SURVIVORMAN - Sherman Alexie

Here’s a fact: Some people want to live more

Than others do. Some can withstand any horror

 

While others will easily surrender

To thirst, hunger, and extremes of weather.

 

In Utah, one man carried another

Man on his back like a conjoined brother

 

And crossed twenty-five miles of desert

To safety. Can you imagine the hurt?

 

Do you think you could be that good and strong?

Yes, yes, you think, but you’re probably wrong.

SONG FOR NOBODY - Thomas Merton

A yellow flower

(Light and spirit)

Sings by itself

For nobody.

A golden spirit

(Light and emptiness)

Sings without a word

By itself.

Let no one touch this gentle sun

In whose dark eye

Someone is awake.

(No light, no gold, no name, no color

And no thought:

O, wide awake!)

A golden heaven

Sings by itself

A song to nobody.

NOT GETTING CLOSER - Jack Gilbert

Walking in the dark streets of Seoul

under the almost full moon.

Lost for the last two hours.

Finishing a loaf of bread

and worried about the curfew.

I have not spoken for three days

and I am thinking, “Why not just

settle for love? Why not just

settle for love instead?”

Decline - Friedrich Nietzsche

“He sinks, he falls, he’s done”—says who?

The truth is: he climbs down to you.

His over-bliss became too stark,

His over-light pursues your dark.

CONVERSATION WITH A STONE - Wisława Szymborska

I knock at the stone's front door.

“It's only me, let me come in.

I want to enter your insides,

have a look round,

breathe my fill of you.”

“Go away,” says the stone.       

“I'm shut tight.

Even if you break me to pieces,

we'll all still be closed.

You can grind us to sand,

we still won't let you in.”

I knock at the stone's front door.

“It's only me, let me come in.

I've come out of pure curiosity.

Only life can quench it.

I mean to stroll through your palace,

then go calling on a leaf, a drop of water.

I don't have much time.

My mortality should touch you.”

“I'm made of stone,” says the stone,

“and must therefore keep a straight face.

Go away.

I don't have the muscles to laugh.”

I knock at the stone's front door.

“It's only me, let me come in.

I hear you have great empty halls inside you,

unseen, their beauty in vain,

soundless, not echoing anyone's steps.

Admit you don't know them well yourself.”

“Great and empty, true enough,” says the stone,

“but there isn't any room.

Beautiful, perhaps, but not to the taste

of your poor senses.

You may get to know me, but you'll never know me through.

My whole surface is turned toward you,

all my insides turned away.”

I knock at the stone's front door.

“It's only me, let me come in.

I don't seek refuge for eternity.

I'm not unhappy.

I'm not homeless.

My world is worth returning to.

I'll enter and exit empty-handed.

And my proof I was there

will be only words,

which no one will believe.”

“You shall not enter,” says the stone.

“You lack the sense of taking part.

No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part.

Even sight heightened to become all-seeing

will do you no good without a sense of taking part.

You shall not enter, you have only a sense of what that sense

      should be,

only its seed, imagination.”

I knock at the stone's front door.

“It's only me, let me come in.

I haven't got two thousand centuries,

so let me come under your roof.”

“If you don't believe me,” says the stone,

“just ask the leaf, it will tell you the same.

Ask a drop of water, it will say what the leaf has said.

And, finally, ask a hair from your own head.

I am bursting with laughter, yes, laughter, vast laughter,

although I don't know how to laugh.”

I knock at the stone's front door.

“It's only me, let me come in.”

“I don't have a door,” says the stone.

The Poet With His Face in His Hands - Mary Oliver

You want to cry aloud for your

mistakes. But to tell the truth the world

doesn’t need any more of that sound.

So if you’re going to do it and can’t

stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can’t

hold it in, at least go by yourself across

the forty fields and the forty dark inclines

of rocks and water to the place where

the falls are flinging out their white sheets

like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that

jubilation and water-fun and you can

stand there, under it, and roar all you

want and nothing will be disturbed; you can

drip with despair all afternoon and still,

on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched

by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,

puffing out its spotted breast, will sing

of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.

After Years - Ted Kooser

Today, from a distance, I saw you

walking away, and without a sound

the glittering face of a glacier

slid into the sea. An ancient oak

fell in the Cumberlands, holding only

a handful of leaves, and an old woman

scattering corn to her chickens looked up

for an instant. At the other side

of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times

the size of our own sun exploded

and vanished, leaving a small green spot

on the astronomer's retina

as he stood in the great open dome

of my heart with no one to tell.

DAUGHTER - Lisel Mueller

My next poem will be happy,

I promise myself. Then you come

with your deep eyes, your tall jeans,

your narrow hands, your wit,

your uncanny knowledge, and

your loneliness. All the flowers

your father planted, all

the green beans that have made it,

all the world’s recorded pianos

and this exhilarating day

cannot change that.

Strangers - Richard Shelton

we find ourselves at the exact place

where the light becomes darkness

and turn our faces toward one another

realizing we could be lovers we could

be anything we could even be friends

we could carry our scars

like banners we could pray to each other

and answer each other’s prayers

                 

this is the earth we can touch it

the mountains expose their nipples

to the last rays of the sun

and day lingers on the undersides of leaves

with so much need on the horizon

surely there is a heart around here somewhere

but we are characters from a book who have

come here on vacation

to listen to the pulse of the sea

which makes an affirmation beyond despair

those who have heard it

do not recommend it to anybody

we have heard the hypnotized telephone

ring itself into a trance of silence we have

seen the poor pass by on borrowed legs

we have been enameled by the sun

and as we are slowly going under water

where all light

is the light of a green stone broken open

we keep our distance it is all we have

Do the Dead Know What Time It Is? - Kenneth Patchen

The old guy put down his beer.

Son, he said,

        (and a girl came over to the table where we were: 

        asked us by Jack Christ to buy her a drink.)

Son, I am going to tell you something

The like of which nobody ever was told.

         (and the girl said, I've got nothing on tonight;

        how about you and me going to your place?)

I am going to tell you the story of my mother's

Meeting with God.

         (and I whispered to the girl: I don't have a room,

        but, maybe . . .)

She walked up to where the top of the world is

And He came right up to her and said

So at last you've come home.

         (but maybe what?

        I thought I'd like to stay here and talk to you.)

My mother started to cry and God

Put His arms around her.

         (about what?

        Oh, just talk . . . we'll find something.)

She said it was like a fog coming over her face

And light was everywhere and a soft voice saying

You can stop crying now.

         (what can we talk about that will take all night?

        and I said that I didn't know.)

You can stop crying now.

Trust Is a Luxury - Bucky Sinister

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.

Healing Hermann Hesse - Buddy Wakefield

Hermann wants to eat nicotine sometimes. He asks

for a lot. He paces space to make himself nervous

because some people are better at surviving than

living. If you wanna get heavy he'll teach you. He

knows it. Spends his time falling from the weight.

Got a lead brain. It's a battle magnet. He carries it

around by the guilt straps. Don't laugh. You didn’t

see the size of the blizzard that birthed him. Fits

of snow. Cotton rocks. Whipped white bullet stretches

pinned with chips of teeth to his habit of crying for help.

He doesn't land well. Hates landing. It reminds him of not

living up.

Listen.

I know there were days you wanted to die.

Days you misplaced all the right words then waited

to make sense once everyone here stopped watching.

Nights you let them beat up your body in bed

because redemption was still alive in you howling.

Uncompromising.

Gathering strength.

Happiness

is too far to fall.

Felt like ecstasy

when they pounded it out of you.

Those days of dead weather high strung out together

and spoke for you.

You told everyone here it was a good life,

smiled and waved back into the wails of your wind fight,

into the parts of the past that haunt you,

all the days you weren’t being yourself.

It’s why most of the past

still haunts you,

Milk Worder,

Mr. Self Murder.

Hiding is not an option for people

so good at showing up. You show up.

It is okay that you showed up missing.

We’ve all abused ourselves

then looked over

the wrong shoulder about it.

Call it Fatherlock.

You were picked like this.

I know you hate the hope.

It’s all the hope that makes you stay.

And you stay so far off the ground.

Hermann will not bow down to gravity. Falling

he catches up to himself midair just before the ground

smacks. Pullthroat, they call’im. Sharp turner. Nothing

touches the ground here.  Ground is at capacity.

He sees that. He falls back. He patches parachutes

together with a kite knife.  It's big enough to raise him

in the updrafts where he hides himself away in angles

of air outlined by his knack for believing that this life

is gonna work itself out.

On Being Captain of Philadelphia's Top Ranked 1996 Academic Decathlon Team - Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

We had a problem with Talisha.

She was known for being a bad highlighter.

She would highlight everything.

She told us she highlighted only

what she felt was important but it seems

she felt everything was important.

The academic team would sit around and

have conversations about how to address

Talisha’s highlighting problem.

Do we keep her away from team materials?

Do we have an intervention? Someone suggested

giving her two differently colored highlighters,

in an attempt to teach her the difference

between selective highlighting and a free-for all.

Turns out, two highlighters made her problems

worse. We were finally forced to agree

that we’d all just have to accept Talisha’s

highlighting issues, because we needed her.

She was our regional Teen Jeopardy champion,

and was the only one who knew anything about

Victorian Literature.

Sometimes, when I hear stories about other

people’s teen years, I feel like they are talking

about some exotic country,

one I know I’ll never visit: the slang they used,

the boys they kissed, the nights they snuck out,

the parents they’d upset,

all the things they had to worry about

and all the things that they never ever ever

had to worry about.