 Hello everybody. Thanks all for coming. I'm John Smalley, librarian with the San Francisco Public Library. It is an honor for the library to partner with San Francisco's 16th annual Palms Under the Dome, this grand yearly celebration of poetry and democracy and actually traditionally held under the Dome of City Hall. Please note that today's program is being recorded. On YouTube and stream to YouTube. So if you don't want to appear on YouTube, please turn off your cameras. While we're waiting for the rest of us to arrive, I want to take a moment to acknowledge our community to tell you about a couple of upcoming poetry events and to inform you about free COVID tests and vaccinations. When I'm done with these remarks, I'll hand the microphone over to one of the organizers of today's program, the poet EK Keith. So once again, thanks everyone for participating. On behalf of the public library, we want to welcome you to the unceded land of the Eloni tribal people, and to acknowledge the many Rometish Eloni tribal groups and families as the rightful steward of the lands on which we reside and work. Our library is committed to uplifting the names of these family and community members, and we encourage you to learn more about first person rights. On Wednesday, April 21, San Francisco's poet, law, the amazing Tonga, Eisen Martin will deliver his inaugural address. You won't want to miss this. I will put a link to this program in the chat. The following Wednesday, April 28, the eloquent poet and essayist Hanif of Dura Keeb discusses his latest book, The Little Devil in America. That's FPL to go. The San Francisco Public Library continues to offer curbside service at the main library and half of the branch libraries. You can place holds on poetry books or other materials online or over the phone, and we will notify you when the materials are ready to pick up. The library recently added a print to go service. This means that you can now send print jobs to the library and pick them up when they're ready. As you know, we're still in the midst of a pandemic. So please continue to wear your masks until we can all get vaccinated. If you live or work in San Francisco and are experiencing symptoms, you can get free COVID test by going to the website sf.gov slash city test SF. And I'll put this address in the chat as well. If you live in San Francisco, you can sign up to get notified when you're eligible for a vaccination. You can also find out where the vaccinations are in your neighborhood. And I'll put these addresses in the chat. Thanks. That concludes my opening remarks. I would now like to turn the microphone over to one of our organizers. Okay. Okay, Keith, please give a warm welcome to okay. Hey, thank you, everybody. It is so great to see all your faces today. I'm glad you could make it out we're in competition with an exquisitely beautiful California afternoon. And so I'm glad you made it for some poetry. It's the 16th annual poems under the dome. And along with diamond Dave and Charlie getter who will probably be seeing later. I'm one of the original organizers of this event and, you know, we're, we usually are in city hall, but there's this pandemic happening. And so we are not in city hall again we were not in city hall last year either but we hope for the future. And we're hoping next year we'll be back under the dome. Until then we would like to just thank San Francisco public library so much for hosting us on their zoom this makes it very accessible to the most amount of people. And we're very, very grateful for that. And just because it's traditional. We would also like to thank the mayor and the board of supervisors because if we had been in city hall. He said yes, yes poets come to city hall and read some poetry. There's a lot of, a lot of, a lot of people also in city hall like aids and assistants who get a lot of work done and help us out every year and I particularly want to thank them. And welcome. So hey Val. How you doing global Val. Hi K and hi everyone welcome to the 16th annual poems under the dome. We've got a great show for you and with you and of you tonight. Of course, we're going to have our traditional welcome from diamond Dave Whitaker who founded this event all that time ago to give you a little hip story about where this comes from. This is a community blessing from Jorge Molina. And then we have a couple of poets right up front, but this is an open mic. So if you would like to read a poem at this event tonight. Please write into the chat that you, you know, I say I want to read, and we will put your name on a list. And as always it's going to be pretty much a random drawing of names. We could get through as many poets as we possibly can. But so in order to do that, we asked that everyone has one poem only that takes under three minutes to read and and just, you know, be patient with us and enjoy the show. So if you want to read say I want to read and we'll make a list and we'll get as many people as we can so thank you and welcome. Now where is diamond Dave. Let's see if we can put Oh, there we go. Let's spotlight diamond Dave. Hey Dave. Okay, can you. You can do it. Well, well do and what it's doing I have to think about what you mean by doing and how is it going so I'm doing and going and I'm right here. The 16th anniversary, the 16 showing of poems under the dome and it takes me back to you go over 16 maybe close to 17 years ago when I happen to be walking through the dome city hall on my way up to the board of supervisors chambers, the board of supervisors offices where I hang out and tell stories and hear stories. We gave me my own day February 12 I think it is diamond Dave day. So I had them. We're working together. And then the idea came. I was there in the middle of the dome and I looked up and I thought in my mind and it was yesterday I remember it now. I thought what a great place this would be to have an open mic to have an open mic. I believe it would be the first open mic at city hall the first poetry open mic at city hall. It will bring some poetry in an official semi official official way. And I thought wow hey I think that could be done. I'm going to go up and talk to the supervisors and the officers and say I have an idea. What's that? And I said it's called the name had come to me and I think the name is everything in this case. And everything is name that's what poetry is about to know that for every word there's a season. And I went up and I said I have an idea. They said what's that? I said it poems under the dome. And I pointed out to the dome of city hall. And I said hey that isn't an idea. So little is added within five or six months. We have poems under the dome. I believe you were there. Were you not? You came? Oh yeah Dave I was there. I sure was. You were there. You got special outfits. In fact I believe for the occasion. I said wow I had some ideas. We had a good idea and so on. But everything fell into place. And who's a guest that more than 16 years ago we're still doing it. Even though city hall even though it's coming up we prefer you. Thanks for our knowledge and not our knowledge but the knowledge of the people with us because there's now more of us together than any of us could do on our own. That's right Dave. Doing more together than any of us could do on our own. That's right Dave. Strangers becoming friends. Friends becoming family. Family becoming community and here we are. Poems under the dome community. Is that right Dave? You got it Dave. Yeah I think it was a time thing. So you got it. I got it. And we're here to share. And so let's take it on. The poet's chop on the bit. Well I believe in the chopping of the bit to get up here and let the world know that we're under and thank God it's EK. Well thank God it's. We're under something which hadn't really been done before but it's becoming more and more familiar. In fact now we can use all this technology and we can broadcast from several different spaces. I make my case. I make my case. This is amazing. Thanks a lot for remembering me. I'm still here. And plan to continue for some time. So poems under the dome. Open the doors. Let it begin. All right Dave. All right so next up to the mic. Is Jorge Molina. We're going to get him. Get him to unmute his mic. And he's going to offer a community blessing for us. All right. And you hear me now. We hear you. Hear me now to clear. Hello Diamond Dave. Diamond Dave. My brother is so good to see you and good health. So good. And looking as diamond as you can look. I am very happy to see you. EK. Val. Yeah. And we are under a bigger dome today. I'm under the sky. Blue sky of San Francisco. So. I'm going to. Blow my conch shell. In the direction of the south. Right now because the south. From here all the way to Tierra del Fuego. Needs our compassion. Our love. Our understanding. The pandemic. That is killing our brothers and sisters. We send love compassion and understanding. To the first. Front. Servers the people who are in the front lines taking care of them. We send love compassion and understanding. To the tribal groups. In Brazil and Peru. In Bolivia. In Colombia. In Venezuela. In the Amazonian regions there are being threatened by modern living. We send love compassion and understanding to the brothers. South of us. We turn to the. Left. We go east side. All the way to the east. Love compassion and understanding. So our brothers and sisters in the Middle East who are suffering. Wars. The unending wars. The machinery that is destroying our hearts. With war. The military industrial complex that is destroying our hearts. With war. We send love compassion and understanding. Not only to the people but the politicians. Who are making decisions for us. To see if our prayers can touch their hearts. And make a change to make a better world. Love compassion and understanding. All the way to the north. To the west. Where our sun is going down. After giving us a glorious day. The flowers are in bloom. Everybody feels good about sunshine. We send love compassion and understanding. To the north. To the west. Where our sun is going down. After giving us a glorious day. Where our sun shines. We send love compassion and understanding. To the west. To the west. To the west. To the west. To everybody present. Send love compassion and understanding. For the healing. For the heart. For our brains. For our minds to be clear. So we can speak out. our hearts. This is for you, my travel people. Mother Earth, our generous, beautiful planet that is giving us as much as we want. And sometimes some of us take too much. Let's give love back to this planet. It's beautiful planet. The Earth is giving us love. Give love to the Earth. I want to thank everybody from Poem Sartre the Dome for allowing me this beautiful privilege of opening up my heart and my mind to you. Please take care of yourself. Be well. I just lost a brother. My heart was broken, but I'm healing because life goes on. He who's not busy being born is busy dying, Dylan said. And that is the truth. I want to send my blessings to you. Stay strong. Say the word. Say the word mean the word and send the word around the world so we can make a better planet, a better community, a loving community, a healing community. Stay strong. Stay strong. We need all the strength. Things are happening in the planet. We need to heal. So my prayers and all my smokes are gonna be for all of you. Take care of yourself. I love you all. Stay true. Say the word. Send the word. Stay with the word. Be kind to the word. Be real with the word. Thank you people. Thank you Jorge. Thank you for blessing our community. And our hearts are with your family. We especially thank you for being here today. Thank you. Thank you. I love you all. Thank you UK. Thank you Val for keeping this thing going and for keeping an eye on my brother Diamond Dave. Stay well Diamond. I love you brother. Stay well brother. We are we are the survivors 1967. Don't panic. Just keep it organic baby. Thank you. Love you all. All right. So we have a tradition in poems under the dome for the past several poems under the dome that the poet laureate of San Francisco reads the first poem. So I want to congratulate also and thank Tongo Eisen Martin, San Francisco's new poet laureate for being here today to read the first poem in this very unusual poems under the dome. So thanks Tongo. Yeah, Tongo. You'll need to unmute Tongo. I'm muted and muted. I will not touch it again and all will be groovy. Society's wandered together like hopeful drops of virus. Citizen testaments that are offering me a nation of breadwinners to hold me back like it's a brinks. I wrinkle the concrete sometimes like flesh. My Martin Luther King permanence turned away from a podium into the reeds like I God is the dangerous twin. Black August to the mountain top balcony on my bedroom floor. You know they steal you from the earth itself and suspend you in your broken neck from their foolish euphoria. From the loyalty oath of their great superstitions, loyalty oath of their agrarian reform. I return to my mother completely disrespected. You know for peeling the heat off of purgatory, they kill poets like me. Walk me away from my poems never to be heard from again. And this file industrial complex of blood lines picked over picked through a sporting spiritual death. You definitely at least become a pretty word. I'm reading a list of my shoestrings like they were tea leaves teaching you how to write about the city. This is the 25th century in America people. Tyranny against your chump, change your chump to be mocked even with a gun in your car, a cubit of needlework, spell tune for the proletariat, the relapse ministry, talented people curled up in a fetal position next to a diamond dot. Just another service day in the theatrics of tea house fascism in a bouquet of surveillance cameras in the poverty of God. New blue eyes, corpses of water, newly potted presidency of one big shiny coin. If you ask an animated capitalism and other non-literal boards killing his white freedom, the deification of hyphens, medicine bread and picture shows, great protesters in LA, guests of our ink, drop kicking roses in the graveyard, DC make like a stone torn in half, the pen advances despite CIA guide post despite non-African past and futures, a metaphorical but not surreal day in a horn ridden life. Horn player improvising king, like a radio prize fight featuring Sean Goh himself a real hand sweeps the land in the racism, now return to the ground, now make progress with the gun. Our mother Emmanuel, you know they put on music that evening, a sweetening, swinging tight body language for you to drink with your fermented five dollar bills for your body language, some applause, my past stomach line and neither a good thing nor a bad thing like being psychic on the way to a lethal injection, it'll sit you down with lady day, lady day, leading youth who surrendered their souls to Africa too soon, polity thought floating in a cup of water, she saved me, accessing my stomach, accessing the love of the American lynched, coast leaves wooden and avalanching to the wrist, our mother Emmanuel avalanching to the sharp keys, pain, the deal you make with pain, piano makes sense for them, laying hands on the world gradually, addressing the bend and necks on the streets to the north, traveler sailing in pain, repeating pain in the north, ten trigger fingers on that piano, a harmony would have me, putting a hundred fights on every direction offered her, lady day, leaning on trees again, recruiting the countryside itself, lay your plan out on this lightning, make your poems the corner pocket of men, I've read it the blues itself, America may clean my dead body, but will never include me, there goes the poet, killing without killing, don't mind this painting of your language, may I be a meaningful lynching, a crow's passing, good and dead by the afternoon. Thank you, Tongo, thanks for being here today and opening up the 16th annual poems under the dome and our next poet is also a pretty special poet and it is our youth voice poet, Madison Fortson and so let's let's get a spotlight on Madison. Hello Madison, how are you? Good, excited. I'm excited too, I can't wait to hear your poem. Are you ready? Yeah, this is my poem called Clocks. Clocks are ticking, tick, tick, tick. Hands are turning, slowly counting down the time. Years are moving, perfectly in order. Life keeps turning but to what extent? If days were counted as years, the average person would be 27,375 years old. Time takes away with life along with it. It is colorful but somehow black and white. We must move with it though all of its many hardships but at the same way stop and enjoy it because we can never forget about the clocks going tick, tick, tick or the hands turning without fail. Years keep it in it all together. Life is beautiful but it is fast. It can be described in a multitude of ways but none fitting to do it justice. Like the gears it has many layers but all are working in perfect harmony. We must be careful not to destroy that harmony because without the ticking we forget about the clocks and how precious they are and without the hands it's just a ticking machine. Without the gears the clock falls and the glass breaks and we become broken and time stops because life only moves when the clock is ticking and the hands are turning and the gears are moving. Counting every time a new life is born those first steps are taken. Every memorable moment goes by with every passing tick. Pay close attention to each one but never stop moving and listening because before you know it you'll have forgotten the ticking of the clock and life will move on and be gone in the blink of an eye. So never forget the ticking of the clock going tick, tick, tick or the hands turning counting down the time without missing a beat the gears and the gears are moving reminding us of the time reminding us of the ticking reminding us that life is precious but it is fast because that's what life is a beautiful clock going tick, tick, tick. All right thank you so much Madison. Hey I have an idea let's let everybody like turn on their mics and make a little bit of noise for Madison and Tongo and Jorge and everybody this is such a quiet environment can we can we turn on our mics and give a little actual applause a little cacophony I appreciate the noise and it's something that I really miss about actual open mics like the side conversations and the chattering and you know all that it's really it makes it fun hey Val hello all right how you doing Val I'm doing well can you hear me everybody all right all right so E.K. and I are really happy to be doing this tonight we have all of this wonderful help from the library and also Dan Brady and I see Richard Ivanhoe is wearing his big green hat so again if you if you just joined us and you'd like a chance to read a poem at this event you can put in the chat say I'd like to read we'll see your name we'll put it on the list and we're going to do little blocks of five poets at a time so I'm going to call the next five poets and then introduce you one at a time this is also a good reminder that your name could pop up at any moment so please be ready with your one poem short poem if you can so I'm going to announce the next five readers and I'm also going to put it in the chat to everyone the it wouldn't be poem under the dome poems under the dome without Richard Ivanhoe so he's going to be up next followed by Clara Sue Kimmy Simeo Sugioka Gregory Pond and Wendy Walters so I'll want to turn it over to Richard Ivanhoe to read his wonderful poem so you can I'll ask you to unmute and put you in the spotlight great thank you and we're not drawing from the hat today but I did bring it and this is poem dome 16 here we are at poems under the dome number 16 we're not at city hall where we held one through 14 this is our second year online seems like it's been since the Pleistocene although we're still living with this strange condition we've been able to maintain some tradition Perhey still brings blessings to all corners of the earth as part of his mission local poets still give their best in three minutes or less E.K. Val, Dave and Dan still effortless in helping us express and our new poet laureate continues to impress calling out those who are press living life virtually has had its ups and downs I've seen friends and poets from New York Denver Paris and even Cape Town people showing up in tuxedos t-shirts and even nightgowns online concerts parties open mics interviews meetings and classes participants in their kitchens living rooms and even freeway underpasses but I strain my eyes with people in little boxes do I need new glasses home for 13 months hardly ever elsewhere I've never really had much fashion flare but now add to that a whole year of pandemic hair mute on mute volume too high or too low teases but I think what for me most displeases is when in the middle of a poem my screen just freezes we're now starting to emerge from our cocoons sending out little trial balloons finally enjoying some sunny afternoons in person school for some begins tomorrow are things getting better should I send the city attorney mayor superintendent and school board a letter inviting them to kindergarten to learn to play nicely together well thank you for your attention from my screen to your screen there are lots more poets ahead that should be heard and should be seen that's all from me here's hoping we're together live for poem dome 17 thank you so much Richard uh every year Richard Ivanho does the numerical poem of poems under the dome so thank you for setting that poem dome tone and now up next is Clara Sue so I've uh Clara I have asked you to unmic and hope that you're with us hi everyone I'm so glad to be able to attend this poem under the dome because I haven't been for a few years now so here's my poem under the dome within the squares miniatures of poetic layers 20 000 at the crossing hope in the heart knows no frontiers thank you hope the heart knows no frontiers thank you Clara Sue that was beautiful uh really appreciate and glad that you can be with us um coming up next is the poet laureate of Alameda Kimi Sugiyoka Kimi here we will I'm here thank you this is the first time I've been to poems under the dome had to come breathe breathe through the endless pervasive hate white supremacy police terrorist terrorism homelessness and hunger loss of human touch the bullet and the virus breathe the body demands as despots deprive the earth of oxygenation her creatures of oxygen breathe in this simmering viral kettle where we cannot choose whether or not we will be frogs or feathers breathe look to the wronged and resilient who know the way home for the unsullied and unblemished are no companions to compassion breathe ask the seven and nine and ten year olds how their mothers are surviving the plague breathe essential and non-essential have nots and haves breathe does breath only follow the money who has the right to breathe breathe bromelids live on air dolphins and whales must surface or drown fish extracted through their gills birds force it through their tiny bodies and songs that carry well above the den of the city breathe though our hearts are burdened with blight and anguish like earthbound astronauts huddling in bubbles of air breathe toggling between horror and hope without evidence of reprieve we ride between the starved lion and the tired lamb in pixelations and fiber optics breathe tangled in the remnants of mourning white roses and tears we cling to breath and faith breathe follow the breath as though inhaling the scent of gardenia's no more no longer never again can we say just breathe breathe the snowy plover with wings the hue of pearls and snow forages fortifies and flies as i walk barefoot in winter on shifting sands breathing and believing there is a miracle of consolation folded beneath her wings thank you thank you so much kimmy um so lovely and i i want to point folks also into the chat where anisa malady who's with us today from the public library has been posting different events coming up with tango with claire su with kimmy suyoka so thank you so much for all everyone for being here this is a we're off to a great start um so next up to the virtual mic is greg pond hi hi everybody i like to send some healing thoughts out to richard sanderel this is prisoner release they always wait to let them lose when it's late after dark somewhere way upstate and deep in the middle of nowhere so the first whiff of freedom they breathe is the fresh scent of dirt and dead leaves with desolation in the air they're finally released from incarceration's leash but still treated like stray dogs left to prowl the streets they seek a guide or beacon but all that they see is a society that leaves no light on for ex-cons and parolees and offers no shelter no job no option or opportunity nothing but a round-trip ticket back to the penitentiary and so they howl at the sky when the moons fully lit find themselves wrong time wrong place but same race as the latest crime suspect stuck in a never-ending turn style with no outlet or exit tries to start a new life but it's usually swing and miss tries to stay out of prison and not be another recidivist not another sum or nobody another place in the line another name on a list another justification for the return of stop and frisk not one you'd consider tossing a lifeline to help climb from an abyss no instead they're usually left to roam the danger zone and follow the erratic path of the bouncing bone like Pavlov dogs they're taught to comply and obey like faithful pets and accept a life where they're caught in the system's vicious game of toss and fetch thank you thank you greg pond for bringing that peace to us the peace that we all need and seek for everyone around us the vision of poetry is alive and well here in san francisco and this is the inspiration that we find through these events that we do so thank you so much greg that was really an important thing to share with everyone so our next poet up is wendy walters welcome wendy okay hello i'm so glad and grateful to be here i have a poem called forgiveness and faith forgiveness walks the streets hand in hand with faith never alone or lonely they find their companionship indispensable what would faith do without the wisdom of forgiveness what would forgiveness do without faith's imagination vitally essential to their common need forgiveness and faith value more than words to believe together they hear the melody of the ages and hold promise beyond the rhythm of time thanks thank you wendy and uh as we want to do every every block or so of of poets we're gonna let folks unmute uh yourselves and give a little round of applause so all right wonderful all right now we're gonna keep going all right so um i'm gonna pass the mic over to ek who's gonna introduce uh the next few poets all right thanks val all right so our next five poets please get ready to read charlie getter rupa rama murthy natasha denerstein kim shuck and indiana palivino and i apologize if i have not quite pronounced properly but please correct me when you come up so that we can make sure to say your name right um so hey charlie getter where are you at let's let's find that guy so charlie um charlie started organizing poems under the dome with me and diamond dave like a long time ago way back in 2006 when when the first poems under the dome happened so let's let's get get a spotlight on charlie and hey charlie turn on your mic and say hi charlie i saw you charlie where did you go he was traveling around with a cell phone on a beautiful san francisco after noon and he was on a zoom i think he's trying to reconnect so um why don't we go to rupa and then when charlie be back in a minute great idea hey rupa where are you at turn on your mic and start talking to us so we can make it it'll make it easier for us to find you okay great thank you uh stories must be told of depressions manic hold of anxiety's aggressive intrusion of life not being always hunky dory i i'm sorry i think my sound is too low okay it's okay of life not always being hunky dory not the thousand-watt smile but the excavating life's cracks and crevices the fears the falling down not taboo a stigma a label not hushed the world mental illness but a greater understanding a realization it's not those others one day it could be you just like it is me stories must be told of medications example clonopin benzodiazepines been prescribed carelessly a short-term fix a long-term addiction or painful withdrawal stories must be told of those living alone in pandemic times the isolation the fear the faltering the stumbling the big ball of fear stories must be told not everyone or everything can have the stiff upper lip the sunny smile there are breaks and breakdowns those stories must be heard not just the new ipo the brilliant doctor juggling family and kids and covid patients with quaff tear and red lipstick but what are the secret fears thank you rupa thank you so much for that poem i think that's like you with your finger on the pulse um is this your first time to come to palms under the dome maybe well if if it is i hope you come to city hall next year so our our next reader up is natasha dinnerstein the amazing the wonderful the brilliant so hey natasha why the spotlight on you i'm so happy to see you it's been way too long thank you ek um i just want to take this opportunity to say we lost a poet and a writer a couple of weeks ago his name was jay diselvo jay miller diselvo i want to say his name because he was a friend a really nice guy and um the writing community will miss him in the bay area and i've got an older poem of mine that i want to um read on behalf of jay or dedicate it to jay it's called rose quartz never fear cupcake i'm still here i'm not dead as such just gone to another place come visit me here get up from your laptop bed put on your boots walk to the end of your street and up those steep steps through the hills keep going till the path gets narrow and turn right at the elephant rock and through the pine needles till you can see the quink ink see come down the steep slope till you get to the glittering white sands and here you will find me under the de Kooning sky sit down with me hold my hands they are neither warm nor cold are they but my skin is smooth isn't it look into my tourmaline eyes let our ven diagrams intersect and let me look into your tourmaline eyes feel the sparks from my lapis lazuli heart jump to yours we don't need to talk cupcake the easy camaraderie is still here the jokes and myriad anecdotes of our shared stories you can feel it all can't you i know you can let our energies commune i never really logged off cupcake i have always been here waiting for you to log on access me whenever you like for jade selva thank you thank you so much natasha and i think this is a kind of a good moment we've actually lost several poets in our community this past year um i'm thinking i'm thinking of q r hand and steven capel and i'm i'm sure there are some other people but yeah we can take a second here to like right give our thoughts to those those poets that we miss so our next poet up to the mic actually read the first poem last year because last year she was the poet laureate of san francisco and it's kim shuck and you know how things change so we're super excited that that we have kim shuck with us and she's you know she's been she's been coming to poems under the dome for quite some time so she's she's an old hand hey kim give us a poem okay gay it's good to see your smiling face transform how many times have we woven rewoven the cocoon made ourselves different split the careful construction come loose shake and free transform by our own art how many times will we find the light instructions recipes for a word for survival that we've never shaped before we will wear the agates their inscriptions cracked from wildfire firefire and who are we to decide where the altars are placed we'll walk into the next moment shimmering with sacred water which we know is all water we'll wash the dead shake ourselves start the reweaving again call the words into the chosen stairwells because we're the people of stairwells of mass transit of the echoes underground we're the characters of myth and even in the deep weaving never doubt it thank you kim you really brought something special for us today i really appreciate that all right our next reader is a new name um and i'm not finding let's see going through the pages here indiana is indiana still in the room so i'm not seeing indiana so hey val let's let's turn let me let me turn it over to you for the next block of readers and maybe we'll see indiana um back in a little while if maybe their connection dropped okay sounds good yeah we're just keep rolling along oh wait i see it indiana equals sb stokes and what i know that sneaky sb stokes hey sb stokes where are you you are here oh and there you are hey sb stokes welcome to palms under the dome i'm so glad you made it well hello there hey yeah this is indiana oh hey indiana actually my name is indiana fechli vadova but i go by indiana jones sometimes whatever's easier all right this is a work in progress right now it's untitled by the way it's such an honor to feel connected to so many poets here today thank you guys i take my daily pills multi-shaped shards of milk or dark chocolate the back of my neck my eyelids get flushed with heat sometimes i tear pages out where i shouldn't sometimes ecstasy takes over imaginary waves of sweat memories and strangers touching fingers how do i hold on to all my socks while molten lava earth underneath dances solo the hottest of twirls sometimes i blatantly destroy i let dishes drop and clothes soup my thrashing like an ocean only ceases for a matter of minutes i need my beetle juice blush before i can face these broken board game pieces tattered loosely foams babies reaching into fire even though there is the occasional aha moments the sweet exhalation who guided me here which teeth did i lose along the way thank you fantastic indiana thank you for your poem and thanks for being here today i hope i get to see you in person and see you all next year that was fantastic and hey sb nice to see you too you guys stay on the line okay um and i just want to give a little reminder to everybody if you just came in the room and you want to read you should put i want to read and your name into the chat and that helps us helps us you know be as random as possible um and oh hey let's turn on our mics and make some cacophony for ourselves we came to the end of this block of readers so make some noise i knew that was jimmy i knew that was jimmy all right so we've got our energy up love it everyone is so great to see everyone's faces one benefit of having this be online is that we can see your your faces right nowadays you walk around everyone's covered up most of the way so happy to see all of you um thank you so much for being here it is a salve for the soul so i'm going to announce just the next four readers um we'll have a little little room in their little wiggle room the next four readers are dan brady alice rogoth jason weddiger and alan harris so let me find where's mr dan brady i'm here i'm gonna spotlight you my friend there you go all right well hello everyone glad to be here thanks to the people who are organizing this and making it happen uh this poem is fairly short i'm gonna introduce it with just by saying it's it's about artists for artists of all stripes and the challenges that they face when they become artists as they become people you are not broken how could that be how your soul limitless knows no bounds cannot be harmed in any manner taken from you or made a victim of shame it is forever yours never apart from you always perfect always safe no matter what you are not broken you are whole wonderful unique a gift to life and life's gift to eternity and back again as such you are never separated from the great happiness that is sorrowless sorrowless sorrowless you a light in this world in extinguishable have always been are and ever will be you are not broken how could that be not broken by their words not broken by their looks their faces their claims their ignorance their dissonance shaming uncaring cruelty you are not broken you are well a well spring you are a voice a song of the soul you shine you go and you are not broken thank you very much i'm going to post something in the chat for everybody but i'll mute myself now thank you so much dan brady and dan dan is a is a is always a volunteer with this event and we're so lucky to have him and also he hosts the longest-running poetry open mic in san francisco at the sacred grounds cafe every wednesday evening um he didn't start it in 1972 but it's coming continued since 1972 so uh it's a great place uh to read and a great place for community and newcomers are always welcome as well right dan and and of course he keeps it very fun um so what i notice is that i i think i've lost alice uh rogoff who i called so we're just going to keep moving down the list and so i believe the next uh reader that i mentioned was uh jason whitaker i'm gonna ask you to unmute do it again oh there we go hi okay i fixed it dude hi it's so good to see so many faces i miss so much uh okay let's just do this i missed the train today i missed the train at tropoli and tighter clothes with a girl crafted of curtains on rails made of saltwater nails riding the soft glow of a night sky conductor roaring ahead towards a shift switch sunrise i have missed trains before missed the melting of hot rails congealing with the coastline creating a place where the sun vaporizes plant life with holy fire i've always hated the heat in california it sits inside your skin for days spreading patients across vast valleys such strenuous circumstance stresses the need for cold and solitary places far away far away from the sun we can dance on exoplanets for days in the chilled exotic rain but we must exit alone and cannot buy train we must earn our tickets of bliss fight until we bleed with our hearts not our fists and dive headfirst into the dimming horizon we'll arrive on rails made from starlight pretend the darkness is not the crippling night and gain our past the paradise through the port of parasites where we feed ravenously on poultry discontent push forward to a quiet death until we awaken illuminated to the morning light there is no safe passage over the sea no steel ship to ferry your dreams to the faraway shores of the deadly serene our path to redemption has been held by haggard hands hanging loosely from train engines taught to destroy all that lies ahead barreling through walls brick after iron-filled brick inching across each massive land racing through each patch of barren space and so space is where we're wandering but not what we're asking for so to the brim we shall fill each pore become burdensome stones sinking through layers of subway systems hurling ourselves as deep as we can until we reach the bottom and meet each other there i haven't gotten there yet you see i missed the train today i'm sure i will again thank you thanks so much jason always a pleasure to hear you read i miss you we miss you but uh i'm glad your your poetry is still rambling along uh on the rails there somewhere somewhere right and that's where we are all of us poets we're always somewhere um can always define it and speaking of undefinable poets i would like to call up to the mic next mr alan harris alan harris turned off his turned off his video alan can you hear me where did you go i did see him a moment ago i did too i did too the elusive and uh alan harris well i guess we'll just keep moving along then and uh if he shows back up maybe we'll get a chance to have him read so ek that was uh the end of my little list of poets do you want to take over from here absolutely val all right so can we can we oh wait alan harris he's here hold on there he is he just came back i just let him back in so how about we just go ahead and let alan read let's do alan harris alan harris you i know it's short notice but you just came back in the room and we want you to read alan harris yeah how are you um okay hi sorry my my uh connection dropped off just as i was about to read so can you hear me yet loud and clear excellent thanks i dwell in the lower echelons of the human experience an honorary eunuch who has daily disagreements with reality and who can't shake the feeling that he should go to more funerals a coward with a bad temper forming tentative relationships with very old souls who spend their days giggling into a void sometimes scarily upbeat sometimes acceptably detached sometimes contentiously agreeable i want only to swim in a vertical ocean and to unionize all of the losers instead i plunge headlong into the nightmarish minutiae of sanctimonious traffic jams and holy day ruthlessness and exuberantly pavlovian stick figures and smirking millionaires who brag about how the only two organizations they belong to are their church and the nra i raced past the shit colored street signs and down the roadkill infested highways of america marveling at the folksy bumper sticker wisdom of phrases like guns make people more polite and i will let dial 911 and save a cow eat a vegetarian stopping for sustenance and well scrum strip balls filled with neopuritans who are all jacked up on right wing pornography and to whom i can feel slightly superior because at least my porn is fact-based a watch in coverage of water gate and bridge gate and russia gate and abuse of the filibuster date and voter suppression date and climate change denial date and income inequality date and religious hypocrisy date and not letting the first african-american president appoint a supreme court justice date and trump gate and trump gate two and trump gate trump gate three and trump gate four and trump gate five and trump gate six and trump gate seven and trump gate eight and trump gate nine and trump gate ten and now finally a scandal involving a gate gates gate and i think that that is really funny and cheerful pessimism is just about all that i have left thank you all right allen harris thank you allen harris for your cheerful pessimism we all see your keeps it right um let's let you get everybody right unmute unmute for a second we just uh opened up the unmute line so people can make some noise all right that's the most cheerful person i've heard all year thank you everyone ek over to you thank you val all right so our next group of readers please get ready to read global val i bara my co-host and like generally like um extra arm in this event uh antoinette pain buford button mia burn and charlie getter maybe so hey global val i know it's funny to bring you right back on but you know i can't wait to hear your poem thank you thank you thank you all right here we go spent so long softening shedding the armor that had hardened sanding down buffing the roughness soothing the soul the pebble shaken out of the shoe so much lighter the fighter fires lit and uplifting but now and then the lead weight drops down holding me aground contorted to the forces buoyed and bobbing tackle in the rip wrap crab in a trap clawing for the line to snap it set free and float follow the shoreline washed again by the waves once peace is the prominent way and we've all shed our collective shell of war and want tumbling rocks born of the mourn when the light is righted and we can dance at dawn thank you thanks val man everybody's really pulling out all the stocks this year i guess we've all had a lot of time to write you can really tell thank you val and bell thank you for lots of years of lots of assistance with this event like mostly val's job is to stop me from like going crazy so um who's next oh hey antoinette antoinette and buford i think you guys are sharing sharing a a screen if i'm not mistaken so how about you turn on your microphones and awesome okay we are here give us a poem antoinette okay here's a poem this came to me this morning and i'm just going to put it in the universe among these wonderful poets it's called spirit spirit of life it's me here in my heart and soul spirit of life enters that first breath plants animals earth and the universe stars moon sun all planets and us so immense encompasses all life spirit my breath moving evolving living dying to rebirth when i listen to that spirit in my breath she dwells in me as holy thank you thank you antoinette that was powerful hey buford are you ready yeah give us a poem man yeah i'm ready all right unable to figure things out life is mostly complicated in the technologically advanced world what i can't figure out often exceeds what i can and almost universal shoulders struck that's it dang beautiful that was like short and powerful all right yay so let's see here so let's see if we've got Mia Bern or charlie getter in the room i gotta i got a message from Mia she's on Bart so let's is let's see is Mia's on Bart is charlie in the room yet i think charlie had to go charge his phone he's all our poets are on Bart right now isn't that interesting all right so val let's just let's keep going forward and we'll you know we'll revisit the people who are currently absent oh wait Mia's getting off i just got a chat from her okay here's Mia let's let's have Mia on for a poem there's Mia all masked up this might be this might be too loud no you sound great um all right i'm ready for transfer um so i wrote this poem on my birthday um about a month ago um all right here comes a train hold on this is all in real life you can't make this shit up y'all hold on i know the bart train is loud right but you know what Mia i'm so glad to see half your face and and i know that you're gonna like i'll know that when you're ready for your poem when you turn your mic on that'll be our signal in the meanwhile i'm just gonna say some charming stuff about what a great poet Mia is and also a musician if you haven't heard Mia's songs you should definitely like go check out like some of her internet things i know her music is out there and uh yeah you ready go for it hi okay i'm on bart so here bart will accompany me so uh let me try to understand the weight of the world's emotions crushing legacies the irony of the poor giving more than they can when the rich only give till it hurts if you know what i mean i'm present today in a city of dreams so many cities call to me as at home but what is home now what is legacy when your wealth isn't anything but a symbol and those striving awakening beyond anything please oh please let me be free today please oh please let me try to love today the sweetness of the blooms or in a mild compliment for someone making my phone ring or a beautiful soul on the wind let them find me somewhere my loneliness is fleeting but present is my existence in a world where i often doubt myself i have nothing to fear i'm doing the work slowly deliberately maybe there aren't more cities on hills where old poets quietly drink espresso but we're all glittering lights and devices and somewhere in this melee i am meant to exist and i cannot doubt that for i am here that poem was actually for Lawrence Ferrell and getty that wasn't my birthday poem so i hope that came through that was awesome Mia actually it sounded really good thank you for thank you for the action poetry on fart we love you love you too nice to see you all right so a lot of great poetry here today everybody i just want to thank all of you for being here because you make this happen every year and um so i want to also just remind everybody if you just came in the room because i've been seeing a few people coming on in if you would like a chance to read what you need to do is put i want to read and your name hopefully as it appears on your zoom name because that'll help us out a little bit um and and put it in the chat and that way we'll know to get you on the list so hey global val are are you ready with the next block of readers i am indeed thank you so much everyone and thanks ek all right our next five readers will be and i'll post this in the chat as well we have carol whitney abby kaplan james zealous barbara bennett and ed my cue so uh carol whitney if you uh let me find you here carol and make sure that you're able to unmute and we'll put you in the spotlight spotlight welcome first year so i'm very pleased to be here i'm writing about the kumbh maila which is a a sort of festival in india every 12 years where all of the sadhus come down and they bathe in the ganga to clear their karmas and they connect with each other so ganga ma pranams 2021 maha kumbh maila haridwar india ma ma ma ma ma i send the findest bhakta i know because i cannot be with you now claire sentience will manifest this wholeness remotely i feel you i immerse every cell your sacred powers liberate my faraway heart with pure love i again and again surrender in humble awe i offer the lotus of song to your currents i offer poems to be birth i offer agni blessings in motion illuminating lasting creativity peace and clarity from your ancient depths bhakti rose in my chest on twists hydrating into fullness inspiration and vibrance opening boons from lives well-lived dormant citas i bow to your etheric beauty your flow strength and grace a reflection i too stand in the power of my truth shaking off the filaments of lives of loss gathering strength from within unswayed by the myek densities that buffet my sensitivity kicked up churning like sand around me swirling intensely past life timelines ancestry unlearned unhealed traumas karmic impressions to be cleared with your eternal vibration multi-dimensional remembrance assimilation i dedicate my service to you and to myself beautiful beautiful thank you so much and welcome a first a first timer to the poems under the dome so great to have you here great to have everyone here we hope that next year we can be in city hall once again so our words can echo through the chambers of of the people's house but for now it is great to be able to see everyone's faces in a time when we don't always get to see them so thank you so much carol great to to meet you here um so i the next poet i called was abbey kaplan but i believe that abbey had to go so i'm sorry that happened um so going down the list we've got james zealous james are you there you've been asked to unmute yep we're forever looking at the content of oh what do you want to call it focus the content of attention perception i mean these are just cheap words and the word is not the thing i described we're forever looking at the content a bunch of thought yeah and we look not and that which is present or the content you know it's been said in the absence of all that is not love love is hmm show me look at what is what do you want to call it presence tasteless colorless odorless it is the silence so it is subtle presence it cannot be fractured cut up so it has integrity presence it can't buy five pounds of it it has no market so it cannot be bought presence everyone has one so no one goes without so it is abundance hmm presence it's all we know as knowing so it's omniscient it never goes away so it's omnipresent question can somebody all knowing an old presence also be omnipotent i'm asking thank you james thank you so much um our next poet up to the mic is barbara Bennett who i believe is there with diamond dave yeah there's a few of us here all right there are a few of us here can you hear me yes oh okay uh yeah there are a few of us here actually this is an older poem but i still like it it's called are those stars real around eight years old or so i heard the words one step and one giant step for mankind the kind of steps that catapult that let one soar out of the dreary whatever i was supposed to hear recently that even nixon's seems sincere when congratulating the humble pioneers of science by phone it seems the eight year olds today might be hearing the voices of armageddon on their television and the president congratulating the pioneers of earth's destruction but for me i get pulled by that big rapping bull whip of consciousness that is sweeping the world all i know is i want to travel anywhere to find a dirt road that disappears and pretend that it is the highest desert a sea of tranquility in the armageddon brainwash that is pushing me to believe in things i never even thought about believing before thank you so much barbra great to hear your great to hear you hear your poetry up next you're doing this okay absolutely up next to the mic is ed my cue or my see you however i may be saying that ed are you my cue is fine welcome uh the early great we are the early great black fry and cloudy the time is short but some days never end there is no joyous lake there is no incantation that can bend the moment back into the patterns we may see too late waits for wait for tomorrow tomorrow never comes wait for tomorrow tomorrow never comes threes a crowd the spunky ones the cream in your coffee well i know i know we said that's the thing do it do it now early wine is flat dry and cloudy and some days never end there is no joyous lake there is no incantation that can bend the moment back into patterns we may see too late thank you thank you so much ed and everyone in that block of of poets so let's let's unmute if you will if you want to make a little bit of noise everybody love these poems pots and pans yeah excellent excellent and on on we go moving right along um and everybody's doing great thank you for bringing your poetry and keeping them out of the epic realm so that we can get as many poets as we possibly can so i'm going to hand it over to ek thanks val okay so our next group of poets please get your poems ready sb stokes marianne philip jeff brain ds black and charlie getter so i am going to find that sb stokes and i'm gonna get him spotlighted are you ready to let's see here oh there there we go hey sb give us a poem all right so this is called winter honey winter honey freezing beneath our bed glass jar filled with a darkening crystal and amber a golden lake hardening glass jar on our dusty carpet just beneath where we sleep sweetness unchanging how do the crystals know what shape to take as they quietly join hands across this strange winter we share a different world our nights together a performance shifting and moving speaking and touching and not touching the choreography a mystery until like the honey we receive our seasonal q thank you sb that was gorgeous thank you man someday i'm going to sit around with you and we're going to talk about where those ideas come from thank you for that beautiful poem all right so our next reader up marianne philip who i happen to know is an awesome librarian so hey marianne how about you gonna give us a poem yeah hello everybody so this is my first time here and here we go the words spill after night has fallen as the raindrops drip when soul is heavy brimming they gush out needing a paper reservoir to catch them thanks that was deliciously short and what an image thank you marianne thanks for coming to palms under the dome all right so our next poet up if you will all please let's find let's have jeff brain i think jeff brain is a new person too hey jeff welcome to poems under the dome give us a poem thank you yes indeed a first time here and a shout out to jack hershman who ten years ago encouraged me to yes it's okay even though you're an old guy to keep on writing so uh and to the late john oliver simon who also uh like jack and me loves baseball so this is uh naruda meets bassie if pitching is poetry batting is big band big right-hander wines deals naruda metaphors to a steady bassie rhythm section tattoo southpaw sonnet's high and tight low and away constricted construct catcher signals conducts each pitch cat anderson screams over frame delington brass back and forth shakespeare and duke hyke who curves dance over bucket muted growling bones ranga changeups confound clarinets pantumes prey on outside cold train chords villanelle sliders clash with chorus after chorus of cjam blues and when they connect words flung a crack of bat sweet sound fielding is ballet orchestrated movement soliloquy and chorus pivot turn to pas de deux ode to high heat rears back and fires cheese woody's reeds sing mournfully swing and swing and swing amiss brittle innings tonka mingus bass bottoms bright bass runners scattered bird melodic stream stressed syllables ladyday syncopates two bass hits such swat thunder gilgamesh himself striding epic ninth inning closer facing mel lewis buddy rich elvin jones part of the order seeks hits ride symbols ride thank you thank you jeff and thanks for showing up to poems under the dome i appreciate it i hope to see you next year in city hall all right ds black let's get ds black up on the mic i'm there he is hey ds how you give us a poem all right these are some lines from the mind of a mission e victim my creed occur memento mori a nightmare taxi or black mariah sunday's vitrious floaters pyrotechnic facets kindling glow the power of thought returning at muddies over a crystal stein of darkness brew don't mind me my days on crap street an alphabet suite 26 years rounding off a half century given my late boom cohort expected it all to end by 30 or 33 at the latest it's all been gravy since though why me how was i favored to survive plagues fires quakes revolution displacement smoke of lives extinguished all around i am sad and a little convexed to see time recede as a rear view mirror a taunting spool of futures passage while across the bay an eye of sauron the farce of ever-filled sails catches the fog-winked sun my mood my eyes before the scalpel tongue press teeth's wall first of many walls before the books took form made a library that informed a world view on victor's void of course as they never balance vibrate ever more now who'd have thought evergreen an astroturf misnomer side-dicked in the sues could take down capitol's cargo cult for at least a few news cycles so san so francisco your dome may be gold streets lined artisanally cobblestone but without heart bleeding love and soul from the feet up might as well all be market street without fascination or kina or you get forget the idea thank you all right ds black thank you for that poem but that's that was awesome hey you know who i think's back in the room is my friend charlie getter there's charlie hey charlie i see you at home isn't this awesome yeah i was i was on the bus came and i listened to a bunch and then i was on the bus and as i'm on the bus it was a dude having this long terrible conversation the whole ride back and i was like if he would just get off i will put the put the thing back on but it didn't happen here's the poem i'm happy to see you charlie how about you give us a poem here it comes most sci-fi movies lie to us if when the starships battle in space there are no zapping sounds or explosions everything would or will happen in perfect silence a silent war i don't know why this sounds more discomforting to me when you watch the video of a tragedy without with the sound off it seems like less and more of one less because it doesn't seem real more because you feel worse about yourself because you feel less about the victims that said hearing pain and anguish without seeing it might be more powerful the oral landscape from my bedroom window is all pain and anguish but at times late at night it descends into a perfect quiet too when the could explode in a moment into a shouting match or a squealing break crunch traffic wreck on mission street quiet in a place that always wants to scream it's the same as that dreamless sleep that follows a long day of physical labor when the junkies on the sidewalk stop their snore but it's not like space quiet there's an underlying ambient hum that i imagine are the combined heartbeats of san francisco anything but synchronized thank you wow charlie it was beautiful thank you my friend yay charlie's great charlie and i've been organizing this thing for a long time you've kept organizing again which is awesome well thanks for making it happen charlie i appreciate you i appreciate you more all righty so hey val are are you ready with uh i am i have a next group of five here and i want to again thank everyone for for keeping these poems moving along so we can get as many people up there as possible so in the chat i posted the next five readers we have jeff khalis tomi avicola mecca larry who's going by larry blah phil lumson lumson and randon bagwell oh is that somebody comment you're all smoky there uh charlie am i still on me you will be now okay jeff where are you jeff and you can say your name um if i didn't pronounce it correctly but thank you i know jeff's got here early where's jeff oh jeff's not there all right we'll come back to you jeff let's go to tomi tomi avicoli mecca hello hi tomi hi you can hear me right yes indeed always paranoid about that um so this poem i'm gonna do um comes very much from being a queer man of a certain generation it's called muzzled i'm muzzled walked on a six foot leash at least a dog gets treats forbidden from hugging or kissing i'm highly suspect every sneeze or cough sets off an alarm i've been down this road before with another deadly virus a condom won't help this time my sperms been cleared my droplets are the guilty party they're quarantined now i'm like belladonna look don't touch i may be beautiful but i'm deadly again thank you thank you tomi thank you so much it's always great to have you and and tomi was a great help last year when we were trying to cobble this event together um for uh you know during the pandemic and so uh i really want to thank you for helping out last year and this year we're we're legit we're with the san francisco public library so that's really exciting um i want to go back and see if jeff is is here and he's still absent so that's okay so um we're gonna go to larry hi larry oh i yes larry bob uh anyway uh so i'm this is i'm going to read this piece uh it's been shockingly five years since uh prince died april 2016 and this is uh looks like the the focus is sort of shifted over i don't know i'm seeing i think anyway um this is called uh ballad to prince a music man from the midwest died among the april snows a dove ascended from his breast from frozen ground a flower grows a solitary purple rose his tribute to his also suave played melodies danced on his toes the man who always dressed in mauve his songs live on though he's at rest yet covers can't eclipse the source we took for granted ceaseless zest his gender bending frills and bows guitar improv his skills no pose dancing like barishnikov bordering on grandiose the man who always dressed in mauve with music genius he was blessed so many songs he did compose he by the muses was possessed he filled the vault that overflows but doing splits at all his shows left him with pains he could not solve and led to death by overdose the man who always dressed in mauve oh prince for whom a symbol shows the ambigender sign of love the word of god divine logos the man who always dressed in mauve thanks larry that was awesome i love that he by the muses was possessed as we are here so a great inspirational poem and and a great tribute to prince love it all right coming up next is phil lumson and hopefully is ready hello phil yes we can see you and hear you can you hear me yes sir all right this is called what happens to the heroes when winter comes calling and there's no place like home when waking up becomes a choice when waiting consumes the day when whistling an original tune earns your own corner spotlight when wondering about tomorrow is a dangerous proposition when wanting gets deleted and wishing went south when working wore out and wailing had a throat operation when wheeling and dealing gathers dust on your shoulders one can ask what happens to the heroes when moving with the rhythm makes trees dance back when masks are chained in place when money looks like numbers on someone else's shopping list when manners make excuses for goodbye when magic slips in through clouds and memories ignite when maybe loses its right to vote when men act like babies and children like angels it's okay to ask what happens to the heroes we need some simple answers we need the boat to float we need no newer cancers we need a winter coat because we ask for operas then see the sham of grown humans in line we invite opinions then nail down the floodgates of pull toy noise that clamors in the bell-free towers of parks with broken glass that clamors and voices without echoes we'd like to charge admission while white-shirted waders tap the halls of our lasting debris collecting crumbs from the frenchbread souls wiping faces tipping proper too much reading headlines through the box with cold coffee for lunch leaking through the side door dream in the rain saving matchbooks for the million drop dead minutes that form the perfect collage when glued to the sidewalk when clarity gets caught between eyebrows who thinks about the heroes the collective click of the lock pushes evolution a notch higher the heroes arc into tributaries what happens to the heroes when the heroes are weak thank you that was that was beautiful Phil thank you so much i'm glad you were here thanks for joining us you're welcome all right so continuing on our next poet up to the mic will be brandon badwell and then we're going to go back to jeff callis who has rejoined so brandon you are up awesome can everyone hear me yes indeed awesome thank you um and thank you for hosting this event it's wonderful um to live is to want and not have hard earned winnings lose their shine as they fall to the grounds like grain such crumbling trophies seem less befitting than their cost was measured in pain should we seek out to harvest new prizes to possess would we find ourselves reeling the best could we drown out these pleasures for urges repressed for to live is to want and not have to live is to want to not have these riches of ours about like the tides on a world with an itinerant moon they ride on the waves of fortune and change to curse for to come to our boom we require these treasures we temporally lack they bubble and froth on this ocean that slacks our ambition then angers and our wrath again cracks for to live is to want and not have to live is to want and not have man's hunger for greed leaves many unfed and to beer and to mead so many us marry we wed these intoxicants cheery and marry to be starved for unleavened bread our army it marches on a belly that rots we thirst for these things in which we have not we dine and we die but delight while we fought for to live is to want and not have thank you thank you brandon that was thank you so much coming up next we have jeff callus are you hearing me yes indeed thank you jeff there we go thank you for joining us well thank you for having me i was hoping to get in early because i had a date with chamber music now i'm down where the chamber music is happening so maybe they can accompany me uh this is san francisco a place of music and poets uh and the poet poem that i'm about to read was actually a poem of the day thanks to uh kim shuck for including me in on that program uh it's called east on 24th homes here politely paint over their age and turn it into money a new crop of children regenerates the greened in playground the afternoon flowers and the leftover pumpkins frowned down on by gray skies gravity pulls me down into the valley and draws raindrops from the overseeing clouds now in the neighborhood plexus my memories begin to shine through the autumnal presence hollandaise listens on the face of some lovely old young flame loveliness abides the waitress at the wine bar the bank officer chumming with tellers here were coffee houses where we scribbled in our journals towards girls with bears and here were bars where we put shots into our courage and coins into our anthems after a long detour of years i got married again at the church up there catered by neighbors in a short block groggy irish publicans on one side goading greek greengrocer on the other one sweet daughter carried as a babe to the bar and grill there toddling later to the cleaners here and going on quotidian gravity grabs hold again towards lower anonymous first cross traffic i think i'll have to thank you all very much thank you jeff thank you jeff kales worth the weight as this as this event keeps rolling along so i'm going to pass it over to ek who's going to announce the next couple poets and we'll be wrapping up in just a little bit again right so please get ready to read joe jackson and robert darlington so let's let's find joe on our list on this nice list here and we'll just there we go hey joe is this your first time at palms under the dome welcome oh yes i'm basking in all the palms that preceded so thank you give us a palm joe poetry wears no mask refuses a smile to cover up pain rejects being silenced in order to fit in returns worry without a receipt poetry wears no mask it's improvisational jazz uncoreographed dance so uncork the bottle of desire befriend silent cries grips of grief let tears rain truce sing your freedom songs bow to the fear you see in the mirror poetry is patient is passion turns over the tables in the temple prayer flags on the mountain conch shell honoring the earth gives anger the space of grace the delights to skip across the page secrets once untold unfold poetry whispers welcome home come live inside your poem poetry is my address poetry knows my name thank you joe that was awesome i hope to see you next year inside city hall thank you all right so let's see here um our next poet i believe is robert robert darlington let's find robert here and hear a poem from robert here i am all right robert give us a poem what's that oh yeah i love your shirt give us a poem oh thank you there you go this poem is called uh carpe diem and it goes like this this unceremonious morning patches the road to nowhere your rituals failing in the light still lost among shadows sleep never far away fills your head with stars and worlds without end the dream of a life and you have become a history of never awakening filling your unhinged bones with the muscle of generations the smells of coffee and rain water pulling you forward cousin of a sheep and a tree humble from the beginning open your jar of daylight before it fails a cascade of silence clean to the shivering air once more a human being without a reason to be petty the immense power of your birthright unknown to you your bright life waking to each moment without fear thank you thank you so much robert that was amazing and hey thank you you're welcome thank you for having me is this your first time to poems under the dome it's my first time i'm actually calling from baltimore but i live in san francisco for many years and all my books are designed there and i've played on a local band called translator there for many years so i've uh san francisco is you know i'm glad that you're here well thank you so much it was a nice evening i appreciate it all right so i'm gonna i just got a a chat there's a poet named vlad pogorelev pogorelev where's vlad let's let's get vlad up because i think i think we have time for one more poem come on it's april hey glad welcome hey can you hear me okay yeah you sound great give us a poem vlad excellent so this one is for john lennon i uh i thought a little what i have got i don't believe in jesus but i tried i am a baptized jew afterwards i went to palestine i wasn't the place where he was baptized had his last supper got crucified perhaps i'm too proud and ignorant perhaps but what i got is a false belief in me i don't believe with donald trump i tried i volunteered but i failed he's no profit billionaire he is a puppet of wall street and what is left for me i have a false belief in me i don't believe in communism i tried and i was pure in my faith but soviet union simply melted my country is gone the greatest country on earth simply melted away the old revolutionaries are forgotten millions suffered and died all from nothing and what is left a false belief in me i don't believe in burning sanders a socialized and socialist i volunteer i still do but he is a grumpy old man doing what he can lonely socialist capitalist states of america filled the burn as they say but what have i got once he was another election i've got a false believe in me i don't believe in art museums are full of it yet dead children wash away on the shores of italy greece united states i don't believe in love people burn saints at stake at stake for the love of humanity i don't believe in Hitler or nationalism or mass murder or police or states or countries america europe asia australia countless islands it's all the same to me pointless exercise in geography it does not deserve my approval nor faith this whole planet is a joke little grease ball lost in space so what have i got in the end after the lights go out and voices get softer and die i've got me baby i've got me some crazy motherfucker thank you thank you vlad thanks for bringing that poem to poems under the dough nice one thanks vlad and vlad publishes the monday journal um coming up next is ernie brill hi ernie happy to have you to come and read a poem um we need you to all make sure you can unmute there and we can't hear you yet little things should pop up there for you to say there we go yeah we got you now all right thank you thank you okay this is going back a while but it's a elegy to an unknown human falling 9 12 2001 but through the spirit of the pandemic and helping out okay i see you leap from the flaming tower you jackknife freeze in midair by camera tucked seeming so disciplined calmly poised as you plunge what beats through your heart and brain do you remember your mother making breakfast or your child crying out in the night do you redo triumphs first breaths underwater or simply calm sunday afternoon strolls do sudden fleets of seagulls pushing you winging you to a warm haven or do you behold buddha a la jesus whose white embrace spirits you to safety before looming concrete arrives and air ends i wish 10 000 gathering linked arms to form impromptu human trampolines to bounce you past death and i wish angel firefighters aim cloud hoses whose waterfalls could come could drown conflagrations i wish myself and a million others could lift the rubble wipe away the soot cradle your crushed body and bending breathe over your lips and bring you back to life thank you thank you ernie and i'm so glad you were able to join us your poetry is powerful and i know you've you've been writing a lot and the the hipstery and history of social progress and moments where the progress seems a little bit little bit stale it has some obstacles in front of it so um we're moving through that muck together and thank you so much and i love your punny t-shirt um so the the time has come for me to introduce the last poet of this year's poems under the dome and it should be no surprise that the last poem is read by ek keith right hey everybody thanks for coming today and thanks for sticking around long enough to hear the last poem i really appreciate you all being here and um keeping this going even though we're not inside city hall and we're looking forward to that in the future in a bright shiny future um there's a lot of not bright and not shiny things happening in the world today and i picked this piece because there's been so much violence against asian people and black people and all people of color over this past year since we've been together and this poem is is about that anti-racism is a state of mental health we can't see ourselves any more than we can see each other it's like sometimes on a rough day an ugly person looks back at me from the mirror on the bathroom wall and i think damn where did that pretty woman go is she hiding back there somewhere in mirror land i have my suspicions about the ability of science to describe how a mirror really works what if it's not the mirror but the eye and how we see collectively is racism a societal dysmorphia that results in self-hatred and self-harm what would it be like to be the light particle wave something not quite yet described to be the light in the mirror reflected deflected redirected does a light particle see its own intensity and flinch and if i can barely see myself and you can barely see yourself what does that mean when we look at each other we change how we change who we see use the mirror get the hate out of the eye thank you ek for rounding us off and and and bringing this lovely lovely event to a close for this year the 16th annual poems under the dome i really want to thank the san francisco public library um especially our librarians who are with us tonight john smalley and anissa malady also want to thank michelle jeffers at the public library as well and the friends of the san francisco public library so thank you so much we also of course always appreciate the support that we get from folks in city hall including the mayor and the board of supervisors so thank you there and and to everyone who shows up our poets laureate um thank you tango ison martin when congratulations we look forward to your inaugural uh delivery on the 21st of this month which was posted in the chat earlier um so thank you ek keith for holding this together for all these years thank you charlie getter dan brady richard ivenhoe and of course diamond dave so i want to let everyone kind of unmute right now and we can all enjoy a little bit of uh audio support for thank you well done