I find it hard to replace my voice
with the sounds and the thoughts
of someone else, some other one with
a story to tell. Anne Marie I’m sure

Is replete with wisdom and overwhelmed
with the scars of words and glares,
permeated with a story that would shift
the soul of an emotionless engineer

(Caught in his cubicle with skipping fingers
on worn down keys, grimy and germy
with the smudges of cold brilliance
imprinted on the tight-lipped plastic).

I am not a medium. I do not know 
the craft of witches who can catch
another’s spirit in the earth’s windy
breath. I cannot re-present her eyes.

The musician takes you on a journey
over sewers and through teary fields
of smiling purple flowers, succumbing
to the wind’s dirty musical dancing.

I should take you on that shifting
journey. I should transport and transfer
the voice of your neglected neighbor
into your glassy eyes, bypassing sewage

Like a heart surgeon cleaning Pipes,
only I would put balloons in your mind
and your soul, not your trapped heart only.
Alas, I am dumb and deaf and clubbed.

I smile at all the right things and I
collect all the right books, but I can’t
dismiss the not misappropriate looks
of those who’ve read more than I write.

My voice is not diverse enough to thwart
the cat-calls of Ezra from the Pisan 
prison. Rilke too snickers in the corner.
My eyes are also panther blind, barred.