Jesus
never taught me
how to interact
with a rock, didn’t address
the souls of things.

There was that one time
when He talked of rocks
but all He said was that
we shouldn’t  be throwing them
at each other, for which (I imagine)
the rocks
were silently grateful
but their feelings
remain unrecorded
in any of the Scriptures.

Later, He called Peter a rock
and said He’d build a church on him.
I don’t imagine real rocks
were amused — a man’s not a rock,
they said to each other, how foolish
to imagine that a church could be built
on men alone?

I do not know
if Jesus listened
to the voice of the earth
when He lay down to sleep
on the hard stone
of the Holy Land. 
Did He even
consider that land holy,
or was it just
a convenient place
to start?

Even when He lay
for those three days
under the ground, protected
by the boulder,
sleeping upon stone,
the story that we’re told
is that He wasn’t truly there:
not present
in the place
of His greatest
possibility.

It’s said that
an angel
rolled away that stone
on the Sunday,

but I have always imagined
that the Stone moved out of Jesus’
way on its own, as if to say:

"It’s your time now,
and we’ll let it happen,
but we will be here
long after you’re gone."

This is how the Robe
was passed
to Him: it was an allowance,
a sufferance,
and not a seizure:

for I still see rocks everywhere,
intact, patient,
waiting to be heard,

while Jesus
lives in a house
of broken stone,
split wood,
melted, clarified sand;

while we know what He said
to us, it is impossible to know
what Gospel the rocks heard
as He stood upon them,
preaching what to their ears
was must have been
an impenetrable message
of the End of Days.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PS:  I’m sure this will prompt some upset here and there; sorry in advance.  Just talking about my own beliefs…

Tuesday
has yet to click into place.
Birds fall silent after the dawn chorale,
the squirrel’s chattering on his usual rock,
and I can’t decide what to do:
go back to bed for a while,
or start working.

This week hurts more
than I’d planned for.
Money’s tight, I’m alone again,
and while there’s a pretty world
out there to astound me,
it seems I can’t breathe deeply enough
to take it all into me, let it expand me,
open me to something greater than myself.

Perhaps I should be silent too today,
take the birds as mentors —

eh.  I am not good with mentors,
with being advised.  I’ve given up on
therapy, listening, pills, meditation,
exercise, thoughtful contemplation
of what others have said.  All I’ve got left
is a keyboard and a lust
for getting me out there,

instead of letting what’s out there
come in. 

Believe me, you must believe me:
there was a time when I could have told you
the names of all the minerals in the rock
that squirrel is using for his soapbox.
There was a time when I knew
what I stood for, and upon;
a time when I knew how
to be awake.

The first great poet
was Lot’s wife,
because she dared to look back
and understood, for a second,
why gaining distance from pain
is important.

Lot was the second,
and he didn’t even know it
until the day he could bear
salt on his goat meat
again.

I washed dishes this morning,
then made coffee. Right now
I’m waiting for the dark brown scent
of it to come alive, and I realize that
the scent isn’t dark or brown,
and the only reason I say that it is
is because coffee is dark and brown
and there’s no way to describe a scent
without relying on comparison,
and on other senses,
and all of it is about the past,
how coffee reminds me of past things,
of how a sink full of dirty dishes smells,
it reminds me of fear and sloth
and those days when I couldn’t
get off the couch
to address anything,
and I’d go out for coffee instead of
making some.

Hearing other people in the diner
talk about work and babies and money
just made me think about the couch so I’d go home
and sit on it some more, and I never bent down
to smell the couch, covering my own scent
with deodorant and spraying the air to remove
the scent of cigarettes and cat and old me,
until I just couldn’t stand myself anymore
and I’d go back out for more coffee, a beer,
a shot, anything to cover the smell.

I know I made it to here
by repeating a story
I wrote from whatever
I can remember…

but this morning,
I got up.
I washed a sink full of dishes.
I brewed coffee.
It’s ready,
and all the cups
are clean.

some of us think we’ll close the deal tonight
when we fire up a doomsday machine in France
and atoms open up
and let themselves go
and maybe we’ll all burst open with them;

or maybe it will come ten years from now,
or twenty, when we drown in our own waste;
or maybe when the earth finally opens its gates
and sends another flood to pull us down;
if we close the deal that way we may be wet with more than tears.

one thing is true: when we close the deal the sky will be blue,
surviving birds will sing, remaining animals will chuckle
in their furry throats, cockroaches will stretch
and slap each other on the backs even as we turn toward each other
and try to decide if it will be worth living one more day

if we have to slit the throats of children right then to gain it,
or will we decide instead to stroke their hair and tell them
that all the promises we made about making a better world
were just like drawing knives across their necks? will they
beg us to kill them before we close the deal?

when we close the deal (and maybe, just maybe, we already have)
will we still wonder how it happened, or will we take one moment
to recognize how we failed? or will we take that moment to lie one more time
and turn to the ones standing beside us, trembling before the awesome End,
and say, “I’m sure it will all come out right”?

Len says there’s a sea of garbage
in the central Pacific.
Seal pups
on the beaches there
play with tampon applicators,
swallow them,
are blocked up
and then die.

Just above us
on the beach
is a dead sea bird.
I’ll say it’s a gull because
it’s the only sea bird
I know by name.
It’s probably
as soft as it looks,

but I won’t touch it.
Death needs
to be kept
at arm’s length,
just beyond
my fingertips.
It needs to stay out there,
far away from here.

There’s no need for me to know what killed that bird.
I’ll walk the beach, pick up smooth stones,
flip the flat ones
over the surface of the water
two, three, maybe five times
until they sink at last
to safety on the bottom,
where I can imagine

they’ll rest on clean sand,
no plastic there
among the scallops
and the horseshoe crabs
that will live forever on the bottom
of the perfect harbor
that shines and ripples today
with the slight breeze that heralds an approaching storm,

glad we made it to the island
ahead of the wind and the rain
and that we may sleep through it tonight
and get up tomorrow and read poems
to smiling faces on the bluff above
the beach, the gull, the stones,
the sand full of white shards
I will not speak of again.

All people can be divided into two groups:
those who divide people into two groups,
and those who do not.

We call the people who divide people into two groups
"them," and we call those who do not
"us."  Sometimes, we call "them" "the Others."

Let us say some things about the Others:
they are grown fat with their unjust ways.  They
hate us.  They are the source of the Smell — ha,

they are overripe with it.  If you were to crack open
the "O" at the beginning of the word "Others," it would be
as though a durian had been split in a closet

and left to rot.  In fact, the Others
are the splitters of all fruit.  All carcasses
are split by them too.  We

are the stitchers of that which is split.  All people, then, may be split
into two groups: the splitters of things, and those
who guard that which can be split.  We call the Splitters

the others, the guardians are called "us." The splitters
are known for their cunning, their conspiracies, their incoherent
justice.  If you were to straighten out the "S" at the beginning

of the word "Splitters," you see that it is a snake’s spine
and they have been holding the serpent close to their breasts
since the beginning of days.  Venom is their milk, and we

are their silent milkmaids.  We are the ones who carry
the venom to their tables.   It sloshes onto us and we are burned
daily.  All people, in fact, may be divided into two groups:

those who are burned, and those who are burning us,
or those who are poisoned and those who live on poison, or those who
worship division and those who pray for shielding and healing.

All people can be divided into two groups.
These groups are called "us" and "the Others."
It is as lamentable as It is observable, and it can be proven as follows:

all people can be divided into two groups —
those who divide people into two groups,
and the dead. 

— headline on a news story, August 29, 2008

Matthew, who covers accountants,
is sharpening pencils, placing each one
into a lead lined box
so they won’t float away this time.

Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, the messengers,
are rehearsing. Brass is their specialty
and they’re dropping a little swing into their fanfares
because — well, just because.

Anthony of Padua lays out the magnifying glasses,
the dowsing rods, the long poles for probing
deep water, the black bags for the recoveries.
He is the finder.  He will be ready.

Everyone’s busy — Genevieve, disasters; Jude, desperate causes;
Martin de Porres, race relations; Joseph, of course,
overseeing both death and social justice, is working out,
getting in shape, doubling up on his reps.

Me?  I’m Anthony the Abbot.  This is Elizabeth Seton,
and to her right is Jerome Emiliani — in charge of
gravediggers, lost parents, and orphans, respectively.
We’re on standby, coming to you live

from a place somewhere nearby, somewhere hot and sticky
and not exactly forgotten, somewhere not exactly anyone’s idea
of Heaven anymore.  Bernadine, who has responsibility
for public relations, tells us not to mention the name

just in case anyone should draw conclusions about us
and our readiness last time.  I’ll say this much: sometimes,
we do our best and the worst still happens.  When it does,
it’s usually because we counted on help from those

with boots on the ground, no matter how soggy it gets
they’ve still gotta do their part if we’re to be of any service
at all.  That didn’t happen.  We’ll see what goes down this time,
I guess.  Foresight doesn’t fall into our jurisdiction.

Oh, in case you were curious — yes, there are two among us
who bear those names.  They’re old, and we don’t trust them
with anything of consequence anymore; don’t confuse them
with their namesakes, though.  We cause nothing to happen:

we’re all about the aftermath.

This time of year, when the good weather
is winding down, swans appear on ponds and lakes
everywhere, their glorious, Art Nouveau necks
slipping through the mirrors
into the brown-green muck below.

They don’t want you to remember
that they rose to this
from their birth as sin-ugly ashy cygnets,
that they rode on their parents’ handsome backs
until they were ready to take their places,

so if you get too close
they will attack, breaking your limbs
with angelic weapons, fervently trying
to cut you open with their cruddy,
razored mouths, working every ounce of their weight

to keep you from thinking of the way
their eyes are black, all black,
with no light shining through from inside;
to keep you from thinking of anything except
the arc of their feeding, their classical poise.

1. (in an office at work)
“they hate white guys like us.”
“i’m not white.”
“what do you mean?”
“my father’s Mescalero.”
“oh, that doesn’t count.”

2. (in a bar)
“you’re a conquered people
and you’re just going to have
to get used to that.”

3. (at my nonni’s house)
“your father steals from me
every time he’s in my house.”
“no, he didn’t, nonni.”
“he does. he stole a knife. he stole money.
i no understand why
your mother want to be
with those Indian peoples.
it’s good you look like her father.”

4. (my father’s way of saying how bad the pain was)
“i’ve got a headache
that would kill a white man.”

5. (at school)
“your dad brought two colored kids
home for the weekend to stay over?”
“yes.”
“did they smell funny? do Indians
get along with them? i didn’t know that.”

6. (at the office)
“oh, i love Indians! Indians
are so beautiful — i love their feathers
and the way they dance. do you dance?
do you have feathers?”

7. (at school)
“how come your sister
looks like a chink
and you look like a wop?”

8. (driving with my dad)
“i’m never gonna marry
a white girl.”
“son, your mother’s white.
it doesn’t matter sometimes.
marry who you love.”

9. (outside a club)
“don’t you really hate seeing these kids
running around with mohawks
when they’re not even Indian?”

10. (in a coffee shop)
“take your glasses off.
oh, yeah, i can see it now.”

11. (at work)
“now that your hair is long,
i can really see it.”

12. (too many times to choose)
“now that i know, of course,
it’s obvious.”

13. (at school)
“i’m really surprised
that you have to shave.
does your father have to shave?”

14. (during a performance review)
“aren’t you a little old
for this? i mean, aren’t you supposed
to have gotten over this, had a vision quest
or something when you were young?”

15. (too many times, too many bars)
“should you be drinking this much,
i mean, you know, fire water and all that?”

16. (at work)
“when your mother makes lasagna,
does she use buffalo in the sauce?”

17. (third week, introduction to anthropology, freshman year)
“so, you’re Italian and you’re Indian?
god, you must have a temper.”

18. (junior year, private school)
“jesus, put away the knife! what are you — crazy?
it’s just a word, you are a half-breed,right?
that’s what you are, right?
i’m sorry, jesus, i’m sorry, i didn’t know,
how’m i supposed to know that? you’re fucking
crazy!”

19. (being interviewed for someone’s grad thesis)
“so, how do you describe yourself?”
‘i don’t, i guess. not really. not anymore.
i guess ‘poet’ works as well as anything.”

“which side do you get that from?”

20. (first time in Italy)
“my mom’s family’s from around naples.”
“but this isn’t Napoli. why you come here?”
“because i’ve always wanted to see Venice.”
“you should see Napoli. you should see.”
“next time, maybe.”
“yes, next time. something there for you, maybe.
maybe home.”
“yes, maybe.”

21. ( first time on the rez)
“i’m looking for records, anything.
my father was born here, was sent to a residential school
and joined the army after,
he lost touch with every one, never came back.”

“there are no records, though. everything
was lost in a fire back in ’67. i’m sorry. you’ll have to do
some work to prove it, if you’re interested in being on the rolls –“
“no, that’s not it. i just wanted — something.
anything.”

“well…
welcome home.”

The natural order
is this:

first, we breathe,
then, we cry.

Nursing, sleeping, dreaming,
eating, drinking, elimination

all follow,
but the breathing is constant,

will be often unnoticed,
will be sweet and foul equally,

continues through smiling, laughing,
writhing, crawling, walking,

reading, writing, eventually
sex and its attendant foibles,

compounded from everything already mentioned,
working — grieving and recovery,

losing, winning, parenting
and more of all the above, and still

the breathing continues, up until
it stops, forgotten at once upon cessation

along with everything else.
We create so much along the rails of breath,

marking the events
left trackside as being our truest expression

when the miracle
is measured in breath upon breath

taken in spite
of all the rest,

and in our continual recovery
from the first sharp cry we gave

after drawing the ripe tang of the world
into our lungs —

why do we focus on the crying and laughter,
desiring one over the other

when the breathing is what remains constant?
We are not made to be happy or sad forever:

we were meant only to breathe,
and to count the rest of it as mere consequence,

just the fruit
of the natural order,

just the rumble of a train
going home.

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.