Christ, I want to put other voices
into the heads of these people:
put a strong woman’s voice into
the head of the jock at the back table,

the one who won’t talk, who juggles his facade
of listening to me with his fascination
with the Blackberry; make that redhead next to him
do more than nod, switch out her monosyllables

for the chirp of the little guy at the front of the room
who has a story for every thought anyone utters,
and they’re off point, every last one; because I think
she’s with me and I want to know more about her, how she thinks,

what she has to say about work and how it goes for her
in meetings where it’s always like this, with the loudmouths
doing all the talking or the ones whose attitudes come through
without saying a word and whose attitudes color the atmosphere

in this breakout space with no room to do more
than sit nearly in each other’s laps and take the measure
of how the middle aged trainer is handling the pressure
of the long silences, of them sitting on their hands

every time I ask a question designed to get at something,
how it is for them, do they get what they need
at work, do they let their employees speak up, ask them
who they are, how they are, what they want, what they need.

The whole world loathes a trainer. We even loathe ourselves: too often
we bore ourselves with what we have to say. We’d rather
shake them, walk out when they’re silent,
toss a slide into the regulation Powerpoint

that suggests that the key to good leadership is to shut up and pay attention
to what’s around them, get to know their people
as if they were people instead of collections of aggravations —
which of course, is just how I see them right now: just faces, types, full of disdain

for the guy asking them how they think and feel,
trying to get them to turn to each other and say, “Yes, I hear you,
and it’s that way for me too — we need to talk more and remember
who we are no matter how we dress or talk.” I earn my living this way

and there are days I hate it as much as I hate anything
I have to do: comfort the unwilling, dance for the blind,
make a monkey of myself to get them laughing; I’m just another clown here,
and I don’t know how to get out of it,

to start being worthy of the role,
to start acting like I really mean it when I say
we have to be more to each other,
we have to give a shit about each other.

sez he

don’t say we didn’t warn you
remember
if you don’t take heed
to where you’re going
you’re likely to end up
somewhere you never wanted to go

sez i

s’ok
i kinda like it here

whereupon
the Old Goat
exploded

i was left staring
into a field of skulls
twined up with dark daisies

brown eyed lamia

but they sang such lovely
songs that
i worked up the nerve and
i sez to one of them

if you know medusa
tell her i said
stone is strangely more comfortable
than flesh
and i don’t regret the sight of her

the singing never stopped
it fell on my rocky ears
and my voice softened

with no more myth
of the Old Goat
to scare me

i came right in
on the one
and it was
perfect

face
and shadow of face

whoever looks into
a broken window

finds a broken confession

looking out

mea culpa

for the insincerity born from fear
for the backstabbing born from a desire to be loved by all
for the seductions born from a need for power
for the pigments made by crushing and grinding

mea culpa

mea culpa
for half truths told
because they moved others more
than full truths
for lies and deceptions told
because they were more true
to my self-portrait
mea culpa

mea culpa
for the inadequate activism
mea culpa
for the righteous display of old scars
mea culpa
for my beard’s natural gray
portrayed as worry’s hue

mea culpa
for small murder
mea culpa
for cult fascination
mea culpa
for incessant chatter
mea culpa
for the overdeveloped skill
at smooth blending of brushstrokes
into a false photograph

for my treasured album of someone else’s memories
mea culpa
for the stink of my body unexcused by hard work
mea culpa
for the scornful honor I accord to my lazy fatness
mea culpa
for the image
for the green magic smoke
the red knife
the black black ordinary clothes worn like a difference
mea culpa
mea culpa

for the rough wooden frame around
the gold-swollen artist’s lust in my heart
for the hanger that holds me out from the dirty wall
for the vulgar displays
of the performance enhancing poems
mea culpa

all of me
is my fault

take a knife of your own to me
I will suspend before you
the only thing I’ve got
with which to defend myself

that it all was done for dumb
and not for evil

and
(mea culpa)
even that
is no defense

for I have signed it

M. C.

The Wall Arch falls in Utah
after spending tens of thousands of years
holding itself up against erosion.

A locust tree falls in Gettysburg
after one hundred and fifty years
of holding itself up against
bullets and cannonballs and blood, after
holding itself close to Lincoln
as he spoke there.

The poet Shannon Leigh falls into dark water,
holding herself against the need
to see her life through
once she knew that it had been enough
to live as strongly as she had.

Ken Hunt falls, Angela Boyce falls,
Pat Storm falls, Lisa King falls, Scott
Kirkpatrick falls.

Some days it seems that everything is falling.
All the poets are falling, all the natural wonders
I’ve known are tumbling down head over sole
leaving me with more answers than questions
than I was willing to ask when they were still among us,
upright, appearing as if they would never die;

and now Mahmoud Darwish falls as Palestine falls, years
of people crushed, starved, burned;
people fall in olive groves and fail in shanty towns,
raising his words against their dim future
in order to recall
how things can change
even when they seem most
immutable.

In the August night I stop for a moment to say
that I fear I am no arch, no witness tree,
no name others will use to conjure hope after I’m gone.
The ground itself shakes me into terror daily
as I look at the way I live, the way I have lived:
coward, passer-by, content more often
to marvel at the courage of others
and the endurance of the Earth
than I have been to pull my own bravery out
and try it on;

set-up more often than punchline,
killer more often than savior, mayhem in my voice
more often than healing; give me strength, I have said,
give me strength to be the rock that doesn’t crumble —
forgetting that to crumble is the way of all things,
and that what endures is not the thing itself
but its spirit, its flavor carried forward
on the wind of the planet.

I am no hero, not in this life.
I am no wonder
worth seeing, not today.

But things can change.

Desmond Dekker playing hard
and losing
to the rowdy river,
white and high
from the earlier rain.

Snapping flames in the fire pit
as particle board burns.
Kerosene lanterns in the trees.

Sweet smoke in the cool, damp air.

A quick old hippie with odd teeth
talks non stop of how he trims
and cleans the trails for a mile
up and down the riverbank on his side.
Talks of finding foxfire at night
in the decomposed logs carried here
by the spring thaw. Imagines the cavemen
finding it, saying, “It glows.
I’m going to lick it!”

He cackles on
about black snakes
developing intelligence based on years
around people, says the big ones
are the smartest because they’ve learned
the most about how to get along.
Knows all the best fishing spots
and is willing to share that with anyone
because it shouldn’t be private knowledge.

There are blackberries back up in there, he says,
that have never seen pesticide and are bigger
than his thumb.

Something invisible
is moving on the opposite shore,
but I keep my mouth shut:

stories like these
haven’t been heard
in a long time,
and they deserve
to be heard again
beginning to end,
with no interruption,
on a riverbank
in Attawaugan, Connecticut,
with “The Israelites”
in the background,
almost drowned out
by the sound of flood water
pouring over an old dam
as if it wasn’t there.