 Well, going into the gallery, I saw the photo of Bob Kaufman. So the first poem I'm going to read is for Bob Kaufman. It's called, Ben Addiction. If I rearrange the letters in solitude, would it spell your name? If I bathed you in light, would loneliness still crowd around your heart like sparrows come home to roost? Could this Ben Addiction of love draw you in? Would you kneel before the altar of sorrow, picking from your sparse spirit the wisdom of St. Francis? A ragged poet slips in the back door of my heart, sits down with an empty cup. We fill it together, painting murals of deep blue and mahogany on the interior, a place for quiet for silence meets wonder. No dialogue could match the exquisite grace of the wordless, fire licking their brains, creating an inferno of forgiveness, strange how your hands shake as you wrap out the rhythm of Billie Holiday's slow moan and whine, knowing each place where her voice rises and falters in strange fruit. Looking into eyes that traveled the blue highway long before you came to us, long before the wild rantings of a man who knew too much, whose arms flailed around him like broken wings. What has it been like, Bob? Seeing all those word ships drift out to sea, traveling the interior, shifting out into space, knowing the constellations by name, tasting river water, calling it wine, holding fire in your palms. If I followed you down that dark corridor, what I need a light, or what I fall into, step at your heels, understanding the natural inclination to push below the surface, knowing where the mirrors are that distort, feeling the collapse of the solid world, trading everything for a memory or a detail so you could echo Lorca. Stand at the foot of my bed and dreams, chanting Neruda, feeding me lessons that I would need, holding my hand, guiding the pen like a sacred teacher who has something to show the pupil before the spell is broken and all communication stops. You feed me tales of the open highway of the sea, the places where love stops and starts and visions won't slow down to let you catch up. You bathe me in emeralds charting the way, pushing me forward, my nose to the glass, lost in the mirror in the moment, drifting out, drifting back and in, knowing nothing but feeling the blessings of a saint who held words as solid objects, who moved pictures into places and solitude crowded you in loneliness. And you drifted carrying me out to sea and the ancient rain fell, fell on soiled holy men, fell on naked children, fell on widowed women, fell on blues prophets and old blind jazz musicians, fell on governors who could not govern, fell on twisted politicians, fell on the orphans of a failed system, fell like grease lightning on greasier palms, fell on distinctions and demarcations, fell without rhythm, fell without rhyme, fell because it needed to fall. Benediction. When Kim Schuck asked me to be a part of this, I had written this poem for one of the Native American fellows in The Hate that I have known for over 40 years, and he lives in his van. And it's called Double Nichols. I wrote it for him when he was 55 and now he's 72. Fragments remain, cutting up the pieces to make the hole, white space around the border. The broken arrow, someone's great, great, great grandfather held on to. The skins taken off a dead woman hang in a museum to remind us of manifest destiny. Tell tale signs, old shields, moccasins, a baby's cradleboard, a headdress, and a shirt someone danced in to bring back a dream, distributed like the spoils of war. Numbered and catalogued, bloodstains in the snow were only memories, wounded knee a tail told twice. Smoke and ash of long gone cook fires, something else passed into history's memory. Where are you tonight? Where is your head pillowed? Are you shadow dancing? In my heart, there is a red handprint and the bitter taste of history's lies. 90 proof won't bring back the warriors, won't change the way some women bleed. When I say I'll see you in the morning, that is a prayer that you will survive. My heart is singing to you, can you hear it? It is the drum calling you to warm yourself, wake from your haze. It will take more than a fast horse, more than ribbons and beads. There are so many stories to be told. I don't want you to become one more urban Indian statistic. Didn't want to hear earth-shattering news that someone found you off 18th admission with your head split open and sunshine pouring into dead eyes. Remember that photograph you keep telling me about of the young women with their children? We are no different than the ancestors. We are what they left behind to continue. Firewater, poisoner of spirit, teller of lies, broken glass, broken hearts, broken lives, the cutting of the pieces to destroy the whole. How do I talk about blood, wine, and sacrifice? I have not seen you in 10 or 15 days and that tape loop is playing in my head again. When I say I'll see you in the morning, it is a prayer for your survival. Now, I'm a San Francisco girl, but I got some crazy ass relatives. And they're not my blood, but they're my kids, husbands, fathers, mothers. So I wrote this for my daughter's mother-in-law. It's called Alphabet Blue. She will not take her medicine. It is bitter and is just wrong. It will not heal what ails her. Forget me knots and blue asters turn her vision inward. She would like to dance, but balance can be a peculiar thing. The shawl she is wearing was a gift. Its color suits her. Brings out the warm tones in her skin. Sometimes when she looks out the window, the patterns become something she can almost recall. She tells her son about the net that is holding her together. She says her mother had the most elegant hand and her missives were kept bound by a blue ribbon, the color of her eyes. Oh, she thinks. She was dreaming, woke up, and the sheets were damp. Her son said that she was incoherent, but the syllables fit. And though her tongue felt heavy, she had the oddest sensation she felt each letter that formed itself in her mouth and skittered across her tongue and witnessed her despair. And the last one is for Bob Kaufman. It's called Be Bob Angel. There are saints picking out rotting flesh from their teeth, gambling down highways of lost experience, seeing in the clouds the hand of God. And ever watchful for strange weather patterns, they are beating down eternity with golden arms. And silence follows them like red wine. I see you in my dreams talking wild and fanciful. You've had miles of visions, blue horns with lips of thin eyes, darkness was your virtue. Darkness followed you never being able to extinguish that light. I see you still walking through corridors of pain, pushing past the wreckage. The dealer of sharp images and rancid smells. A child finds you a holy angel, a whispering saint. You could tell you just with memories, sainthood, New Orleans, gates of fire leading to heaven, right across the tracks from three o'clock morning jam sessions with other daddies, cool as white lightning was hot. You shipped out on pale mornings, leaned into the wind. That walk pushing you forward, you'd fold, dry up, and float away. Like the rushing wind, you assaulted each step like you had to be going somewhere special. And sweetness never darkened your door. But there were women with dreams of their own, birthing pain, misery, blues, as well as joy. And wine was cheap, that vino, that bottle, stained red fingers, stained blue lips. And Red Mountain was 75 cents a quart. And it left many heads cracked open, letting in light, hearing the voice of the creator through your heart. And you just stumbled into darkness, letting the light go out for a while. And the last time I saw you, you had boarded the number seven bus, going nowhere fast, but in a hurry. You asked the bus driver for directions. His disdain was evident. Your torn coat, your disheveled look. Yeah, he thought he knew who you were. He thought he'd seen it all, jaded, a jaded black manna, another jaded black man who knew too much to care so little. Getting up as I got off the bus, getting up to tell him, man, that cat that was a poet, a North Beach original, man, have some respect. And he blew smoke out of those jagged lips. He blew smoke, all that cool knowing, and he had nothing to say. Envy had twisted his heart. Lust for the dollar had frozen his soul. He didn't even get what the blues was saying. Had never dug the jazz notes from hell, or heard a three part harmony sung by some boys on a street corner late at night. No, he had never dug the word that made suffering seem regal. The word his mama shouted as he charged into the world already full of himself. No, he had never dug the word. And such treachery can only be disguised for so long. He was a poet, man. He said, all I see is a drunken old man. He said, all I see, I stopped him cold. I stopped him with words. That's Bob Kaufman, Bob Kaufman, Bob Kaufman. Man, that's part of your history, and you don't even know it. And I got off the bus thinking about the word, the light, and music, and thinking about God, and thinking about God and wondering would we know him this time? Would we see her crossing the streets if she were dressed in rags? Would we see her? Would we see her this time, this time, this time?