MAGIC - Shel Silverstein

Sandra’s seen a leprechaun,

Eddie touched a troll,

Laurie danced with witches once,

Charlie found some goblins’ gold.

Donald heard a mermaid sing,

Susy spied an elf,

But all the magic I have known

I’ve had to make myself.

Thank-You Note - Wisława Szymborska (Translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak)

I owe a lot

to those I do not love.

Relief in accepting

others care for them more.

Joy that I am not

wolf to their sheep.

Peace be with them

for with them I am free

––love neither gives

nor knows how to take these things.

I don't wait for them

from window to door.

Almost as patient

as a sun dial,

I understand

what love never could.

I forgive

what love never would.

Between rendezvous and letter

no eternity passes,

only a few days or weeks.

Our trips always turn out well:

concerts are enjoyed,

cathedrals toured,

landscapes in focus.

And when seven rivers and mountains

come between us,

they are the rivers and mountains

found on any map.

The credit's theirs

if I live in three dimensions,

in a non-lyrical and non-rhetorical space,

with a real, ever-shifting horizon.

They don't even know

how much they carry in their empty hands.

"I owe them nothing,"

love would have said

on this open topic.

The More Loving One - W. H. Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

That, for all they care, I can go to hell,

But on earth indifference is the least

We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn

With a passion for us we could not return?

If equal affection cannot be,

Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am

Of stars that do not give a damn,

I cannot, now I see them, say

I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,

I should learn to look at an empty sky

And feel its total dark sublime,

Though this might take me a little time.

Not Waving but Drowning - Stevie Smith

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

And now he’s dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always

(Still the dead one lay moaning)

I was much too far out all my life

And not waving but drowning.

FOR THE LEAVING - Andrea Gibson

Nobody

ever thinks

about the weight

of a comet, how heavy

something has to be to go

that fast.

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.