 Hello. Good afternoon. Welcome everyone. Thanks for coming to this month's inaugural poetry program. Echoes, Poets and Memoriam. I'm John Smollett, a librarian at the Maine Library, the General Collections and Humanities Department on the third floor. While we're waiting for a few more people to join us, I want to take a moment to acknowledge our community and to tell you about a few of our upcoming programs. So on behalf of the San Francisco Public Library, we want to welcome you to the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramatush Sholoni, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. As the indigenous stewards and in accordance with their traditions, the Ramatush have never ceded, lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers of this place. We, as guests, we who reside in their traditional territory recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. We wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the elders, ancestors and relatives of the Ramatush community and by affirming their sovereign rights as First Peoples. As we all know, April is the coolest month because it's National Poetry Month. So we have quite a few exciting programs this month. I'm just going to mention two or three of them right now. On Thursday, April 13th, Kim Schalk is going to be back here with a poetry reading celebrating a new anthology. Readers published in that anthology, This Wandering State Pones from Alta. On April 16th, the Sunday, we'll have a program with California's new poet, Lauret Lee Herrick and guests. That's going to be here in the poetry basement. And on April 30th, our concluding program will be led by Tongo Eisenmarten, our current poet, Lauret. And he's also going to be on this program. That program, April 30th, the West Revisits Harlem, will be across the way in the Courrette Auditorium. And there is in conjunction with today's program a book display exhibit on the third floor called Poets in Memoriam. So if you have a few minutes afterwards, stop by the third floor General Collections and Humanities desk and check it out. There are a lot of books of local poets who died in the last three years, as well as a banner representing about 70 poets from around the world and original artwork by one of my colleagues, the artist Drew Banerjee. There's flyers about all this month's poetry events on the table over there. You can grab one. There's also newsletter which lists some of these events and others, things as well. There's also coffee and cookies. So feel free to help yourself to all of that. And that's it for my introductory comments. I now want to turn the microphone over to the poet Kim Shuck, who will introduce today's readers. Please give a warm welcome to Kim. He used to read these really good mystery stories where the cat was referred to as the cat best at when you said the poet Kim Shuck flashed on that. And I'm probably being silly because the topic is pretty serious. We've lost a lot of people over the last few years and for various reasons and in various ways. And there's no way to do this completely, this kind of event. You can't do it even for a small region. There is no way to completely cover who we've lost. And we will not know for a really long time what the fallout is really culturally of the last couple of years. And I really want to thank the people who've agreed to come. The people who won't have their work shared today, that's not happening because we don't want to honor them. It's happening because there's no way to cover it all. And enough of that. Our first reader is one of my... I can't tell you how much I respect and want to honor Manaz Badihan's work in the poetry community. I always learn things, which is what I love about this community. And she always behaves in a communal way, which I also really appreciate. And probably now I just want to say Manaz Badihan and call her up. And you can use that one or this one depending. Thank you very much, Kim, for inviting me to this very necessary event. Thank you so much. And thank you, San Francisco Public Library. I appreciate it. The topic is so sensitive. It's so important that I cannot even explain. I am going to read poems from two poets in Iran. One is Bakhtar Shoptin, who died when they imprisoned him in 2022 because he contracted COVID and they didn't treat him. Absolutely they didn't want to treat him, so he died. He was a filmmaker, writer, poet, and he was a member of Iranian Pen. He was a very, very good poet. He was only, I think, 47 when he died. And the second one is a lady, Aotefe Char Mahalyan, which is a beautiful young poet. She is also a member of Iranian Pen. And they just arrested her. She was in prison for like eight months. And they said, your poetry has something like propaganda against regime. But if you read her poetry, it doesn't say damn Khomeini, F Khomeini. She doesn't say anything like really obvious something against the government. But they just don't like, first of all, they don't like this regime in Iran. They don't like women. They just don't like women. No matter what you do, they don't like you. And they don't like especially women who are, you know, intellectual women, like artists, filmmakers, and poets. So I don't know how much time I have, but I'm going to read two short poems. Thank you. Two short poems by Bakhtar Shoptin. And one poem from Aotefe, the Lady Char Mahalyan. And one poem that I wrote for events in Iran recently. And you guys all know about woman life freedom, right? And all this demonstration around the globe and in San Francisco. There was many of them. Actually, there was one yesterday in Pier 39. There were many, many, many people in the Americans also. And we appreciate other cultures, other people to notice what is going on in Iran with this dictatorship, criminal, backwarded government, and support Iranian people in any way they can. That's why I appreciate so much, Kim, that you have this event. This event is very close to my heart. And thank you so much. I will read one short poem in Farsi by Bakhtar Shoptin. And then the English. What should I say? Of great wounds, a small line remains from your eyes. What should I say? The memory of your elbows on my bed has a deep mark. And the second poem by Bakhtar Shoptin, it has your taste, the wine I have never had. Because in Iran, having wine is forbidden, right? So it has your taste, the wine I have never had. And how sad are the wounds that is sitting in a cup in front of me? And how painful it is a map that has sea on the wall, but it doesn't move. I land without you. It is a sad curve inflated on the hands of the sea and I most hidden of all. So now I'm going to read a poem by Aotefechar Mahalyan, who was in prison for eight months. Now they put something on her leg just to follow her moves around the country so she doesn't escape. She's in her house, and she's supposed to go back to the court again. It is a bizarre story. I'll read just two lines of her farsi poem. Cheshmai ke, cheshmai ke nemi darand, be shedard mikhurand. Eyes that they don't open wide. What use are they to me? I don't feel the hallowing between hungry mountains. The sadness that exists in the solitude of the colors of the air. And the redness disappearing in the dust with its thirsty ashes at the edge of the hill. It becomes afternoon, still with a virtual cry. I am next to you, still calmer at midnight having tea. And now I'm going to read a poem that I wrote recently. It is called My Daughter Iran. Because Iran also is a girl name. The country's name is female name. My Daughter Iran, I am looking for you in the Middle East. In the pile of bones wounded, in the pile of bodies wounded and broken with abstention, bellies of organs, and eyes full of bullets with a broken pearl in your mouth. I am looking for you, My Daughter Iran, your lost at night and at dawn in search of the soil of your homeland, in search of woman life, freedom. From the broken roof of the homeland, you have risen like the sun. The Middle East swallowed you. West sold you to decay of turbines and abayas. My Daughter Iran, you were ripped open. Your heart spilling and kidneys were removed. But your courage, they couldn't shatter. Your torch for lighting, for the awakening at the Middle East, the Far East, and the awakening of wounded and neglected evergreens. I'm done reading, but I have few comments about this poem, the part that I say bullet in your eye. Actually, that's what they are doing. During the last six months, in the previous year, they probably blinded hundreds of people just by aiming at their eyes, either one eye or two eye they lost. They kidnapped many girls, they raped them, they killed them, and they took all their organs to sell it. So this is a real story, and it's not one case, two cases, three cases. This is a real, and we are all living in the era that these things are happening in one country, a country with rich history of art and poetry. So we need to wake up people in the world, because if Iranian woman can succeed, all the woman in the world will succeed. We'll have better futures. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. I'm always astounded when people think that poetry is a minimal thing to do when you look around the world and you see how many poets are in prison for poeting. It's fairly clear. If they're willing to kill us for it, it's not a minor thing. Our next poet is... Ooh. Well, Paul Corman Roberts has basically been my good right hand for the last couple of years, also while doing all of his own stuff at the same time. So much of what I've accomplished would not have been possible without him, and that's, I guess, all I want to say about that. I'm reading this afternoon for somebody who started as a client, more or less, but became a friend. A couple of people in this room knew Ilana Ayama. Hardly anybody in the scene knew her, because she only ever gave one public reading. It was right here at this podium back in November when she published her one and only collection. The poems, notice the lines. It's inevitable. Dedicating this to her, dedicating this to all of those in our region, all across the world who get lost in the hamster mill of mental health treatment in the mental health industry. This is called My Bedroom in Tatters. When I moved in, my room was a shining sun with dad's colorful Greek tragedy paintings, pillars of Rome's demise dotting the walls, but my poems spoke of a clean canvas. My bed is a recklessly abandoned chrysalis, popcorn kernels from late night medical smoke runs to the kitchen for munchies. These attempts at nourishment itch my pock-mocked torso. As I rip and tear my bed apart through the night, the itches spread their way under my blankets. Through the icy, loveless nights, done special murder gloves to bed, fight and lose against nerves in battle, my hardest battles always tied to dream states and the lack of them. Blood and bile stained sheets, covered with fuzzballs, live next to a disheveled night table encrusted and eroded by melted shards of yellow and blue pills. It's not quite a warrior's tribute. I was once a neat freak. They say this disease changes you. You don't get to come back to yourself. Self, are you there? Are you there? Can you hear me now? Bad connection. My bedroom is covered with old medication bottles, vessels of pain relief, actually leading to more pain. Irony does its daily dance on my prison-striped covers. I live in a San Francisco yuppie castle with two bathrooms. The queen below suffers more than any could. The princess above pines to stay alive. I don't know how to find my suffering twin outside a bed that went from twin to double to queen. This bedroom where I was conceived, as my parents slept in the same bed, is this bed where I lie down to die? Phantom fetuses wait to take my place. I am already dead, but my heart somehow beats like a chicken still walking. Even after its head is severed, it still thinks it's living. Ilana would be very upset if she knew I read that poem because she always wanted poems to be happy. She said, I just hate that my work is so depressing and I want to, and I told her that's, honey, that's not what poetry is. Poetry is where we come to exercise the heart of emotions. When it's at its best, it's like we're exercising demons. And Ilana is special because she is a lifelong native San Franciscan, much like Kim Shuck here, somebody who grew up here and didn't fully understand maybe everything that was available to her. I would that more poets, more artists, more creative people knew what was available to them in this place. I wrote this for Ilana. Dear Bluest Mountain, I too wanted to write the happiest poem ever written. Wanting is one hell of a drug, a ticking that never ends, but you can feel it waiting out there. I thought I'd be glad to be a monkey too, but it's all soreness and ache now. It eventually infects the libido, and we don't care anymore. Hard enough to breathe these days. I'm too happy to preview and chill the trailers of what could have been a place of profound simplicity, a reflection we can't get to like everything we've ever seen in a telescope. From here, so our hands never touch again. The ability to manipulate illusions may be the one true gift we're born with. All I ever wanted for you was to learn to frolic in the sandbox constructed entirely from the spectrum of wavelengths. No other gift can I bear Blue Mountain Mama. Every day now is our day to take me home once the sunflowers have escaped their line containers and taken root. And this is how God shows us what a sick fuck he is. With the Candymanger scenes to take me home, all country roads lead to Tartine where you sink down into these cerebral folds where I learned that if the things I love don't come to me, then I go to them, to the place I belong. And sometimes that means severing the lifelong you never wanted to let go of. Leading you right back into this umbilical scene once more, prepping for the love making we still talk about while gasping for a sweet carbon salvation. Gunning to be one hell of a time popper three to five years down the line is when you will sell me on your voice because your only reference who took my call was that stand-up exquisite vibranium cred and precious nose precious in this industry of hounds and sounds. Our passports cannot be contained. One can only hope, one can only pray for the transport to tiptoe your own legacy of light bulbs where you stood right here and set them off like the Chinese lanterns you so loved. What was always a beginning for the rest of us was a landing pad through your eyes. And me out here like another cranky elder admonishing you bite down on those words, dishing out the irrelevant questions which drove you back time and again like a suffocating Orwell still down and out in Paris searching for an all night, all John Denver karaoke wine bar, the solution to all impossible things. Thank you. I would be remiss if I did not introduce our next reader, our next performer. I'm so glad she is here to read for who she is reading for this evening. Please welcome Colleen McKee. Both of you all, that was just so beautiful and moving. I'm honored to be here. Can you all hear me okay? Oh, thank you so much. I'm gonna read a poem from Jada Salvo's book, The End of Ambition. And it's kind of funny because it's called Don't Walk and he was the publisher of Pedestrian Press. But what he loved to do was walk and walk and walk. So this is called Don't Walk. I walked down the hill. It was too late for anything, but I had to do something. So I walked down Valencia Street from end to beginning. I decided that street wasn't long enough. So I walked down Market until I came to the water. Everything was closed. The morning buses just starting to run. I lay down on a bench by the port. I was too tired to walk back and I didn't have any money for the train. A policeman told me to move along. And thousand people sleeping outside in the city, but not me, not there, not allowed, not okay. I'm just resting, I said, playing the traveling salesman. I'll be moving along pretty soon. I showed the appropriate cards. What are you doing down here? I just went for a walk. At four in the morning, is there something wrong with that? No, it's just very unusual, he said. I said yes, I suppose it is, though within the realm of possibility, certainly. He was confused, well, you know, you can't sleep here, he said. If you say so, I said, I don't wanna fight about it. Just move along, he said. So I did, all the way back up Market Street and then up Valencia from beginning to end and back up the hill. So yeah, that was one of Jay's principal activities, walking around, but he was also a hell of a writer and publisher. This poem is called Level Three, Item 16, Violation. And this is my poem about Jay, who was homeless for seven months in 2018. I've been invited to read at the San Francisco Public Library, the Civic Center Branch, where you edited countless issues of the Bicycle Review, Oakland Review, dozens of books from pedestrian press. Here you read Babel and Dr. Rowe and wrote your own stories and poems in these custom chairs, there are custom chairs upstairs, in these custom chairs at these spacious desks when security guards would allow you inside. Often they wouldn't. The San Francisco Public Library Code of Conduct prohibits bringing carts and luggage here, one of many anti-homeless policies with the ostensibly public library. So you had to schlep your cart down the hill from the Tenderloin encampment to Bart, schlep it down the stairs and up the stairs and down the stairs and up, leave your clothes and books at my studio apartment in Oakland, take a shower, borrow more train fare, then take Bart back under the bay to Civic Center Station, to the library, the clinic, your psychiatrist. You were trying to get clean, but every place the homeless need to go is barred if they bring their possessions. I'm sure I could traipse in here with a tote bag full of tasers and no one would stop me, but you were suspicious because you were so obviously poor. So here I am, security hasn't stopped me, didn't even glance in my bag, in fact they were very nice to me. I've limped up to the podium to honor you. Should I act genteel and pretend you were always honored here? Should I say Jay loved this library when the staff would allow him in the door? Why do I get to go inside, take shelter from the thrashing wind? Why do I get to read your poems here where you weren't welcome? Thank you. There's a lot about doing this sort of thing that's not easy for anybody and I really appreciate every one of the writers who agreed to come be part of this because it's not easy. And part of what we do as poets is periodically we pull out our nerve knife and we scrape the Alice off and then we emote and sometimes we dig a little too deep and that's usually the best work unfortunately. What to say about Kitty Hustle? We too are partners in crime in a lot of different ways. We know a lot of the same people and have for a long time and she's gonna be reading two people I also loved. Please welcome Kitty to the microphone. It looks different from up here. Kim has done such an amazing job of introducing all of us to each other and is continuing to do it even for the people who aren't here anymore and now I know about them. So just all these events are so appreciated. So the first poet I'm gonna be commemorating is Mary Tall Mountain. She was an Athabaskan indigenous woman who spent most of her adult life living in the Tenderline. She was born up near the Arctic Circle in Alaska and was adopted out at a young age because her mother was terminally ill with tuberculosis. So she spent the whole rest of her life, her spiritual journey and her writing journey was about reconnecting with those roots. So I'm gonna read a poem called Song for My Mother. Spoke gravely of winter. I walked out with you to see whether ptarmigan and snowshoe rabbit had turned white. Sky wore a purple mantle. With you I saw through snow and rough backs of malamutes your shadow against the silver spike of moon. You slid salmon to the table, raised the fish knife and your hands honored the holiness of all things. Always do this with care you said and the knife traced a flashing crimson stripe along the soft white belly bearing masked luscious eggs. I looked into a million faces afterwards but found none like yours, none anywhere. I stood different knowing. So I went the alien ways but held my life with you apart, gripped tight my soul, weighted, wrapped in the cloak of your strength. Oh, sure. Sorry, I thought you couldn't hear well. So this is a tribute I wrote for Mary. It's an acrostic. So the title is Tall Mountain in the Tenderloin but it's written along the side of the page with each line starting with one of those letters. Can you hear me okay now? Okay, Tall Mountain in the Tenderloin. Tallness wasn't a matter of height. It was all about her unbounded heart of love especially for those who felt unloved, unlovable, knowing each one had a story to tell. Monumental as she was renowned out there in the literary world, she stayed under the radar low key there in the not so tender Tenderloin. Not taking the obvious lead but always there to witness each soul's journey with illuminating reflections, a neighborly hand held out, inspiring all to write, to speak, navigating us through thorny squabbles. She kindled healing connections across all the edges and divides. She had traversed her own fierce schisms early removal from family, from Arctic home, never Indian enough or too Indian. She had drowned her own anguish and drink until everything she'd forsaken overflowed her pen, resurrecting her lost child self, her me too tales overthrown in the telling, inviting all fallen angels to now avow their own forgotten wings. So Diane De Prima. I was gonna read rant and then I thought, no, Diane was so great at writing poems about death and this is a memorial reading. So if you never read rant, I think it's revolutionary letters, number 75, if you want a big bite of Diane's mind, that's a real good place to look anyway. So I'm reading one that came to light in weird ways like right, like the day before she died and then has made the round sense. So this is called, he breathes. So I am printing out poems to send to the 26 magazines magazines who want them or say they do. I figured I'd better get on with it while I have the time. My book is done at Viking, even now getting messed with in unthinkable ways and I have the time and I'd better use it. Yesterday I went to visit a friend who's dying and that always reminds me, get the poems out while you can, you know? And everything else for that matter, not to mention I had a dream last night that wasn't so good. So I'm printing out poems and the phone rings and it's someone from the examiner and only this morning I read the examiner will soon be extinct. So I wonder how the guy feels about that and I pick up the receiver. He says he heard Gregory Corso died last night and he wants a quote. They always want a quote and I usually ignore them, but this time I say he had the greatest lyric gift of any of them, Allen, Jack, the greatest innate genius. Yeah, says the guy, but you know genius and discipline don't often go together. I have discipline, the guy says, but no genius. I have just finished printing out a poem for Sharon Dubiago and want to get on with it before we all drop dead, you know? So I tell him to call Allen's office. Allen will still have an office after we're all gone and that office will have quotes for everything. I am so grateful. And he wants to know about Gregory's time in San Francisco and I tell him to call City Lights and then I hang up. By this time my printer is spitting out old haikus. I only have 68 poems and 25 magazines want them or say they do and I want to send at least three poems to each so they have a choice and I'm trying to figure this out do the math when the guy calls back. He says he got through to Allen Ginsberg's office and the woman who answered said only he breathes. That's good I said and thought about Ray Bremser and Jack Michelin not breathing and my friend in Mill Valley and all the rest. Me too soon. She breathes no longer they'll say and somebody will mention my lyric gift but no discipline and what a bitch I was. So I get my sweater to go to the Asian American restaurant. It's Chinese Peruvian actually but suddenly I decide I don't want to leave the house so I cook some pasta and think about Gregory breathing in the Midwest somewhere and while I keep writing the pasta is getting cold and I can't help it. I wish I could send him some ziti with summer sauce and Sarah Raffetto too my friend breathing not so good. Allen too and he wasn't even Italian. So if there's time I want to read one more is it okay? It's okay. So this is something Diane's partner sent to me like last month saying this is going to be run in the New Yorker if you can imagine that. So I'm just going to read some of what he said. This is as far as I can tell the last poem she wrote by hand sometime in late summer 2020 and she died in October 2020. She by then had mostly switched to dictating poems to me or tapping them out with a stylus on her phone because her hands had become too cramped from Parkinson's and arthritis. So this is the last one she wrote out and I read that not to be overly revealing about her last time but just so you know how serious Diane was about writing poems. So okay. I think I forgot to turn off the radio when I left my mother's womb. In Hasidic Judaism it is said that before we are born an angel enters the womb strikes us on the mouth and we forget all that we knew of previous lives all that we know of heaven. I think that I forgot to forget. I was born into two places at once. In one it was chilly lonely physical and uncomfortable. In the other I stayed in the dimension of spirit. What I knew I knew I did not forget. Voices the world of spirit held me in its arms. Yeah. The perception of Diane was interesting particularly as a person who always got an enormous hug. That was my experience. And every time I hear that she was so cranky I'm like and all I can remember is at various heights because I knew her most of my life saying hello and getting this absolutely enveloping hug. So I guess we're a lot of different people to a lot of different people. Sorry that loss was both of those losses were really heavy for me. Our next reader who's mask is that yours? Okay. Our next reader is somebody who's work I've really really loved. And unfortunately from an unnecessary distance but it's on my list of things in the next year or so is to make sure that that stops and that I see more of this poet. Light always is an incredible human and I'm really delighted that he's here today. Thank you for being here. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls come one, come all. Come on a step right up folks wanna grab yourself a front row seat before they're gone they're going fast. You don't wanna miss this no way it's time for another exciting installment of the Light Always Show. With me you're always clever, always handsome, always charming host, Clyde always. And I have traveled far and wide with one objective that being to recite for you fine folks some poetry. And this first poem was written by my late mentor and he's a man most of you knew and loved and he like me had an intention as a poet that being to entertain, inspire, amuse and uplift his readers and listeners. His name was Stephen Coppell and this is one of his works. It's entitled Harmonica Blues. Why is Patrick pushing a de Soto sedan? Do the kin of Cedar Carver's pot latch the turtle clam? Is your fluoridated toothpaste on the empty shelf? Is the face in every mirror a reflection of yourself? This leather picture album that I balance on my head it's full of empty pages since the photos have all fled. Thin shadows shifted when the curtains did close plans bound to be rejected were the ones I would propose. My mechanical friend has a robot, Matt, who spilled the soup cream of mushroom going splat. Uncle, Mr. Zuppers, I was playing a trick. Whoever smashed bathroom glass forgot to take the brick. I've been fed too many insults. I swallowed all my scars. I'm not in fulsome prison, time to rattle those bars. Chewy tender meat is tattooed on my right shoulder. It's time to dunk the devil. That's my courage growing bolder around my rock. And a gentle buffer breathes. I'm a pair of Levi shorts cut off above the knees. I'm a bugle blowing taps and the woods are fast asleep. I'm a porpoise sleek in hands in the blue and purple deep. Can Chardonnay prevent the gout? Pop-tarts float, I have no doubt. Puppies go for spicy mustard, smacking good as mama's custard. Every fire needs a spark. Am I glowing in the dark? No more headache, no more pain. Dance and naked in the rain. Want to know it, do it, be it. Want to drive a little fiat. Thank you very much. Thank you. And I did write a tribute to my late mentor, but before I present it, I just wanna tip my hat and say thank you very much to Kim Shuck for organizing this event, to the folks at the San Francisco Public Library and to all of my fellow poets and performers. It's an honor to be here with you today. So thanks so much for hearing me out. I don't know if you knew this, but Stephen actually went by another name. He was the Verseman of Eureka Valley. The Verseman of Eureka Valley would wake each day at four and he tally 5,000 crunches, then 5,000 crunches more. By daybreak over his freshest lines, he ponder aloud to his quill, well, if these don't win us that Pulitzer, hell, if I know what will, then into his trusty jansport, he'd pack only essential kit, bananas, props, a silver spoon, and his darlingest works of wit. Then along the a meandering sidewalks, with its countless curves and bends, he'd carefully scour the neighborhood for some unsuspecting friends, to each nuzzling pair of lovebirds, he would clear his throat and say, best goddamn looking couple that this poet's seen all day. And the Verseman near unblinkingly, he'd ask some men with pride, excuse me sir, but what would you charge to give me a piggyback ride? Serious, and uncountable ladies, young and old, would giggle dumb with shock, when he'd ask them, miss, might you be free to tango at seven o'clock? At any respectable poet salon, he'd garner a riotous hoot, presenting his triple entendres and his bevy of trinkets and fruit, and each sunset he'd savor a Sunday, where all the soda jerks would know, that he comes with his own utensil, and he takes 10 pints to go, and nightly beneath the shimmering moon, atop his pillowless slabs, he'd rattle himself a lullaby on his rigid washboard abs. Thanks everybody. Tune in next time for the episode of the Clyde Owen Show. Some of you may have already caught it, but I've been trying for the booking for today. I was trying for some tone shifts, in case you hadn't caught that. Our next poet, I may be responsible for her reading in front of humans. I did a wicked thing. It was really, really wicked, which was that we met at an event, where Atonga and I were reading at the Mechanics Institute. There's a good story that goes without, which I will not tell you right now. And she and I got talking, and she came to an open mic I was doing, and I said, so if you ever read in an open mic, and she said no, and I put her on first. But it's worked out. That could have gone very badly, but it's worked out. Anyway, please come on up, Lauren. You too. Thank you so much to Kim for organizing. Sometimes, or for me personally, I didn't realize how much I needed this, so thank you. So today I'm reading for the late, the great JMS, Miri Kitani. For those of us who had the privilege of knowing her, she was just larger than life in so many ways. She's most well-known through her work with Clyde in The Tenderloin, as well as being our second poet laureate of San Francisco. And I'll start with one of her pieces, Imperfect Enough, from this book, which I highly recommend picking up at some point. Imperfect Enough. Mother, look what has been created out of schools of your life. Strands of rope tied to my sleeves. A string of warnings. Men abandon imperfect women, you say. Your hands have knit embroideries, for me, not of not-enoughness. Pretty is not enough, you say. I thought if I was perfect, you would love me. I worked hard to get perfect grades, make perfect stitches, perfect rituals of failure. Smart is not enough, you say. Mother, I have watched you save balls of twine rolled into infinite lifelines. Grandmother, mother, me. You reluctantly reveal your ends of strings bound to barbed wire of concentration camps and broken marriages. Being citizen is not enough, you say. You show me knots of humiliation. The names were called of Jap and Yellow Peril. The losses you bear of your teeth and home and husband marriage vows are not enough, you say. You tell me to be careful. Break our need for violent men. Get an education. You weave fibers of rebellion in my bones. Purple threads of abuse, crimson webs of broken flesh, yellow streaks of defiance, the amber of my voice. I loosen knots and I unravel. Cut loose, connect, bind, repair. Look, mother, these hands shaped like yours. This body that holds the strands of you, this spirit rising up. I unravel the tangled threads of my unworthy and discover your love, my love. I am ferocious affirmation, this stubborn root of a weed holding fast to the power of imperfections. Beautiful enough, I say, in all my contradictions. Look, mother, how powerful is this mending. Thank you. In one of my conversations with Janice, she offered quite the provocation of what it would look like to write towards the light. And this is the poem that came shortly following that. It's called Arrival as We. Thousands of women hum in my blood, forced to play God, cradled their knives with a gentle hand, lifted gazes to the horizon and summoned air, tucked it into laugh lines, a teacup, a birthmark, a prayer. For generations yet to unfurl, knowing breath is never promised always, especially these days. Always, always. Remember this, inhaling sunrise and birdsong, we never arrive alone. Thank you. A lot of the people who have been read about inspired me in one way or another over the course of my poetry path. But Janice, I've had a lot of poetry moms. But Janice actually, at one point, after I read for one of her readings, she was like, you hide under a rock, lady. I was like, I do. I like my rock. It's comfortable. I come from a culture where pushing yourself forward is discouraged. She's like, yeah, but some of us need you out here, so just get on with it. Which is not, you know, she had a great strong hand and a velvet glove kind of way about her, and I loved her madly. Thank you for those poems. Her next poet, how to describe our next poet. We've been friends for some time now, and so it's very hard for me to introduce Tonga Weizen Martin without giving away too much. But just maybe this. If you ever have to sit in the dark on a cold night outside waiting for an idiot to stop speaking so that you can go read your poetry, the best person to be sitting next to is Tonga Weizen Martin. Please welcome him to the microphone. At a time, I got you, I got you. And that was the high score of an introduction right there, you know what I'm saying? Big facts, you know? Apologies, y'all. I've been trying to get out of Arizona since four in the morning. It's good to be, you know what I'm saying? It's good to be with y'all. I mean, you know, lovely rocks, you know what I mean? The people, woo. I don't know. Right? Now, there's some group, you know, a lot of them suck. But some were real, some cool people. So my poet is a QR hand, Jr. I mean, how can we do justice to an aborted line spirit guy Diddy typecat, you know what I mean? I mean, it really, to have a conversation with him almost was like a cosmic award. Like congratulations, you are on the right path, you know what I mean? As certified by this, you know, just being able to hang with this cat. So here is a soon-to-be-released poem of his. The sun is the only thing warm as hearts are in freezers to keep well not enough for a real smorgasbord any more limbs and eyes only now. And they throw away anything over seven as stiff with age trying to invent televisions without commercials buying time stealing from laundromat washers and dryers paying off tiny lookouts with collected roaches skimmed from neighborhood vipers in their other visitors pointed out by the tiny ones as if that's what they were born for, like chimney sweeps in a dingy dickens tail so terrible competing against brothers and sisters to stay small and not be eaten. Having fewer birthdays putting candle makers into a precarity zone and the few basket ballers remaining had to accept small pensions or smaller cells in the older walls between the reservation so ecologically sound and financially responsible where the will to powers in the world of trouble some are all or in the hallways of that large apartment at 112th Street and 7th Avenue across the street from a little hotel mortal metal metals for valorous behaviors in the service of cosmetics, prosthetics for returnees of foreign wars who could no longer be hidden in zoos and circuses for the criminally insane from the previous wars of valor mortal metal and honors for academics to older subversives whose protesting often led to blood curdling screams and future protests in the court of too late for you and yours if you got any of yours left. And then there's this jerry expiation ain't the California I moved to so much more blood flooding the plane than raining which gotta be pumped back and forth and in and out travesty of waterways weighs a lot on all those drab dodging farmers lazy on the land the very fruminousness of it no longer just banter snatched into a vortex of meanings colliding on receding ideological tramps in their directress in that distress and the redressology of it insufficient half they all said you draw bridges down for the clowns and farmers to cry on the streets teaming now flesh flood didn't come to California for the rain but it said this very earth needs it if they're gonna continue to make wars here killing as many possums as possible really just playing possums are good enough to kill in some counties live metal there now bright sun up morning beams bright poems winding centuries away like a saxophone solo in sweet jungle's time and covering the tons of tripe they try to stuff drummers with speaking dreams in a fuller tongue with no words and vital sounds past and always wanted to stay on earth feet there and finding spirit and soil is skewing the high and the sky I knew not and not to care for but in a loving family existing in such tensions impacted beyond words it has stopped working like constipations do a strike in the harbor hopes in below deck and sit there in operation going in after it wearing so many hats determined to my life they say loud first little breaks come then hoping making the profound simple yet heady buckets for buckets taking it to the streets all over the world falling down progressions posters high brow and lots of bottles brew high and hubbub upon fighting OG joint hidden from the draft boards turning the corner stop the blame and get on with the game give it give it to them youngsters for that old you know go go go the inventors too old to activate but can't stop them you servers and well coordinated wise guys co-optation college shared how cultures work and how cultures work in courts where the quick tongue move dollars and lies from one side to the other most valuable killers running rampant like pansers and shermons and ghouls and rows in the heart or trained in the orange genocide in the hands on the way to find the gold and other appropriations in the name of I'm going to kill you if you don't do what I say and might even if you do it men women children every living thing can be wasted for metals and stones finally the land itself every and any self in the way gone quickly all that's why a lot of people are making lots of revolutions more and more cells growing on many parts of the whole earth the grand would be narrator comments on council who might have they're affirming their ways in the right to appropriate or not as well as being appropriated trying to be appropriate in the ways of nature may may be not as constant as several millennia ago but plugged in never the more or less mobiles mermaids on their hoods hooding hooting too late for the so does the cells in Coronado's busting out in these few freedoms intense of their own choice as well as bodyguards impermeable inappropriate hands or eyes listen up to your people listen up to cells who buys please from the wake so down river of turpentines the best for giving their fewer than thousand now only good line the dead were missing signals to be live and then quick man okay so we see this cat was you know a torrential rain but was also just this very very very very very careful biographer of the human journey and would be your biographer you know and and when I tell you he like he would tell me he knew my poems better than I did and knew what and like and knew he could just tell you where a writer was going what they had evolved from what they were evolving towards you know as close to abnitions as you know find themselves so you know I'll just conclude with a little diddy he enjoyed apparently too much of San Francisco was not there in the first place this dream requires more condemned Africans are put another way state violence rises down or still life is just getting warmed up or army life is looking for a new church and ignored all other suggestions or folktale writers have not made up their minds as to who is going to be their friends you know this is the worst downtown yet and I've bought a cigarette everywhere I've taken many a walk to the back of a bus that let on out the back of a storyteller's prison sentence then on out the back of slave scores but this is my comeback face I left my watch on the public bathroom sink and took the toilet with me through that the first bus I saw eating single mothers half alive it flew through the bus line number then on out the front of the White House hopefully you find comfort downtown but if not we brought you enough cigarette filters to make a decent winter cold a special species of handshake let's all know who's king and what's the lifespan of uniform cloth this coffin needs to quit acting like those are birds singing rusty nails have no wings have no voice other than that of a white world down their book page in the gas pump catchy isn't it the way three nuisance is the rule of the way potato sag mask also wear with radio calls of the way condemned Africans fought they way back to the ocean only to find waves made a 1920s burnt up piano parts European backdoor deals and red flowers for widows who spent all day in the sun mumbling in San Francisco red flowers but what's the color of a doctor visit there are book titles in the streets book titles like hero you make a better zero or a fur coat later the president is dead or pay me back in children or they hung up their bodies in their own museums another book titles pulled from a drum solo run here hero lied to hide in place all the bullets and 10 precincts know where to go there's no heaven nor any other good idea in the sky politics means that people did it and people do it understand that when in San Francisco and other places that was never really there I bet this ocean thinks it's an ocean but it's not it's a 60 mission street all know who's king king of thin things you know like America I'm proud to deserve to die I'm going to eat my dinner extra slow night in this police state candy dispenser you all call the neighborhood no set of manners goes unpunished never mind the murders insomnia or the tea kettle preparing everyone for police I don't like the weirdest scheduling ever whenever I book tango to read I have to read after him there's just nothing that can be said about that except maybe this face and just a warning I had a light show migraine yesterday so we're testing out whether my eyes work today and we're testing it out on genie leptin's work who we recently lost and genie was like the thing about poet's hearts is that there's an exercise in trying to leave them open enough keep them strong enough there's a balance point and we don't always hit it and genie was always really great at this we used to like to flirt with one another I think we probably flirted over the course of 15 years we got really good at it she was we got it back down to the point where like we could just look at each other it was funny anyway at 70 kissing lessons from a younger lover she tells me I'm not improving knowing him is like visiting a stream in a deep canyon the stream and the canyon delight but the horse flies are biting for our honeymoon we go to his aunt's funeral in albuquerque I take all the photos of my new husband's family anyway read genie leptin read her when you're feeling funky about things she was amazing the other poet I'm going to read one of is Mary Norbert Corta and you'll hear nonsense sounds about women in the beat movement some of those nonsense sounds imply that there were no women in the beat movement some of them suggest that there are people some of them suggest the names of people who are not beats at all and would have told you that if you'd ask them when they were still around and and then there was Mary Norbert Corta who had been a nun and quit it to write poetry so I don't know what really much to say about that part the conservatory voices the voices she said come to me like leaves of the dust and corners my mind makes live and she turned her head it's my fear growing bright lush about the eyes I tend carefully she moved in the room waiting to turn as unlikely she said the earth another way I'm too much my own maker for another planting in this place I absolutely recommend anything of her work do you have much of her stuff in the poetry section John right on yes yes so I feel like everything I've ever written probably commemorates at least one or more of the poets who I love but I'm I'm gonna read this one which was very consciously a memorial poem safety of streets if you fell as rain on this hillside squirrels might eat you as plum petals they fall cup like small palms at the foot of Diamond Street the eucalyptus might make seed pods out of you grown in the shadow of whimsy and rescue finches the sound of model railway in your ears two hills over you might just catch Mary's poems in your web of linked oxygen and hydrogen you might know the streets of Norton and bummer we're grown too serious the man read a poem about the safety of the 1800s when my skin might have been sold to the state for a bounty define safe sing me a song of rainwater and supermarkets sing me a song of rain in neighborhood fall with me like rain thank you for being I like to say I really really really get the best AV treatment in this place and a lot of that has to do with Kenny and Mike I love that that John is basically my co-pilot for a lot of this stuff the San Francisco Public Library doesn't like everything I present and it doesn't like everything I say about it we disagree but we have had an extremely long relationship and even though I have had my own arguments with the same public library we still love each other and you do please at some point if you have a chance go up to the third floor now I'm getting that right right okay the third floor and look at the memorial to poets who aren't here with us anymore there are a lot of people who hold us up even when they're gone and these are some of them thank you for joining us today