 A person who's walked among us now for almost three decades as a social activist, as an administrator, but as, from my perspective, a lady of great words. She has authored three books, the last one with the most colorful title, We the Dangerous. She is well respected, well read, and well heard. Ladies and gentlemen, the Port Laureate, for the next 12 months for the city and county of San Francisco, Jan Mericatani. Thank you so much. Whew, this is wonderful and a little overwhelming, a lot overwhelming. Thank you, Mayor Brown, for this deeply, deeply meaningful honor. Thank you for your vision to create such a post, and I'm so happy to be in it for the year 2000. But it's so fitting for this position to be created for the city of San Francisco, a city that inspires poetry, a place where movements have been created and legends like Lawrence Ferlinghetti can be celebrated. What an honor to stand in succession to you, our first poet and legend in his time, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Thank you. Thank you, Poet Laureate Committee, for your support of me, and thank you, Jewell Gomez. Thank you, the San Francisco Library. Thank you to Mr. Vroom. I was told, don't thank so many people because I'll be up here all night. But you know, I'm planning to talk to you for about three hours, so I hope you're butchered. I want to thank my daughter for being here, Tian, and my mother who flew in for this occasion. Thank you. My family, and Cecil, Williams for being my inspiration and the subject of a lot of my love poems. I want to thank all the friends in the community who have encouraged me and who have really blazoned a lot of pathways in social justice for us, for all of us. And I want to thank my glide family who have made a place for poetry every day of our lives. Thank you. What this honoring means to me, Mayor Brown, is that I feel you are honoring others in our communities who have been telling the stories and breaking the silences and singing from the margins in the edge of society for bread and justice. I hope I carry these voices of diversity within me. In a poem to my mother, I say, there are miracles that happen, she said, when the silence is broken and all is made visible. These stories connect me with history. These words release me from cages of shame. These poems break free from barbed wire prisons. We recognize ourselves at last. We are unafraid. Our language is beautiful. Language. Poetry has been, for me, the language of my definition and my liberation. Although it has not always been so, it had been my experience in school that poetry was esoteric, art elevated above life, rarefied and inaccessible. I want to redefine poetry as a means to connect with others. Poetry as a bridge, spanning communities, ethnicities, continents. For me, poetry should be accessible, connecting our human experiences, steeped in the struggles that define us. Poetry gives form to the power of the imagination and speaks as the conscience of real life. Elizabeth Catlett, renowned sculptor, poets Furlinggetti and Neruda perhaps state best what I feel that poetry should do, that art is created both in solitary and in solidarity. Poetry for me is the act of speaking the truth of our inner self and being connected or informed by our community. Poetry is timeless, reaching through generations across continents to my great ancestors buried in the ashes of Hiroshima. From my grandmother in an Amachi Gate internment camp, poetry weeps in the circles of famine in Rwanda and the circles of Argentine mothers of the disappeared. Poetry opens the heart, rises from the place of love and romance and passion. It makes romance delicious. It puts vigor in our marching feet. It shakes our shoulders, straightens our spine, moves our hands to clap in time. Inspires our children with visions in color and memory and history. When I run in the neighborhoods of San Francisco, I'm always reminded of why I love this city, its diversity, the poetry of each unique community, the echoes of past and emerging songs, city lights in North Beach, Furlinggetti's temple of poetry and famous beats. I still hear Ginsburg's Guru Om in an anti-nuclear drone, Chinatown, rhythms from Kearney Street writer's workshop, the ghost of iHotel and Manong Freddy's banjo strums longing for a home. It is the powerful year of the dragon, Chinese voices warn. Mrs. Maxwell in the house on Petro Hill calls sons and daughters off drugs and nonsense. There's justice to defend, she says, and college to attend. Samba of the mission, the beat taps our feet, the heat grabs our hips, our lips can't resist roses in the teeth of our possibilities. Anklet bells of South Asian women on Eddie Street, sorries like bright wings at their feet. On Divisadero, gentrification divides haves and have nots, but jazz on Fillmore survives, revives won't die, roots are spread everywhere. The Sutter Y is stolen property, spoils of a world war, J-Town Tyco's thunder, don't forget who we are. And the hate echoes of flower children, young runaways needing community, still today they cry, spare change, change is spare. Irish cultural centers, Italian cafes, Russian tea shops, syncopate from Geary to the avenues, the blues from Bayview, don't shut me out, baby, don't put me down, can barely pay the rent, baby, in this high-priced town. But roots are spread everywhere, Harvey Milk's spirit strolls in the Castro, marches down market, we don't forget in San Francisco. And the TL Cecil Sings love to give, fried chicken in amazing grace, glides a home more than just a place. Some of you know about my chronic dry mouth. On Ellis Street, double-dech rhymes of young men with pride, girls step it down and jump for joy. Now, some of the girls at Glide taught me this rhythm, and it's very complex. Now, you said you were not going to laugh at me, sophisticated ladies, check it out. My name is Classie, and I'm more than fine. You can dom a number, baby, anytime. We got hips to move, and our body grooves, we got boys to jump, when we tell them to, we can rock the ocean, we can roll the sea. But when you mess with my man, you be a boxing with me, sophisticated ladies. Check it out. Our young people, aren't they something real, sublime, profound, direct? We have not dried out the music from their language yet. As they double-touch or create in poetry slams, write their lyrics on the walls or rap or serenade us, we must affirm them to define themselves, to celebrate the power of their word, to read, to write, to speak, not to concede to the heat of violence. San Francisco is the city of poetry. New movements, a frontier for progressive poetry, a fire pot for multi-ethnic poetry, an explosion of young voices creating poetry slams from this city to Washington, D.C., spilling poetry into our streets. I hope to be of service this year for poetry by working more, even more with our youth, to encourage more opportunities for performances, more collaborations with poets from our diverse and multi-ethnic communities, more partnerships with the library and festivals and events, and with technology and video. Let us grow poetry as a means by which young people can experience the power of the word also through multimedia, and they should be the ones to lead and direct us. Poetry connects us. Will we listen? I believe that the poet has a responsibility to warn of dangers to our spirit. Adrienne Rich says, we must read and write as if our lives depended upon it. And indeed, our spirits are endangered if we see ourselves become numb from violence, race-motivated hate crimes, anti-gay lesbian transgender bisexual bashing, war, more children killing children, the glut of drugs in our poor communities, racial slurs by national candidates, and we are stunned at the lack of consequence. Does language matter? Gook. Language ill-used, defiles, defames, dehumanizes. And as Asian-Americans have experienced in other communities, too, this incites violence Senator McCain. A comedian jokes, McCain's first act if he wins presidency will be to bomb Hanoi. Unfortunately, there's a whole swath, an entire swath across this country who would applaud that. If the power of the word penetrates deeply to our beliefs of who we are and the values that we hold dear, the world we wish to build for our children to inherit, and if that power can be written across the chalkboards of our schools, the pages of history and literature, the web pages of the future, if poetry connects and humanizes us, restores our souls, then we must read and write and vote as if our lives depended upon it. The UC system hires on faculty a dismal 17 percent women. African-American, Hispanic, Native American student populations fall far behind the dismal point because of Prop 209. Prop 21 opens more jails for our youth. Prop 22 invalidates same-sex marriages. Can we sleep? If the power of the word raises us from the slumber of complacency and warns of the powerful hatred perpetrated against people who are labeled as different, and if it awakens our passion for justice, we must read and write as if our lives depended upon it. I came to poetry when I was eight years old. I wrote to save my own life, to control on the page the chaos I felt around me. In grammar school, my first poem was about the circus. I wrote about the tightrope walkers and trapeze artists. Circus sacrobats walked in midair, a miracle of balance and grace, flying and catching without a trace of fear, with only what seemed a thread they hung onto life as they swung over the teeth of tigers. I would be frightened to fly. In fact, couldn't try with my words in a sky of shh, don't tell, don't cry. That's not quite the poem I wrote at eight years old. It was a long time before I could talk about the childhood abuse because I wanted to be acceptable. So I suppressed my shame into silence, got good grades, and went to college, UCLA, and tried to fit in. In my attempts to write poetry, I was imitative of the only models we were taught, Eurocentric male poets. I did not discover Angelo and Yamamoto, Neruda, Bulasan, Robles, Tall Mountains, Cervantes, Gomez, Aoki, and Leong, or a Cecil sermon of liberation until the Revolution of the 60s. I did not know I needed to give heed to that eight-year-old girl's voice until I came to work at Glide, and I heard the voices of children, another little girl from the TL, from the Tenderloin, who played with matches, who set her house on fire. And when they rescued her, she had been left alone by herself. On her tiny back were welts from whippings still ripe and red. She was, in her darkness, setting fires, fighting to not extinguish her light. At Glide, children write poetry about what home means. Home is a gift of a light bulb in the bathroom he must share, in the homeless hotel where monsters await to hurt him in the dark. It is here in the poetry of young people, full of resilience and resistance and hope, where I find that my healing occurs, and the voices of those endangered by silence are given power. It is the gift of a light we give in the listening, in the loving, which I discovered is the gift to our own selves. It is in our stories of we women who break our silences and break out of cycles of violence, who pay homage to that eight-year-old girl's voice who could not speak. I feel fortunate to have experienced the revolution of the 60s, an era of political, social, cultural upheaval, and participated in the emergence of writers of color, our alternative presses, which resurrected our histories and our voices. Today, especially in San Francisco, poetry thrives as we continue our journey of discovery and self-definition. And we celebrate our beautiful bold bad selves on the stage of the page. We, dark as plums and coffee, light as cream and butter, gold as sun on lemons, red as cinnamon, brown as cola, plump as mango, skinny as tallow. We, bad women, dance without warning, finger pop and hip-shaking, big laugh, wise mouth, hefty thigh, loud talk and soft syllable, hat wearing, tangerine lipstick, queens, fat need, fin-ankled. We dance on the same edge, the tightrope, the high wire. We dance with the knowledge of similar struggles. We samba, boogie down, terjeté, leap from the maw of racism, sexism, homophobia and classism, from the fire of riots and demonstrations, from ashes of our self-emolation, the addictions, abuse, the battering. We rise, Dr. Angelou's refrain says, because we would not be rooted out. We breathe between the rain. We grip deep for the winter. We rise and realize we have wings in our voices because, yes, we are not invisible. No, I'm not from Tokyo, Singapore or Saigon. No, your dogs are safe with me. No, I don't invade the park for squirrel meat. No, my peripheral vision is fine. No, I'm very bad at math. No, I do not answer to Geisha Girl, Chinadel, Mamasan, Jap, Chink or Gook. No, to us life is not cheap. No, I do not know the art of tea. And no, I am not grateful for all you've done for me. Friends of mine have died from AIDS, from PTSD. Some of us murdered, blamed for this economy. We've been jailed for mistaken identity, incarcerated because of ancestry. And no, I am not the model minority. No, I am from Stockton, Angel Island, Detroit, Waikiki, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, New York City, Delano, Tule Lake, Anchorage and Raleigh. And yes, I am alive because of memory. Ancestors who endured adversity, the strength of this diversity. No, we are not invisible. And yes, I am from Tokyo, Singapore, Manila, Guam, Beijing, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, India, Korea, Samoa, Hong Kong, Taiwan. Yes, this strength like ropes of the sun again lifts a new morning. And yes, we rise as always amidst you. I'm going to close out with reading a few poems. As I said, I think poetry connects us. I've had the privilege of working with Dr. June Jordan and her students from UC Berkeley in poetry for the People Circles at Glide Church. These circles included the poor, the homeless, recovering people, students, our youth, people from all walks of life. I wrote this poem during the Siege of State, State of Siege, when Pete Wilson was governor. Governor Wilson said he would not increase benefits to welfare recipients because they would, in quote, spend it on a six pack of beer. His smile is like cold weather, as he announces. Instead, he will build more jails. Here we huddle in circles of poetry against the chill of a long, cold snap. We meet ourselves in specific details of our lives. I am a woman with two children, she says. I will write down seven specific items I must buy with my $630 per month AFDC check. Rent, groceries, toilet paper, diapers, bus tokens, sanitary napkins, laundry soap. No money left for aspirin cookies, shoes, or beer. I put the things I want inside a heart-shaped box, a new dress, a bathtub full of hot water, fresh strawberries, gardenias, a warm coat, child-sized, warm hands, lover-sized. In circles of poetry, we meet ourselves. I am a girl with a baby, she says, writing a poem. Do not crush this butterfly. Do not pin her wings in poverty. Don't bruise her with teen pregnancy. She only wants to fly outside of hopelessness. Fly in the morning with the breath of the sea in her face. Fly with the breath of God in her wings. Soar above the concrete walls of a jail and sip warm nectar from gardenias. In circles of poetry, we meet ourselves, tied together by the details of our lives. I am a woman with grocery lists that cannot afford strawberries. A girl with bruises, wings flutter in my fist. In this circle, I meet the power of myself. I am a woman who opens her hands and releases despair. I am a poet with a pen like a river that springs from the mouth of my heart. I now create my destiny. My daughter stands on my shoulders and see a new horizon. We are women with tongues of fire. We blaze like summer across the sky. See, cold weather, don't last always. In the United States, every nine seconds, a woman is physically abused. 65% of all homicides against women are related to domestic violence. It is the primary cause of homelessness among women and children. In the programs that glide for young people, we are particularly sensitive to how we might help break the cycles of violence for the children. And I ask you what messages we ourselves have internalized that we convey to them. I wrote this poem after being told of an incident by Joy Hayes, director of our children's program. It's called His Dominion. He enters the room, his chest puffed. In his hand he carries a red crayon like a weapon. He strolls to the bookshelf, all female eyes follow. He smiles at one, and she all dimples and shyness smiles back. He nudges another, and she giggles with excitement. He ignores another, and she weeps. Miserable, she keens for his attention. With a single stroke, he streaks her drawing with red crayon. With his fisted hand, he strikes her face. A red crayon scar on her cheek. She stops crying now, a smile swimming in her tears. She is three. He is three and a half. She tells her mother about her day, talking only of the boy who destroyed her drawing creation, who painted her face red with crayon, blue with bruises. Her mother says, that means he likes you. A love poem. My relationship with Cecil has been ground upon which the struggle about who I am, you know, identity, autonomy, has been most, that ground is where it has been waged most passionately. Often it takes a crisis to come back to understand what love and relationships really mean. Hopefully it means growth in spite of pain. It was after his latest surgery while he was in the hospital in recovery, very vulnerable, that I realized once more how much my love has grown for him. But also how easy it has been to use Cecil's power and light to hide myself. What I understand better each day is that love means we must strive to embrace our power so we can have the courage to be mutual. The storm is passing, my husband sleeps finally, my eyes scratchy from lack of it. This is dedicated to Cecil. The hospital ward hushed but for the steady reassuring beep of monitors. His body has rebelled against itself tonight, erupting in a fury of vomit and bile, uncontainable in the universe of polite bedpans. Dawn seeps from around clouds that have poured all night in synchronicity with his heaving. In the calm of his face, I remember the moments not of time, 20 years ago, when I, wild with love, wanted only to be at the center of his heart, like the bee stuttering at a peony. Then oh, how that love roared through seasons, wintered with rebellion, passionate at the mouth of August, between cultures of silence and shouting, between our children's resentments, the storm at our hearts raged. I thought I searched for me, clumsy, desperate, trampling the grass. And when the wearing of bone began, and I saw him with a glisten of pain in his eyes, leaning on his bones, striking bone, naked nerves spiking his spine, I knew in fleeting flashes, he could not hide me. Beneath the strewn leaves dried and dead from winter's breath, the roots stirred, awakening. Today, when Dawn scratches at my eyes, in this hospital bed, a thin space between death and life, there is my husband gleaming like a newborn. In this instant, I find my presence in morning's light that defines the blade of grass, the tree's root, the bee with eternal mission for its home, this heart with storm at its center, and much roam for spring to enter. A final poem and some closing comments. I understood the power of the word, the power of language, perhaps most graphically, when my mother broke her silence of 40 years about the World War II internment of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, 50% were children, most of whom were American citizens in 10 concentration camps throughout the United States. She testified before the commission on redress in 1981 and sent her testimony to me in the mail. It was like a light illuminating a dark passage of my life, and I am grateful to my mother, breaking silence. There are miracles that happen, she said, from the silences in the glass caves of our ears, from the crippled tongue, testimonies waiting like winter. We were told that silence was better, useful like go quietly, easier like don't make waves, expedient like horse stalls and desert camps. Mr. Commissioner, the US Army Signal Corps confiscated our property. It was subjected to vandalism and ravage. I was forced to sign documents, giving you the authority to take, to take, to take. This land, she tells, was an immigrant's hope. Her parents cleared the ground with only their eyes as lanterns, bare hands as plowshares, birthed fields of flowers and mustard greens, and then all was hushed for announcements. Take only what you can carry. We were made to believe our faces betrayed us. Our bodies were loud with yellow screaming flesh, needing to be silenced behind barbed wire. Mr. Commissioner, it seems we were singled out from others who were under suspicion. Our neighbors were of German and Italian descent, some of whom were not citizens. It seems we were singled out. My mother wore her work like tapestry weaving the soil with quiet roses, and then all was hushed for announcements, to be incarcerated for your own good. The sounds of her work bolted in barracks, silenced. Mr. Commissioner, I delivered mail in camp, carried a letter that informed an Issei couple their five sons were killed in combat, serving in the US Army, serving this country that imprisons them. These memories war like silent stones waiting my tongue, but no more. So Mr. Commissioner, when you tell me my time is up, to sit down, to shut up, I tell you this, pride has kept my lips pinned by nails, my rage coffined, but I exhume my past to claim this time. My youth is buried in roar. My mother's ghost visits Amachi Gate. My sister haunts Tule Lake. Words are better than tears, so I spill them. I kill this, the silence. There are miracles that happen, she said, and everything is made visible. We are lightning and justice. Our souls become transparent like glass. We must recognize ourselves at last. We are a rainforest of color and noise. We hear everything. We are unafraid. Our language is beautiful. Poetry, poetry connects and reconnects. Helps us to forgive ourselves and forgive our wounds, to re-tie the severed moments from our mothers and daughters and family. It connects us to those things that endear us to one another. Someone mentioned that their mother washes out ziplock plastic bags. My mother washes out ziplock plastic bags. She saves foil and she collects Wendy's Styrofoam cups. Sorry, mom. I laugh out loud. Now I wash out ziplock plastic bags. I save foil. My daughter laughs out loud. I want to tell you, my daughter, that my love for you extends to the children in our choir who sing in spite of rain or bruises or hunger or fear of darkness. I want to tell you, children, of the phosphorescence of our bodies, ignited by humane touch, by the light of our love. It guides us, this need for each other, like the smell of bread, the comfort of a circle, and poetry that connects and continues, sons and daughters. You're singing. Thank you, Mayor Brown. Thank you, friends. Thank you, family. Thank you, San Francisco Library. Thank you, Mr. Vroom. Thank you, Lawrence from Linguetti. Thank you for coming. The first Port Laureate of the 21st century for the city and county of San Francisco. In the old days, I would have pocketed it. As I indicated, when this idea wound its way through City Hall, as is the case with San Franciscans, most of us are immigrants. Chris is an immigrant, immigrated from eastern part of the United States to San Francisco. He's part of a very successful Boston technology group, decided to be a part of our cultural operations and our art operations in the city, which is very much a part of our culture, stepped forward and said, for the next five years, the Port Laureate will be the recipient of a grant to be able to do his or her work. Since then, he's also expanded his generosity to include giving grants directly to individual artists on an annual basis, 10 or more persons, and at Psalms ranging from 10,000 to 1,500, just an extraordinary person, using an incredible gift of talent and brains, the resources that have come forth from that to share, to inspire, and to be a part of. Ladies and gentlemen, a man who heads the Arts Council that he created, Chris Verum. Thank you for that introduction, Mayor Brown. I will say that we do have your submission to be Port Laureate, and it's under consideration. I'd also like to thank the selection committee, many of whom are here tonight, for picking two years in a row wonderful writer, and of course, to Jim Maricatani, who not only has contributed so much to literature, but also has helped and been fully integrated in our community of Tenderloin and others. It's just wonderful to have people like this in our city that make it so vibrant and special. We really love this program a lot, because it gets kids to read poetry. It makes poetry more accessible to everyone, and we think that ultimately, that creativity will stay with them for their entire lives, and it'll make them better people, and it'll make San Francisco a better place to live. So we're really pleased to be a part of this program. And again, let me add my thanks to all of you for coming. Thank you. We'd just like to close this wonderful evening by thanking all of you for coming, and particularly acknowledging Mr. Frill and Getty and Janice Maricatani, who gave us such inspiring words. It was just really a delightful evening, and we look forward to more activities with you this year at the library. So thank you all for coming. Thank you.