FOR SOME A MOUNTAIN - Stephen Dunn

For some a mountain, say an Everest or a Kilimanjaro,

exists to be conquered, the kind of obvious big thing

my father, that valley dweller, would casually diminish.

What’s wrong with life in the lowlands, he’d say,

why not just look up, enjoy imagining

how you’d feel at the top? And interesting people,

if you need them, are everywhere. They can be found

in a glade or a clearing, even in a suburb.

 

My father is dead; he only has the words I remember

and choose to give him.

 

If I were to say my need to define myself

involves breathing air not many have taken in,

and the excitement of a little danger, I’d hear him say

Do some good work, mow the lawn, carry wood

from the woodpile. Don’t confuse the dangerous

with the heroic.

 

But the truth is I’d like to be a mountainizer,

someone who earns the pleasure of his reputation.

When it comes to women, I desire them married

to their own sense of accomplishment, each of us

going our own way, coming together when we can.

 

Not enough, he says. If they lack generosity

they take back what they give. If they have it

they remind you, ever so gently, that a man

who climbs mountains leaves behind his beloved.

 

It is impossible to win arguments with the dead.

 

Everywhere you go there’s danger of being a no one,

my father insists. Is he changing his position,

or is that willful me changing it for my sake?

The grave was always his destination, the modesty

of his ambition obscured now by lichen and moss.

Comes the mountain before the reputation, I say.

Comes the unsure footing, the likely fall, he says.

Look for Me - Ted Kooser

Look for me under the hood

of that old Chevrolet settled in weeds

at the end of the pasture.

I'm the radiator that spent its years

bolted in front of an engine

shoving me forward into the wind.

Whatever was in me in those days

has mostly leaked away,

but my cap's still screwed on tight

and I know the names of all these

tattered moths and broken grasshoppers

the rest of you've forgotten.

Amor Fati - Jane Hirshfield

Little soul,

you have wandered

lost a long time.

The woods all dark now,

birded and eyed.

Then a light, a cabin, a fire, a door standing open.

The fairy tales warn you:

Do not go in,

you who would eat will be eaten.

You go in. You quicken.

You want to have feet.

You want to have eyes.

You want to have fears.

HIS MUSIC - Stephen Dunn

It wasn’t that he liked being miserable.

He simply had grown used to wearing

a certain face, become comfortable

with his assortment of shrugs and sighs.

His friends said How are you?—

and prepared their sympathy cards.

Miserable was his style, his insurance

against life’s frightening, temporary joys.

And when the truly awful happened,

some rejection or loss,

how ready he was for its aftermath,

how appropriate his posture, his words.

Yet when she said she loved him

something silently wild and molecular

began its revolution; he would’ve smiled

if the news from the distant provinces

of his body had reached him in time.

He frowned. And did not allow the short sigh

which would have meant pleasure

but now, alone, was just old breath

escaping, the long ahhhh, that music

which soothed him, and was his song.

To Myself - Franz Wright

You are riding the bus again

burrowing into the blackness of Interstate 80,

the sole passenger

with an overhead light on.

And I am with you.

I’m the interminable fields you can’t see,

the little lights off in the distance

(in one of those rooms we are

living) and I am the rain

and the others all

around you, and the loneliness you love,

and the universe that loves you specifically, maybe,

and the catastrophic dawn,

the nicotine crawling on your skin—

and when you begin

to cough I won’t cover my face,

and if you vomit this time I will hold you:

everything’s going to be fine

I will whisper.

It won’t always be like this.

I am going to buy you a sandwich.

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.

Lines for Winter - Mark Strand

                                                                            for Ros Krauss

Tell yourself

as it gets cold and gray falls from the air

that you will go on

walking, hearing

the same tune no matter where

you find yourself—

inside the dome of dark

or under the cracking white

of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.

Tonight as it gets cold

tell yourself

what you know which is nothing

but the tune your bones play

as you keep going. And you will be able

for once to lie down under the small fire

of winter stars.

And if it happens that you cannot

go on or turn back

and you find yourself

where you will be at the end,

tell yourself

in that final flowing of cold through your limbs

that you love what you are.

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.

Crow, Scarecrow - Leonard Gontarek

A crow sits on the head

of a scarecrow. I see myself in that.

Which part of fuck off don't I understand.

Action - Gösta Ågren

Every victory concludes

itself.  What remains is the way,

the same way again.  It is

possible to learn

knowledge, to conceal that

wild, nameless bird

beneath a name.  It is easy

to realise one's dreams

if one sacrifices them. And

the years, the years go by.  Yet

you must act now.

More profound than all that you do

is all that you are.  The most profound

is all that you must do

in order to be able to remain

who you are.

"Some people don't need much to live on" - Henry Rollins

Some people don't need much to live on

Hell some folks live on pennies a day

I was right about to wrap my arms around that girl

But at the last minute

I jumped back and wrapped them around myself

"I don't want a shoulder to lean on." - Henry Rollins

I don't want a shoulder to lean on. I don't need it. The whole idea of

“Someone, that special someone...!” is for me, a load of shit. I must

be fully contained. No leakage, no spillover. Dependency is weak-

ness. It's such a lie. Lying there in bed, in your lover's arms. She's

behind me, she believes in me! No one is behind me. I am behind

me. I believe in me. I don't need any support group to keep my head

together. I know what I have to do, so I should just shut up and do it.

Transmutation - Gael Turnbull

It was as if she couldn’t know herself. Only other persons could

do that. When she searched for her image, there was always the

reminder: one green eye, one brown. Her mother had tried to

reassure that it made her attractive, interesting, that it was an asset,

not a defect

which wasn’t what troubled, or even the lack of symmetry, but that

when she looked in the mirror, she was always reversed, with her

green eye on the left, her brown on the right. Only others saw her

as she was. Only others might make the affirmation, ‘You are’. For

her, it was always the reflection, ‘Am I?’

"It hurt when I found out she dug her lies more than my truth" - Henry Rollins

It hurt when I found out she dug her lies more than my truth

It hurt when she finally broke down and saw the real thing

She was so let down

She felt like she had been ripped off

My truth incinerated her lies

I asked her if she loved me

She said that I wasn't the person she thought she knew

I told her I was right here

I was a lie to her lie

I let her down

I couldn't feel bad for being myself

It hurts to think that when we were looking into each other's eyes

We were looking at strangers we thought we knew so well