 at 6.30, without further ado, over to the band. Applause for the musicians, that's Devin Waldman on sax, Shayna Doleberger on bass, Alex Marcello on piano, and Warren Smith on drums. We have another, I don't know, 12 minutes until the poetic address begins. To those of you tuning in on the live stream, you're in the right place. More music, help yourself to drink, there's still time, and we'll kick it off shortly, thanks. Devin Waldman on sax, Shayna Doleberger on bass, Alex Marcello on piano, and Warren Smith on drums. Folks, I think we're T minus, T minus six minutes. If you're just tuning in to the live stream, we've got a packed room here at the Bowery Poetry Club. Thank you for joining us, hang tight, hope the music comes through, dance a little, and we'll get started very soon. Thank you. A round of applause for our musicians. Devin Waldman on sax, Shayna Doleberger on bass, Alex Marcello on piano, and Warren Smith on drums. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 2015 poetic address to the nation. The final event of the first ever People State of the Union. I'm Norman Beckett, Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, and it's a great honor to be with you here this evening. Whether you're in the room tonight or tuning in on the live stream, thank you for your creative presence on this historic occasion. I'd like to provide a little context for what we're about to hear. As we all know, the President gave his State of the Union address last week. It was a speech from one to many, followed by a whole bunch of talking heads competing to tell us what it all means. Well, here at the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, we know that democracy is a conversation, not a monologue. And so, over the last week, we hosted People State of the Union events across the country, inviting neighbors together to share stories that reflect their own take on the State of our Union. More than 150 communities took part. You saw the photos just now from many of them. From 10th grade English classrooms in California to homeless shelters in Indiana, from circus groups in New Mexico to universities in Nebraska, from youth organizing initiatives in Ferguson, Missouri to immigrant theater troops on Staten Island in New York, we've come together, young and old, to sit in circles, share our truths, and listen deeply. We filled our museums, community centers, libraries, places of worship, living rooms, and public parks with stories, forging new bonds of empathy through a shared participatory ritual of reflection and connection. And in so doing, we've embodied the simple truth that the State of the Union is not an annual declaration, but something that we create together every day. So, what State of Union will we choose to create? What are the ways of being together and the habits of the heart that will define our State of Union? And what new civic rituals might we enact to forge a path to the more perfect union that our Constitution calls for, one in which we the people includes an ever enlarged we? In the words of USDAC Secretary of Revolutionary Imagination, Makani Temba, We who know that truth is not bound by headlines or heads of state, let us forge a State of Union where love is justice and justice is love. Folks, this is the US Department of Arts and Culture after all, so it should not come as a surprise to you that our address tonight, our expression of that State of Union where love is justice and justice is love, is a poem. Yesterday, our poets came together, many meeting each other for the first time, to read the hundreds of stories that have been submitted and to create the poem that we're about to hear. The ink is still wet and this is literally the first time it will ever have been read aloud. So, without further ado, spearheaded by USDAC Minister of Poetry Bob Holman, written collaboratively by 20 poets based on stories shared at more than 150 events nationwide, please put your hands together for the 2015 poetic address to the nation. A shadow hangs where my country should glow, despite glories shaped as skyscrapers or sound, more wars, more prisons, less safe, still low, massive cities teeter on shifting ground, glittering lights, music tracks hide the craven, TV, movies, books so we can forget, countless worn out, debt laden and slaving, their soul derived destinies unmet. NASCAR, low riders, hip hop, the blues, give me crooklin, cowboys, cool jazz, cholos, ladies and lollipops, gardens of the muse, give me songs over sidewalks mad solos. Big America, improperly sized, give me your true value, real life. I am 71 years of age and there is sense of how and hope now. I am writing for returning troops, PTSD, a job situation for a kid with autism, a kid transitioning out of high school, building community programs. In March of last year, our collective got together, a gallery, a community garden, a lot of hope, my fondest memory of the previous year. These grin represent scissors to cut America's hanging slip. First times got a seat next to pride of any lace stitch with non-defeat. Marry opposite sex, race, America, stop tripping. Just a madness which marinates brain cells who swell, not swear, for we must care about one another, mother, brother. Radical hardship of liberation grip on the horizon, I built community, they tried to snatch us up. America, my love, if my blackness turns to fruit, do not pull it from the vine. Let it grow from earth to sky untouched by hating hands. So sweet, my juice, my jazz, my blues, so sad, but true. Dear America, my love, look beyond your prison walls, count the black seeds behind bars, the cells where nothing blooms, can hope flower from despair. Yes, America, my love, resistance comes and then the rain. Step to podium, lights pop like corks from pricey champagne. Poetics by Y, not Brooks Brothers' ghost, cause this can't be about no. I did not call 1-800-BLACK perspective this morning. What happened to Mike Brown was not new, Occupy taught me how to listen. I was that little Mexican kid in that whitewash school. It wasn't a problem till I got it inside my head. I haven't been out because of my health issues. In 2008, remember being part of a group of people? Those people got shot. The pastor said, I love you, but I am not feeling it. With ends, grow grain, soothe pain, just enough rain to remain. It's a crazy rod that juts and never bends. So many things to protect and correct, resurrect the sect that none dare neglect. Wake up, kiss the landscape, honor the water, call off the guns, kiss the ground. No more slaughter. Volta, volta, revolt, revolt, time to allow, time to plow, time to cease, time to release, time for cease, time for inow, as in paradise inow. Given to grace, no more ill pace, not in a trace till all shall erase. Table of contents, 16. Am I old or new? Space to speak the truth. A tribute to space that feed the work. 32, 38. Paper burns a fixing. Really failed a difficult. This blaze first moved to New York City to find my friends becoming really lost. Esta esquina en llamas me recuerda México. Solor quemado, de noche en flama, tan igual al barrio, esta calle de New York, las flores desvanecen mi ácida memoria. All right, so last year, the big headlines happened far away. Here we had droughts, floods, fires, and celebrities. Our marathons were run, children felt safe, our bridges held, our planes stayed in the air. Ebola claimed only a sainted few, but people are hungry today. People frack, and some unarmed male people who were black were killed last year by unindidable white male people in blue police uniforms. Then people spoke the 300 million truths we must sift through to find what justice is. We're learning black, blue, any color lives matters that we're less different than the same. Our grandchildren are our wisdom, teachers. I was waiting for the bus and saw a phone number about helping veterans. They call me Ghana Brown, and it's not global warming that makes me say, I can't breathe. Everyone's snowman, God dodges second coming, love from Arthur runs, jazz snatched chance while you wait beneath thebans sheets. Celebrate your lives, embrace the same differences, we succeed through time. Our dream is equality, our dream will be reality. Changing, she said, moros y cristianos donde esta los dharma bums, eggs, so so. That's how the poem begins, he said. Funny the state we're in, she said, constant feed, no comfort. Union, hardly, glutton's for rum and lechon. We sleep with our shoes on, bags packed, ears burning, one eye open. The chatter's incessant, infinite music, everyone's listening. God, no. Love, poem, jazz, all. I was on the team, then I got lazy and quit. Gained weight, felt empty. My soul filled with trash. They made me stand in the back. Then the back filled with friends. Yes, there was a lot of trash, but we picked up most of it. Love, bomb, what's moved me? Here to move to you, making fourth failure and sad. See jobs to re-enter me, crisis in economy. Basic strategy based on geometry and democratic, erratic, mathematic, emphatic, static, induced. Two-party pimp modes, black codes from the underground, founded by white, wigged, four father's countries, a V based on slavery and gentrification nation. My wife is in the garden with her dog, who turns his decrepit face to the sun. My wife's dog is a pug named Rambo. He resembles Charles Olson. This dog does not carry a gun and is blind. When he looks at his owner, he sees a fish shaped girl who readily shares her bananas with him. My wife limps, hides, and bends in her garden. She is the worst gardener ever. Better at reading about gardens than making one. And a depressive besides. Birds are fond of my wife, her limp, her bad knee, her uneven temperament. I told my wife, you are beautiful. You need to stop feeling sorry for the flowers. And go get a job. In my grand world, el sur emerge. Un olor de otro tiempo se expande aquí, como el sudor de los tiestos llenos en tibios jugos. New York también es mi sur, mi huella nace ahora. I was that little Mexican. I didn't know I had an accent. It wasn't a problem until it got in my head. I couldn't do good. But then someone told me I am human and I matter. Take care of the love now. Believe in the dream of love. Let love exist. Formed in differences is love. Fused in differences is love. I sit beneath the tree of promises. Some hanging dead on weighted bows. The mouths of others upturned and open, hoping for rain. Neighbors and strangers crowd with me beneath the tree. Its shade broadens to embrace them all. The tree of promises, promises nothing. It's only a tree. A girl child with ancient eyes leads us in song. Everyone hears familiar language. Bones rattle down an unfamiliar scale. Another state of the union promises peace as its secrets war. Promises freedom to those who brave desert death while deportations increase. Welcomes professional killers home. Morns another black youth dead. Shot by the cop who knows he has permission. We, the people, have been through this more than once. But the poem sounds. Its words create cacophonous harmony. A century changes gender. And tomorrow's sun says no more war. State tree in a peace, time long lost to secret wards. Possession of my permission to pluck, sweaty and precise through poem soundscape. Goodbye, Florida. My heist, Miami. Moreau's ostrich's chirp, preach. That's stature, Arthur. Funny nihilist stealing constant haunted tanka dream. To fit robotic lifelines fixing chaotic and smart-ish effort, team lives not invisible mattering before we love. La casa flota. Desde el río fluyen lirios muertos. Fertil en su sombra, el hogar aún en pie. Cada ala es un vacío, así acuden todos. Dreaming glances my sneaky knowing everyone. A dog bar cannot make me complacent. A government sense and safer time. We, we were running out of breath as we, we ran out to meet ourselves. We, we were surfacing the edge of our ancestors' fight and ready to strike. It was difficult to lose days in the Indian bar if you were straight. Easy if you played pool and drank to remember to forget. We, we made plans to be professional and did. And some of us could sing, so we drummed a firelit pathway up to those starry stars. Sin was invented by the Christians. As was the devil, we sang. We, we were the heathens but needed to be saved from them. Thin chance. We, we knew we were all related in this story. A little gen will clarify the dark and make us all feel like we're dancing. We, we had something to do with the origins of blues and jazz. I argued with the pleblos as I filled the juice box with dimes in June. 40 years later and we, we still want justice. We, we are still America. We, we know the rumors of our demise. We, we spit them out. They die soon. Union, noise, noise, trickling, gluttons, tongue, neon, onion. We please the popo, ears, breech, cherubic, rubio, the ether, ether reverbs the heart. Form my dreams to mind, unionize the mind and hearts, act accordingly. We are all sharing this dream. All of our lives matter. I said, I don't care what is happening to you. It's your life, not mine. That's when I thought I was the majority in majority rule. People who don't listen, why do we let them speak? My grandmama's house is now the EPA. Call this place home and there's hell to pay. Shady lane banks stealing people's cribs away. Police departments acting like the KKK. Turn coats treating my prayers like a runaway. We rock the mask and hoodie, more threat than a gamma ray. It'd be no union when our black asses ain't okay. Should we wait for the whiz to change the color of the day? Let the witches of doom reign on our hey, hey, hey. No, I'm a black girl sipping 94 du belay. Steady plotting over a mean double crochet. How to make my grandmama's house the USA. Gonna wear my love like combat boots and berets. See, them doctors can't save you, but your grandmama may. Marching again, y'all. Selma's breath not breathing in. Heave, America. Free to be at last from past. Transgressions is the lesson. God says one fountain drink all. Don't split water wells. Burning rock, I laid down law. Not law marching tear gas fists. Upside oppression, no bliss. People say racism, but it was all the rainbow for me. And James Baldwin says the time is always now. The middle schoolers in Harrisburg know the sense of belonging can overcome the broken system of education. Not when or where, but how did we lose you? In between last scene, the words become elegy. Echoing sidewalks and streets. Hand out your picture to strangers. Post it on post office bulletin boards. Missing as if it were a destination. A place one goes to disappear in invisible cities. Except there's no hero. Like in the movies or endless resources for us, which shows how truly invisible we are to them. How is it no one can know? When 1,181 women were taken, did millions of eyes not see or pay attention to you being swallowed up? For the ones left behind? Left looking, endlessly searching for the murdered and missing in the cities in which we loved and still love you. We won't forget to demand for you action, words, a poem that ends in your lives. Your lives, your lives mattering too. We are all the same. Underneath these skin and bones. Dreaming of living. A life of equality. Unblemished in love and hope. In LA south where balancing aspects of shock never thought, felt excluded after New Year wonders. What essence in light? What does belong mean? Rip from land and keep me? Freedom on awakening? Story rising in landfills? Of broken bodies shaking? Awake and listen. Now hear this. I was born in Texas. Grew up in Kentucky. High school in Hawaii. Never graduated in Utah. Moved to New York. Never left in California. My children's names are Dakota, for real. North, South, Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, Alaska. I was trained to kill by the poets in order to steal people's languages and last names till I became citizen four. They call me Garner Brown, and it's not global warming that makes me say hashtag I can't breathe. It's the way the 14th line of the sonnet closes in. Death by one's own hand to state the union is to make the poem that heals. That's a wrap, folks. That's the 2015 poetic address to the nation. Featuring David Acevedo. You want to stand? Mahogany Brown. Sid Cherise Fulton. Reggie Gaines. Bob Holman. Paolo Javier. Nikhil Melnichuk. Steven Motica. Tahani Sala. Yuri Santo Pietro. And thank you to all of the poets who contributed sonnets from afar. That's Jennifer Bartlett, Jessica Haggadorn, Joy Harjo, E. Ethelbert Miller, Marilyn Nelson, Margaret Randall, Luis Rodriguez, Ed Sanders, Tanaya Winder, and Yolanda Wisher. Of course, we wouldn't have a poem today if folks hadn't heeded the call to sign up and to host StoryCircles nationwide. So thank you also to all of our StoryCircle hosts and to the partner organizations for bringing the People's State of the Union to life. Thank you to the thousands of participants who courageously shared their stories with friends and strangers and to the incredible USDA team for making it all happen. You can explore all of the stories that inspired tonight's address at peoplesstateoftheunion.usdac.us and soon you'll be able to download the entire text to peruse or to perform or you could browse the stories and write your own poetic address because, as we like to say, the USDA is not an outside agency coming in. It's our inside agency coming out. The People's State of the Union reminds us just how many stories there are waiting to be told, how much creativity there is eager to get out and how far we still have to go in building the just and thriving society we know is possible. And that's why this is just the first in a series of new participatory civic rituals intended to spark empathy, equity, and social imagination. So we hope you'll join in the next one. Thank you for being with us tonight and for contributing to this act of collective imagination. Enjoy the music and we hope to see you soon. Thank you. Good night.