwarded an email to me.
He was talking mad shit.
Bar life
Drug life
Says I have to call him out
in front of everyone.
Don’t look like a punk
But I wasn’t in a bar
or a crack house.
This wasn’t a drug deal,
this was an office
at the end of the F Line
at a job that
bought me a condo,
a truck,
and got my teeth fixed.
I printed the email out and
took it to HR,
filed a harassment complaint.
There were a bunch of
meetings after that.
I never felt any better about
it.
I went home,
worked out,
wrote a poem,
ate,
shit,
jerked off,
and went to sleep.