 If you can find a way to escape the people who don't have poetry, you know, the people who carry the shackles, the people who use the shackles, the people who want to monetize your body, the people whose God tells them you're worse than an animal, if we can find a way to get over, under and through the cages of the people who don't have poetry. If you can just make it down to that next river valley, I promise you there is another America. If you can just get down to the next river, you will find an underground railroad America. You will find the strong, outstretched hand of a strong, beautiful woman named Harriet, pulling you into a boat America, pulling you into a car America, pulling you into a sanctuary America, do it, take that weathered dark hand, and I'm not saying it will be easy or obvious. I will always say you need to be cautious, but if you can get there down by the shore, you will find poetry. You will find the people who will not silence you, who will ask if you need something, who are kind, who will listen to you, who will feed and shelter you, and try to get you back to the family you have lost, and you will have poetry, and no one will ever be able to take that away from you. Somebody advised me to read feminine titles tonight. So this is nine squad cars and a chopper. Tonight there are artists and activists putting their bodies on the line on the border in Arizona and California, and at the detention centers in Texas and New Jersey and Florida. And tonight as I come in from another meeting with the resistance, there are nine squad cars and a chopper dispatched out on Kitty Hawk Road. Something about a gathering of use on the beach, the night after Independence Day, the night after Independence Night, scattering into the residential enclave, a fanning out of the seek and detain tonight, my little neighborhood has become the center of the island of lost adults. Tonight there are artists and activists trying to find something for the children to hold onto besides the bars of cages. Tonight grows thick with a marine layer, thick with tactical and medical duffels, thick with canines and extra units, thick with chatter of a sucker punch, an activated taser, a cry of pain somewhere out on Kitty Hawk. You can't tell me there isn't a clash of civilizations happening out there on the borders at the detention centers and on Kitty Hawk Road on Independence Weekend on the island of lost adults. Thank you. Does anybody, for those of us who can't afford to go to Burning Man, has anybody ever found themselves during the actual festival like watching, there's a live stream. You can watch the whole festival just streamed live off of the playa and I understand there are some people who like to enjoy watching it as it becomes nighttime and all you can see are the lights of the different art pieces and sitting there taking drugs and turning the sound down on the God awful bro chatter that you hear on the video stream and then playing your own psychedelic music on top of watching this live stream with the lights out on the screen. Does anybody do that? Yeah, I don't do that either. But if there's somebody who needs help with that, I'm here to support that. So it's called Black Playa. Staring in real time at the mobile neon city with still corners and wormholes to Bakersfield, cascading down waterfall tabulas of light, something is burning in real time and like the man once said, this is the best we could do, they're there sweet Narcissa, so in love with our gaze, so skilled in the gazing that the fact of the gaze becomes more than the fear staring back at us in real time. There is my perfunctory explanation longer than the poem poem and I don't even know what this is. This is the dumbest title I've ever come up with in a piece, it's crib note subjectification. Hell is the house of mirrors where we have to stare at ourselves for all the live long summer evening and if you can manage to stay up all night not once taking your eyes off of your reflected image, you get to move on to the next stage like heaven or nirvana or reincarnation or Iceland or existential nothingness or whatever comes next but it just doesn't matter because no one gets out of hell in the manifestation they were praying for and it's not like blinking is a problem because it is hell after all and your eyelids were removed with a rusty straight razor as a cover charge to get in but it's hell so you don't even pay it as much mind as you thought you would because really there was so so much going on and you're really concerned about the humidity which causes one to sweat profusely when maybe you really did want to check out all the beautiful people getting their limbo on at the demon orgy but this is hell and since you're clearly a voyeur you are stuck in the house of mirrors with so much sweat now caking so much salt over your eyes and all your other orphi side that's lots wife has started hitting on you lately but when you go to wipe the salt out of your eyes your hands get stuck ensuring that you won't see anything till morning and you'll have to do all this all over again for another night just like you have for the last three hundred thousand nights and yes what I'm saying is that hell is groundhog day and you're never getting out of the house of mirrors so you stop lying to everyone when you can feel the demons start to wrap their soft caresses around your tired heart playing chicken with each other in the arteries where I've been playing chicken with life a slow suicidal shuffle down the consensual reality highway acting like I'm going to attack all hold me back motherfuckers hold me back but no one ever really holds you back even as their hands reach out but never quite latch on to something always veers them off to the side of letting go no the people who really love us are the ones who will look us in the eye and say really is this really what is going to happen to you are you going to let it and I think maybe I don't know if I could read your mind love well that would permanently change the ending wouldn't it wouldn't be the first time you've stoned me out your wonder is that I keep coming back unconditionally and that's chicken in the ethereal highway don't you dare call them freeways chicken in the virtual chicken in the charade here in this place we can keep reinventing ourselves all over each other wondering how long the other can keep putting up with it and of course of course I don't want to kill myself I'm too attached to orgasms and soothing drugs but thinking about the act of taking one life has its own soothing attributes and it happens a lot because I know I'm not the only one but don't talk about it it's taboo to say that beautiful people are just animals too that they are also slaves to their bodies and even more to their minds so it doesn't really matter how beautiful you are or how rich you are or how poor you are or how ugly you might think people think you are because everyone feels that invisible tractor being pulled toward the train tracks which is to say we feel that death is beautiful when it's passive a near potential that takes the breath away quite literally maybe permanently but still not quite the rush of playing chicken just like the sublime potential of having a choice and the power inherent in that choice tells me to think that Larry Einer probably would have really liked alt lit before it got all frat house of mirrors douchey another example of hell breaking loose on earth just a few more it's from my collection from nomadic press we shoot typewriters I'm on to you shadow man creeping through the archetypal fun house portals of the subconscious yeah one time too many a little too fast yeah and I know who you work for your boss yeah she ain't just a son of a bitch she's a real bitch of a bitch it takes her absurdity queer up no chaser on no less than one dozen dialectical levels simultaneously so you best watch out next time creeper man moth man I'm going to run straight for you with my arms wider than the mountain mansion you found me in than the desert wash I found you in arms wide open to embrace you will be faced with the prospect of being stuck for eternity with a needy clingy poet who will never let you go and how does that make you feel shapeshifter and where will you go and what will you do pull up a chair I hope and sit down next to me with the spot of some perhaps powerful mushroom tea and maybe we can work this all out if you could just please please please tell me about all the stories about all the things you've seen on the other side of the galaxy so that over time my words then become your words allowing me to fashion them into any vehicle I fancy allowing this see through barrel I hold over my head appear much easier to ride into the wormhole galleria perpendicular to a snaking puffy cloud of sativa writhing its way down and across Franklin Street all the way to Brooklyn Basin but no we skipped something the past few years don't match up as well as I thought they odd and we're missing something some bright misguided hope that seemed without end when our gritty ass Brigadoon was still off the map and under radar expedition ravings where love seemed possible up on that dim lit stage but it got all over cocked somewhere down the way like everyone was always in love with the wrong person just having a hard enough time getting to the hook up until we finally got a convention of these beasts together and Kwan and Maisha met and fell in love or still falling and still going strong and the truth is if the rest of this world falls to shit these two lovers are still together it will all have been worth every damn bit because that is the kind of love that gives me more hope than I have a right to believe in and if you'd only take a moment to look through these dazzled beastly eyes through the eyes of a conquered shadow man then you would also love I think this will be my last one it's very recent this is very new it's called attendant I cut the cord connecting my daughter to her mother and damn if the rich dark blood that came flowing out from the umbilical didn't look exactly like mole dense in nutrients and proteins dark red but somehow even more dark red and yes despite my surroundings a sterile fluorescent hospital operating room at four in the morning I'm reminded that I haven't eaten in over a day and boy could I go for some really good Mexican food right now but no no time to dwell on that even is this amazing little massive gray squalor that is my daughter upon being forcibly removed from the only home she's ever known via c-section and yes a c-section is arguably a form of ethnic cleansing by that definition she already has a plastic to being shoved down her throat as if all this wasn't enough trauma and my impulses to scream no you can't do that to my baby even though I know damn well she has meconium in her lungs and that literal shit needs to get be got out of there but there's not even enough time to reflect on imprint trauma in these moments is now mama has to get sewn back up in the haze of her epidural cocktail and my daughter who I'm pretty sure is very much a Hannah appears to have her lungs clear so she is swaddled like a burrito and we are ushered without haste to the nursery where she is semi incubated and the lights aren't quite so bright and this little munchkin in front of me has no interest in not crying she is not fucking happy about her new setup and yet at this moment it is the greatest sound I've ever heard I do what I always do when weird sleepless euphoria grips hold of my senses I begin babbling nonstop oh my goodness you are so gorgeous and beautiful we're so happy rear with us now and everything is gonna be all right I promise even though it doesn't seem like it right now I promise you it's all going to be go so much better did I mention how beautiful and gorgeous you are and for 15 seconds her crying stops and she turns her head slightly to the right to look right into my eyes and yes my breath catches yeah hi it's me that goofy voice that's been talking to you through those big goofy headphones we put on your mama's belly do you recognize my voice she doesn't begin crying again exactly more like an exasperated series of loud sighs that sounds something like a question the attendant Aran asks me if I've ever considered a career in public speaking thank you so much thank you Kim I really appreciate it I had my reading glasses tonight