 Welcome, everyone. We are going to start in just a minute. Hi and welcome, everybody. Thanks for coming to this month's poem jam. I'm John Smolley and I am librarian with the San Francisco Public Library. While we're waiting for a few more people to join us, I want to take a moment to acknowledge our community and to tell you about a few of our upcoming programs. On behalf of the Public Library, we want to welcome you to the unceded ancestral homeland of the Rama Tushaloni, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. And as the original stewards of this land, in accordance with their traditions, the Rama Tushaloni have never ceded, lost, nor forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers of this place. As guests, we who reside in their traditional territory recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. We wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Rama Tush community and by affirming their sovereign rights as First Peoples. Friday, April 18th on the same page book club discusses post-colonial love poem, the acclaimed new book by 2021 Pulitzer Prize and Poetry winner Natalie Diaz. In a second program on April 26, Natalie Diaz will appear in conversation with author and educator Michelle Cruz Gonzalez. On Sunday, April 24th in the main library's Coret auditorium, the library celebrates Bay Area Black poet, Lauret, with readings by Tonga Issa Martin, the Vora major, and Dr. Leo Dele Nisinga. Last but not least, on Wednesday, April 27th, the best-selling author Emily St. John Mandel discusses her latest book, Sea of Tranquility, with journalist and author Annalee Newitz. So that ends my announcements. I'd like now to turn the microphone over to Poem Jam's host, the poet Kim Schuck, who will introduce today's program and readers. Welcome, Kim. Thank you and welcome people in attendance. I'm seeing that. Okay, that's good. We have an incredible lineup tonight. Just some amazing readers, and I can't wait to get into it, but I just wanted to explain a little what tonight was going to be about. We've been seeing an increase in banned books, and we've also been more aware, and I don't know if it's because of the internet and the availability of more information, but we seem to be more aware of poets who are political prisoners as well. So tonight we're going to be talking about and through work that has been subjected to extreme censorship. We have one person on the panel that has had work banned. We're going to be hearing the work of people who have been imprisoned, one of whom died in prison in January, I think it was, and we might end up talking a little bit about this. Tom Voiz and Martin will be here later as well. So just to move on with the thing, our first reader is D.L. Lang, who is the poet laureate emerita from Vallejo, California, and was really why I started putting this particular reading together because I heard that your book was banned. Yeah. Welcome to D.L. to the microphone here. Oh, jam. Thank you so much for having me. So a little background on my work getting banned here. Authority figures have been trying to silence me for years, but poetry remains the place where my inner voice is completely free. It's so important that right is preserved and defended around the world. I've been influenced by 1960s and 1930s historical figures. I read banned books. I listened to blacklisted protest singers. It's very important that we don't let these voices that fight for justice slide into oblivion. Those voices reached me in the middle of an environment that violently tried to instill the opposite viewpoint and showed me that I was not alone. And eventually I began to take action on my values. Without access to ideas, none of us know where we stand in life. That's the importance of art and that is what fuels me as a poet. I was writing anti-war poetry as a teenager, much to the chagrin of my teachers in the small conservative military town in Oklahoma. At 19, I expressed a moderate anti-war opinion to the press saying that war isn't always the answer during the Iraq war, and they buried a typo written article in the back of the paper due to their own bias rather than print the quote. I recently had a nine-year-old e-book of mine banned from Scribe, a company which then had the audacity to post a video of themselves giving away historically banned books when they banned entire genres on their platform. Abundant sparks was super tame compared to my recent stuff. For some reason, my interview didn't air on KPFA this week, so I'm joking around that I'm even too radical for them, though it's probably some technical thing. But it's a badge of honor. I must be doing something right. I take it as a challenge. It's making me write harder stuff now because if you couldn't handle a pacifist, well, the socialist has a few things to say. So I'll read some poems from Abundant Sparks and then I'll read some newer stuff about being working class because that seems to be some kind of taboo in this country that folks want to ban. So the first poem is called Plowshares. I awoke this beautiful morning to witness an amazing sight. The nations have laid down their arms, their peoples will no longer fight. The evil dictator tyrants all died of heart attacks, mysteriously overnight. The swords have been beaten to plowshares, the guns museum pieces now, the nukes have been dismantled, the tanks have rusted down, estranged lovers and parents with children long since left now embrace their differences and hold tight to each other's breast. On this day no innocence died, the children are all healthy. On this day no mothers cried. With peace we are all wealthy. The doctors now have magic pills, cancer and aids, no more. Starvation and homelessness, a thing of the past. We each have more than we need. Religions now work together in peace, each praising God in their own way. Differences are accepted and celebrated and not a single mouth preaches hate. Next one is called Generation Awake. Open your glazed eyes. March towards peace, work towards love, feed your brothers, shelter your sisters. No more bullets raining down, no more madmen shrieking in infamy, no more pain and confusion, no more lives dying early in vain. Step away from the screen. Do you even remember the green, the chlorophyll and youthful nostrils now replaced by formalin soaksuits? Feet once barefoot chasing nature, chase after a different green. Tell me, are you happy here? The snarkadelic wordsmith awaits the penguin whisperer. Standing in the dark haze of the alleyway, every breath sends a chilly fog into the night. The stars long since blotted out of the sky by manufactured neon bulbs flickering in their inconsistent rhythms like an erratic heartbeat. Spooked by unknown sounds and thoughts, unchained in incessant regurgitation, lying awake at midnight between consciousness and dreaming, the mind rambles on like the city streets never failing their constant symphony of horns, the cries of those wandering souls long since forgotten by the society that claims to care, the politicians, photo ops, guilt driven good deeds, the jaded jerks with their assumptions of panhandling no-goodniks passing by in their $2,400 suits and brightly shined shoes, never giving a second thought to the down and out. Sleep is a luxury in these days of 24 hour shifts, electric suns destroying rhythms here since before time, machines built without off buttons are clicking around the clock, coffee cups overflowing, endless refills of a caffeinated generation, walking past art and beauty in a haste of waste, laser focused on problems man-made and trivial, while eyes grow beet-red, dead, tired and erased to see what machinery will wear down its rusted elements. In a final cry of acquiescence its bones and bolts no longer fit to serve, taxis screaming down the street in a hurried impatience as I glance toward the calm dance of a paper bag flying in the wind, the ever-present ticking of the silver encrusted pocket watch hanging from the stranger's trench coat shakes me from my dream. Here he has delivered in simple whisper the keys that unlocked that next lexicon, destined to pass from my weary fingers onto simple paper, as if on a movable cue by some divine puppetry. My reluctant muse, the penguin, disappears into the night, leaving this wordsmith waiting once again. And that was all written in my 20s and that's what Scribe decided was not readable, so I'm going to read some newer stuff. I've been playing with my radical side trying to perform an exorcism on my working-class rage and turn it into poetry because that is a healthy outlet for that. This is called the fall, and it's a bit autobiographical. They rob your paycheck every week so they can go bomb the meek, while promising that you'll be okay if something happens to go astray. While you're flushing all your earnings away, just trying to survive day by day by day by day, they're hoping you won't realize it's a lie one day. What little that you manage to save, you're going to take that from you too. Raising prices up high until you feel blue, crashing the market with all you invested to. You're already overworked and underpaid, but you won't wake up until it's too late. First you get sick, then you lose your job, then you lose your home, then you don't know which way is up. You stand in line for food, you stand in line for any handout, you stand around waiting for change, you stand around begging for change, you stand around and you are changed, you stop standing and start making change. You can never cease to see yourself and the man lying down around the corner, his clothes are torn and tattered, he's given up bruised and battered, the system is left in completely shattered, so you start giving him your last dollar. You see gaping holes in the safety net, and no matter how much people try, no matter how much they truly care, their small acts cannot save you because something larger is a foot. They'd save you if they could, but they're on the same sinking ship, trying every day just to make it while the floorboards flood and crack, revealing a rotting national foundation. The invisible hand of the market weighs upon you, holding you down, pushing you to the ground, it'll take multitudes to lift you back to your feet, it'll take multitudes out in the streets, there ain't nowhere to go but up, but you gotta learn how to stand up, you gotta learn how to see reality, you gotta learn how to fight to be free, that's how you end up just like me, no war but class war. I am tired of the boot standing on my neck, it doesn't seem to matter what I do, I will never matter to you, I followed all your rules, I followed them to a tee, I've been over backwards to please you having hope in the American dream, but no matter what I did for you, you never had a full-time job for me, you wouldn't let me speak up when things were going wrong, you told me you didn't believe me, you hit me for putting a paper clip on the wrong side of the page, brandishing scissors, you mocked me in a German accent, you fired me for getting sick, your working conditions injured me permanently, you insulted me for making simple mistakes, you wouldn't treat me with basic human dignity, bosses steal and cheat and lie constantly, but the working class is expected to be perfect, morally, you refuse to show respect to the bottom of the barrel, and you wonder why we're angry at you, you make us grovel for healthcare, you won't give us a loan to start our own businesses, you hoard all the wealth, you make us fight to stay alive, if you wanted me to be a capitalist, maybe you should have treated me nice, you exploit all of us, work us to the bone and discard us like garbage, I wish you'd just leave us alone, I'm tired of making everyone else rich, I'm tired of fighting to survive, I'm tired of trying to fit into this sick society of lies, you steal from every one of us, it's about time we take it back, you treat my whole generation like we're a bunch of slaves, you mock us for being unable to save, you mock us for being unable to have children, you mock us for being unable to buy houses, you mock us for not being able to afford your luxuries, you mock the joys we find in simplicity, you send my cousins off to die in war, you turn us against the generations that came before, you turn us against people who look different than us, you turn us against people who believe different than us, you turn us against folks in other countries, you turn us against each other, I refuse to fight my brother, this last one is called time, your multiple mansions and big fancy cars are the land you behind bars because while you're lying idle the working people still starve, while you sit around drinking up wine the masses are still struggling all of the time, when the pitchforks and torches come straight to your door maybe then you'll remember what your heart was made for, you refuse to pay us a living wage, one day you're going to meet our rage, that wealthy horde can't protect you from the hordes, if you want to stop it you better change now, for there ain't time for your pyramid scheme, we've asked you nicely for centuries but it takes revolution to cleanse the greed, thank you very much. Thank you DL, I really appreciate you being here. You're welcome. One of the things, one of the reasons that we're doing this theme tonight is that almost everywhere I go somebody asks me during the question and answer period do I think poetry matters and I do think poetry matters but it doesn't matter if it matters to me, I know it matters to places elsewhere because they imprison poets pretty much right away, if they're not, if they're not censoring the work then they're you know censoring poets directly by throwing them in the box. Our next two readers are going to be sharing work from imprisoned poets from two different places, our next reader is Kenneth Wong who's an incredible poet in his own right but tonight is going to be reading the work of Burmese political prisoner poets in translation for us and and maybe we'll talk a little bit about that. Welcome Kenneth. Thank you, thank you very much everybody, it's a pleasure to be here and thank you very much for hosting me. It seems timely and appropriate that I should be giving voice through English translation to many of the poets who are unable to speak for themselves because they are either in prison or well some of them sadly have been killed because they participate in protests and in a military regime like Burma the standard way of dealing with protests is to shoot into the crowd with live rounds so some poets were killed, some poets are in prison and I hope that through my translation I'm able to give some of them voices. Many of these poems are part of a new anthology that was put together by volunteer editors and is called picking up new shoots will not stop the spring. Picking up new shoots will not stop the spring, it's a line that is from inspired by a poem by Pablo Neruda it's about because Burma's resistance movement against the military regime is known as the Burma Spring so this book pays tribute to that by saying you you you may actually pull out all the shoots but you're not going to be able to stop spring from coming when the time comes. The first poem I'm going to read is called Fearless Tiger. Fearless Tiger is written by a former journalist and a former political prisoner called Hanthaburi Uwintin. Uwintin has passed away so he's no longer he's beyond the reach of torture or oppression now but he left behind his words powerful inspiring words among the stories that people told about this man was that when he was released from prison he insisted on wearing his blue prison shirt he wouldn't return it he said that he's going to keep wearing his blue prison shirt for the rest of his life because when as long as his fellow poets and his fellow politicians and fellow dissidents are still in prison even though he may be physically free he is no longer he's not still free so he felt he needed to wear that blue prison shirt to be in solidarity with these others who are still in prison so this is Fearless Tiger and it was written by him when he was in prison and people like him were deliberately banned from owning papers and books in prison so according to his his own biography he said that he actually had to memorize this poem and then if he could he could stretch scratch out the words of the poem with any kind of sharp little pieces of rock that he could find on the floor and then eventually when he got out of the prison he would recite it at the way he remember it and then the poem becomes in published form Fearless Tiger by Hanthawadi Uwinton burning sun pelting snow sometimes the heat is prickly sometimes the cold shakes me my narrow living quarter sees no bright light feels no wind blow sees no sunshine nor no moon rice sees no human nor humanity sit or gaze sleep or think can't get news can't even sing a song can't read can't attempt poetry can't preach can't even speak to a soul samsara is empty my wall is tiny i pace in my little space i pause before the iron door i stand for a bit and the day is gone gone was the day before gone is the whole day gone will be the next day gone gone gone get them all gone a day or a life a month or an age a year or an era i won't lose hope i won't give up now i'm the end though later i'll be the hammer don't you know the truth is on my side the people are on my side time stands with me and buddha stands with me do you think that i'll grow blunt in monotony like a caged tiger at the zoo what a laugh remember as long as the black stripes cut across my yellow bright unmistakable and clear a tiger is a tiger and i am just the same and that's by hanthawadi uwinton the next poem is called to wilt is to bloom and is by a poet named mong chon weh mong chon weh is also um no longer with us he has passed away a long time ago under a military regime there was a very um oppressive sensor board um the sensor board that will cut out anything that they they deem um uh criticizing the government or undermining the authority of the military regime so burmese poet have to learn to talk about what they want to talk about using symbolism using code words and using um language that readers would understand but the military regime and the author authorities would be too dumb to understand in other words readers can read between the lines and understand what they are talking about this poem on the surface is talking about flowers but what he was really talking about was how the army will shoot at protesters with life rounds and how the protesters bodies would be strewn on the floor left behind after search and event but this is called to wilt is to bloom by mong chon weh for flowers to wilt is to bloom if you pluck one one more rises if you drop two two more spring up so come knock us down wild gust tumble us cut us down storming blades blow your hardest do your worst litter the ground with our butts trample on us see we care to wilt is to bloom that's the flower's doctrine you may crush us we may fall but when we die we rise again that's to wilt is to bloom by mong chon weh another song another poem that i'm going to read is called which song dear girl which song dear girl and this was written by former student leader minko nine minko nine minko nine was also a former political prisoner and this poem was one that he wrote when he was in prison he wrote it as if he was talking to his daughter who is outside waiting for his release um so this is his poem called which song dear girl which song should i teach you my dear girl the sound of whips all day long all for the sake of a pyramid let not this kind of music be around in your time don't want you to sing along not even by accident for you and this error to sing together i blindly write in my dream a chorus that makes all the pianos mute can you hear the music of the rise and fall of rosary beats of sunlight striking the bogota gongs of jasmine butts washing their hands of snails pouting and stomping their feet just keep listening my dear girl a flock of skylucks over my head looks like they're heading home turning in for the night such a precious sight daddy is still looking at them that's called which song dear girl by minko nine a former political prisoner the last poem i'll read is called each with its own grace and that's by demo demo was also a former political prisoner and a poet after he was released from prison he came immigrated to the us he came and he lived with his daughter in l.a for a while but you could tell that the poems that he wrote in exile shows how much he longed to be back home and couldn't be back home um he also had a chance to come to san francisco and give a literary talk with the burmese community and i distinctly remember the story that he talked about this bizarre encounter at the interrogation center when he went in there for the very first time he was arrested he was arrested because he wrote a lot of he he talked in favor of the civilian government and the democratic forces against this military rule so in the prison when he was in interrogation center the person who was in charge of interrogation interrogating him introduce himself and said um mr timmo to tell you the truth i'm actually a fan of your poetry but uh i have a duty to form so i'm sorry if you'll forgive me i'm going to do my job and then started beating him and that is the bizarre encounter that demo talked about this is called each with its own grace and i hope that i can end it on this note the moon shines in its own light its own glow a little torch too with its own reach its own fang the little jasmine with its own fame its own butt the yellow badalk flowers in its own season with its own scent the deep wide river has its own patterns its own waves the curly creek flows with its own stream its own fairy this that and everything each a beauty in its own right nature blessed everyone with charm and power as its gift be not jealous hold not grudge envy maketh ugliness with its own cloud in its own pace in the right time at the right place each find its role its own purpose proves capable in its own measure so that's my last poem thank you very much for having me thank you so much for being here kenneth that was quite a collection and those are all from uh picking off new shoots will not stop the spring is that correct with the exception of the last one all the one that i read are part of the anthology thank you thank you very much um that seems like a musket book our next reader uh monaz bidehan has taught me a lot of things over the years uh not least of which was this no really not the least of which was this uh this january when um with the loss of an iranian political prisoner or poet uh pulled back the veil on some serious some serious poetry that i hadn't read before and uh monaz is a poet in her own right a translator and she's going to be sharing some some of that work with us today please welcome monaz bidehan thank you thank you again hello everyone um i am here to talk about bak'tash but if we i had time i will also talk about nadia anjuman i don't know if anybody knows nadia anjuman nadia was a a poet from afghanistan 25 years old her husband killed her and uh i was the first one to actually translate one poem from her into english and it was published all over but right now he is her book is translated in many languages really but uh bak'tash died in january eight in every prison in iran notorious prison uh very bad place he was only 47 years old extremely talented poet and he was raking poetry for him a very young age but he was really amazingly he even amazes me he was too brave he said i'm willing to die for freedom of his speech and when they captured him he wasn't the only one he was a member of an iran um they captured him with two other poets at the same time which they are still in prison but bak'tash was the one that really valued i can say that because the other two also value freedom of his speech but he was too brave let's put it this way bak'tash was born in 1974 in shahre rey tehran he has published three collections of poetry in addition to his work as a poet he has been involved also in production of numerous feature films and short films as an assistant director his first independent film the solar eclipse was released in 2005 since 2013 he has been indicted numerous times for his peaceful activism and poetry and writing and films among other things aptin has spoken out against censorship and advocated for freedom of expression and abolition of death penalty so he was really really active because of uh these aptin was sentenced to five years in prison in 19 in may of 2019 and what was the crime what did they say his crime was they said uh propaganda against the state and conspiracy against national security a poet an artist without a gun without a bomb in his hand he was very dangerous because pen is mightier than sword and the dictators cannot tolerate anybody talking against him he has been serving his sentence when he died in January 8 this year in prison okay you might ask how did he die he got covid and if you go online i didn't look for the picture photo of him he's changed in hospital bed while he's reading his book a poet is changed in hospital holding his book he got covid and they didn't pay attention they said who cares there's a prisoner got covid and so the covid killed him i am gonna in 2021 pen america gave freedom of speech prize to bakhtarj aptin the poet we are talking about it right now and the two other poets with him so they awarded a prize for freedom of a speech but in 2020 this year when he died again pen america wrote this our worst fear our worst fears materialized today as the more utterly preventable death of bakhtarj aptin said pen america's chief executive officer susan nasa covid is a natural killer but aptin's death was aided and a big onion government every step of the way and really it broke our heart in iran especially his friends and so right away i translated some of his poems and we had a reading that kim also was one of the main readers and then debora and we all and i translated lots of poems and gave it to each one of poems poets in san francisco dated in english so i am gonna actually read two of his poems short poem i will read it bilingual i will read it in farsi and then i will read it might read my translation the first one is a called a hat for freedom i'm going to take the hat off the freedom look who has taken his own life so lightly like this i look at the sky and the sea the world is tragic and fascinating however with all this question the strike of matters stones and veils isn't bravery the second poem called homeland okay homeland trees with green eyes pigeons with wide shoots and you with red cheeks my homeland the coffin of the sun this is how it climbs from the shoulders of the sky falls high so this two poem was uh by uh bactors he his poems are really really amazing especially in you know original languages so rhythmic musical is beautiful but i'm gonna read a poem from nadia and juman as i said she was 25 years old lady i think she was also teaching in one of the colleges in cabal her husband killed her you know it is not surprise because they killed so many women in afghanistan and right now the taliban in power they killed so many poets artists women just name it but i will read this poem that i translated it's called i don't want to open my mouth i don't want to open my mouth what should i sing of to me whole to me who life hates i don't care much about singing should i speak of sweetness when it's so much bitterness that i feel oh the feast of oppressor oh the feast of oppressor it has covered my mouth with no one by my side in life to whom will i dedicate my tenderness it gives me so much to say to laugh die exist me and my forced loneliness with my pain and my sadness i was born for nothing for nothing thank you very much thank you thank you wow i just want to i think i want to get our poets in the conversation for a little while and i know tonko said he was running late and um so we should talk about this a little bit uh in the united states until 1978 native religions were illegal when we talk about poetry i always think of i i think i think i heard kenneth say this called them a song and i don't know if you thought you misspoke but i think you're right i think they're songs i think poems are songs i think poems are prayers they're probably secular prayers in many cases um the voice of spirit is uh it's a powerful thing and and uh it's one of the first things that people try to take away so i am actually old enough to remember when our religions were illegal um i was as far as we're concerned i was an adult at that point when it changed over and um it's uh the ways in which and it's not it's not a place it's an idea the idea is that somehow you can control people from this behavior so i'd like to i'd like to hear our poets comment on that thought a little bit that this this behavior is intended to protect uh totalitarianism that's intended to limit human expression yeah well poets have vision they have vision for the future and they they want what's best and dictators hate that so you have to protect it in the case of in the case of um the Burmese military regime it's it's always a case where they wanted to present to the world a sudden facade that everything is going hunky dory and there is justice under this whatever they call government and poets are the one that exposes the lies about these you know and they tell the truth in a way that makes it almost irresistible so people cannot help but listen to it and that's a that's a thread if you're a military regime that wants to present a false facade a gold coated kind of view of the world that you want to show to the world well if you think military regime is doing that look at iran it is a religious fanatic regime which is really worse than military probably it they they just control people everything they do the way they look the way they eat the way they behave the way they talk the way they write everything control they want to control everything and say our laws come from Koran which is nonsense i mean Koran is not the the best open-minded progressive book on earth anyways you know this is religious not useful for human life especially in 21st century but they have control of everything and they do that because they have control of resources money and power and anyone in power they become dictators and dictators cannot tolerate that's the end of this yeah it's what remembering thanks for reminding me of that by the way you've talked about how iran in the case of iran is actually the use of religion it's what the remembering that the brummies military regime call itself the socialist government so it really doesn't matter what it calls itself it usually uses a particular terminology whether it's a political terminology like social socialism or kind of like a religious a religious kidnapping the idea of religion so that they could use it to control people ultimately we are talking about dictators authoritarian government so we should separate them from the name that they use to call themselves or the excuses that they use like the Koran for justifying what they do it is so funny if i tell you a story that happened recently it is Ramadan i don't know if you guys know what is Ramadan people fast it is Ramadan in the muslim world i mean not just in iran and iranian government one of the important person came said we don't want to see anyone eating anything during the day because it's a holy month of Ramadan oh and listen to this what they did there is a special bread in iran that iranian people like to eat with their breakfast they ordered that all the bakeries that make that bread they need to stop it for a month so nobody can eat breakfast and because of that bread and they think and they really think they can control people but they can't they just see what they like to see but people are different at home and in their brain that's a sad thing for them you just got me thinking about eduardo galliano uh wrote a book and there's a wonderful vignette in it it's part of the memory of fire and i don't remember which volume it was but he talks about somebody he knew who was political prisoner and his daughter drew him a picture and it was forbidden to show birds in pictures you couldn't bring images and birds into the prison and so she drew these circles and uh he asked her what what are these and she said those are the eyes of the birds i've smuggled them in and what you were saying about how things are then end up in code so we come up with the code and the code evolves and it's this game of code now where we talk about the things that are important to us um when under certain kinds of pressures in a way that only the people who know the code will get and i think about my own community and how um i envy the younger people who grew up with our religions not illegal because i see them and their freedom to express it you know and i want that for everybody so there are a lot of people right now in the united states whose existence are is being made and has been made consistently untenable and one of the things that i've been talking to a lot of people about um in a couple of projects and i'm working on so we need to witness for one another at every possible moment we need to witness for one another at every possible moment when uh asian women and men are getting attacked in the streets we need to witness that and stand up when um you know african-american people are getting shot at uh at police stops we need to witness for them uh native american women are disappearing and murdered on the regular we need to witness for them i think tango is at the library john which is now the second time that that's happened maybe i'm not a good communicator anyway um ongoing uh it is required as a human being in this time to pay attention to uh to these things that are being done to people even when they're not being done to us and even when we are having extreme things done to us we need to witness for one another because the greatest fear i think of tyranny is that we will pay attention to each other and the the greatest power of poetry is its capacity to unify um somebody else say some things i've got to talk to tango for a second well if you have extra minutes i can read a poem of mine okay uh this is my new collection called ask the wind just published this and a month ago and i have a poem here called rise rise to the sense of your rights to the injustice you witness it is not the slavery era with the mantra a steel tongue makes a wise head sitting quietly is the reason we lost the path reason for a steel waters and road ending in dead ends reason for having tyrants lunatics criminals as a leader behind this short wall underneath this old blanket on this torn carpet hands of many heroes grow strong do we remember the hands of frederick doglass and fiddle and we read poem of philis wittly kidnapped from west africa and enslaved maybe the time has come for lions to write history yeah that's the other thing right is that uh the rewriting of history you know to whom does the history belong to whom does the language belong and who writes the history and who writes the history yeah the the reality is is that the history has always been written by everyone or always been told by everyone and all you do when you try to outlaw a specific type of person is you teach them that they're outside the law you inspire a different level of resistance it doesn't work it doesn't work my grandma ran moonshine during the prohibition in Oklahoma now dl's laughing because everybody's grandma ran moonshine during prohibition in Oklahoma not just mine you know and you sort of think about you know she was the kind of woman who did the laundry and cooked biscuits and tried crappie and and catfish and made bathtub gym you know you get a whole different level of resistance and you teach people to be resistant and um it it doesn't go well ultimately does it you know i'm trying to line it up to where i'm going to say something brilliant about the united states prison system and then tango is going to come on and read a great poem this is what it is in my head so everybody bear with me while i try to be brilliant about this when you make certain uh people's lives completely impossible throughout history they take a step sideways into a whole different perspective um and and again it doesn't go well forever you can maintain it maybe a couple generations maybe a couple generations but it doesn't really work um and then you have to either ratchet it up or give up on the project um but the kind of pressure that gets put on people cannot be maintained no no it just can't i we're seeing we're seeing some cracks in it in different places all over the planet right now and uh and ultimately this latest um this latest uh round of uh uh of um new laws across the country that limit people's access to their own humanity are going to backfire uh Kenneth do you have one more poem for us that's we try to work out the logistics of this little moment i'd be happy to i'd be happy to yes thank you sure thanks um um earlier when i read i wrote a poem by menko nine a former student leader and a political prisoner so happened that menko nine also wrote a poem in tribute to another friend of his who died also a former political prisoner um in under military regime when this young dissident um his name is daya minwe when he died um not a lot of people would want to show up at the funeral because once you show up there that mark you as a pro-democracy person and a supporter of the resistance so suddenly you'll have um uh military intelligence officers and playing close tagging along with you so so you could imagine the funeral was a sparsely attended kind of fair um it was at that funeral that um menko nine the former political prisoner himself read this poem as a tribute to the the his comrade who died and it's called the groom of fallen stars the groom of fallen stars my friend you nurtured your conviction like your own child my friend you burn your injuries like lamp oil my friend you lick your own wounds and resurrect my friend you had to drape your own skin sharpen your own bone into a needle sew your own outfit and look marvelous in it go ahead my friend we must stay behind to heal the best we could the injuries of this world where the stars are still falling one by one go ahead my friend we must still stay behind to shield the earth's wounds from the many scotching suns with our own bare hands go ahead my friend we must stay behind to write your poetry's table of content on the world's vinyl record of grief go ahead my friend on the day the peacock banners of freedom fly once more along the campus wall we shall meet again and that was his poem thank you thank you okay and at this point can we welcome tango wise martin ah here we go hey tango hey everybody good to see you all um apologies for the theatrics i'm at the library okay this is actually sort of more ideal because i was having a printing problem um these are poems uh these are poems by christa from mallick who is doing uh life in prison in florida uh where i'm from i'm from double negatives a child's playground holding hands with a graveyard grenade juices and pickled eggs a jack of spades wrecking the city from a billboard hand sign thrown up on from a place where rock and hip hop agree hit the same house parties i'm from where alleys have more life than the streets the chalk police outlined my body with tomorrow is the it's the one my fifth grad teacher used uh used yesterday i'm from where the life expectancy is five more years where juries are instructed the easy j-bags for better days two new ports turned up in the pack and your pets find you quarter smashing knuckle games in cafeteria spoon fights 24 hour laundry mat meditations old loose paper machines turned into benches under a tree beach tine kim bottles whistle past festivities into the breeze where all innocence sways this poem is called mist mist takes all things considered drugs or people too my man raised no quitter i tried once but i quit quitting she'd be proud list haunts you a minute ago i thought i was tripping as if in the chamber any sense spent seeds burned hopes and parts of me adheres to pirescence trying to cast light and impulse the ride wasn't always a scar poems are my only friends even though they hurt they sting they murder third person in who i used to be life is a movie in society's basement escapism really strange i willingly traipse around here this neuro virtual actuality no sense of what's surrounding me which is bad because in essence ghost skeletons and persuasive demons keeping me nescent i struggle through the crowd to find a place without sounds and distractions to a place solitary and empty on average five minutes is an eternity here i find myself debating is it real apotheosis last time leaving gates like those i exhaled deeply the threshold to prescribed civilization i stopped held and crossed inhaling my own mysticism stuck in a mess freedom in c major in hopes my lungs didn't resonate the tone of razor wire out to calendars i'm recounting to a friend after all of this i don't know if heaven really does have a gate that might not necessarily be the place for me let's just imagine uh bruce is desert should never come first we miss some things or never let them out like i never told you i've always hated needles at the age of 28 i still look away prodded by something sharper than appearance with i find myself slightly bruised which confounds me speed bump veins emotional times you left or are they the times i left criminal paces without collecting two bill foes twice no wait three times in a row is ultimately a fault of my own is it not a measure of your indifference inside as i said an envelope would fall through a flap with your name written on the back written whispers missives and and the chances of you taking me back every time i make it back in those few times you appear on the other side of the glass left hand prints behind hope is the lazy man's drug and the guilty man's religion i said an old deed on the church steps like the mother who left uh apologies your way the document and this is a really good stanza too but unfortunately uh the way the document reads on this is not gonna work so i'm through through of turning into obsidian in your eyes and falling from the dark cloud in the sky above you i stopped waiting for your letters to instead i call every denial from the court a love letter and i know you'd ask why marriage is an institution after all in a circular cell and so still i sit with a sentence longer than the sun is projected to exist i'm struggling to find a space between pure existence and cold hard dying we left each other back there i have not escaped our love i didn't want hope's help a needle it's bruise confessions i found myself seated among people i didn't recognize anymore i attempted to swallow my head hoping it get lodged in my chest they're distracting and on most days maybe that's why you left apologies for god and truth be written i can be clumsy sorry it should have been more coffee the cells are carried by the breath they weren't strong enough to take us to the shores of your fantasies i remember when we got lost in our conversations we talked everything we talked neptune and jupiter because we'd already talked about everything on earth and we're not designer every dime that flipped into my life landed face down on you well we all are still waiting half a red scent lately seems like i can't write anymore because words should be restricted no one ever told us submarines were just planes without wings so we failed to take notice of our souls we jumped in a line running off the skin finished the ride it paid pennies the judge gets paid 131 thousand dollars a year to stop crime that's happened the whips and the peace pipes are buried in the same place the irredeemable past of a convict i feel the price of guilt when i was eight i remember this wrestling stage toy and went with the ring that went with the fingers that went with the accessories i just had to have i just had to have it i went in my mom's room on her only day off there are certain debts you just can't pay back from the first to the last illegal act i ever committed since waving white price tag flags i snuck at least 100 deaths into her wallet it's still she's homeless today and so am i missing in society's overpriced life sentence it's a half a red scent buried in the ground and in that balance my change hangs why i write in a billion codes one a word travels down my arm companions follow these hungry freedom fighters rant rave and rage looking for critique and inspirations one day end of lately a place to witness the noise which is it this is life hiding behind the alphabet of conjecture expanding into chaos with an index commenting straight for inexistence kicked by god doing god's job this is death crawling careless through conscious eating into the side of calendar boxes unforgiving under the macroscopic lens of parasite feeding off the nature of rebellion this is life sleeping under the covers of purgatory tucked in tight with fresh cement never waking any closer to an end but we're pre-escaping the live dreams this is death wearing a four-letter oxymoronic prank juking poster size pick a sign displays absconding headlines and political disguise evenly executioner has a hood to lower this is life by name this is death in truth this is death ensued this life without a soul summer absence expected expected apologies for the rush prison fences watering on the daycares playground buses don't arrive till school lunches get good riot previews tied together with slides with swing sets for two-facing sunsets met sunsets met for none meant for none summer took a winter vacation when my ride came we got on it together sat on separate wheel wells to feel closer to the streets i missed the ideal now in a clip full of mild summer will too there were crosshairs in the murmurs to myself molehills across my film pride tucked under resolving a bumper sticker slapped to the back of every thought said no one screams foul at the hollows whistle it only takes a thumb full of wisdom to hear the responsible songs played out inside out then verse some welcome masks are better left unseen most sunsets aren't lowered on the failing end of a seesaw creaking tragedy saying taillights stealing one i remember 10 triumphs in every one as if a dj can scratch that many into a scene and bang it too hard too hard to hear any good noxie it's really the harmonica that sings no voice needed play along to a melody from swing sets chain quietly perspective to the rhythm of home then hook wonder when the sprinklers will stop these things grew tall enough as and the only rust hurt is when swinging all alone huddling off and mausoleums this kind of tragic is three round burst from a thousand county drum memorial memorialized by absence and bridge missing man missing lonely sunrises meant for me thank you again that's the poetry of christa femalica a young man doing life in in florida and is that is that book out yet or he's you're working on that book on the way on the way that's something to look forward to that was remarkable thank you so much and you know my bad the his upcoming book is called a pendulum under a dead clock and that's black fader press that's black fader yeah you don't ever need to apologize for drama hun it's worth waiting for you to hear you read thank you so much all right let's look we have some applause for all of our readers dla and as long as being tango isa martin thank you so much library for the work that you do making this possible i'm kim shuck and i really appreciate our audience as well well hey john step the way so but on behalf of the library come back next month there you go there you go john and kim thank you the next next month at the poem jam we're going to be hearing from the the the new uh jambu press um anthology in honor of laurence firlingin so i actually don't know who's reading yet but i'm pretty sure bobby's going to be here so bobby will be reading and other people from the anthology thank you for showing up thank you all for your beautiful words and thank you for your incredible patience the delightful audience both in the zoom room and online hey tiara good night all thank you bye everybody bye thank you bye