 Alright, it is 603 so why don't we go ahead and get started. Hello and welcome everyone to No Poetry No Peace, a reading and celebration of human expression and peace. My name is Taryn Edwards and I am one of the librarians here at the Mechanics Institute of San Francisco. For those of you who are unfamiliar with mechanics, we are an independent membership organization that houses a wonderful library, you can see it right behind me. The oldest in fact that is designed to serve the general public. We're also a cultural event center and a world renowned chess club that is the oldest in the nation. All of our activities are virtual right now but we are in the process of reopening and hosting events live and in person. And I want to encourage you to consider becoming a member with us. It is only $120 a year and with that you help support our contribution to the literary and cultural world of the San Francisco Bay Area. This event in particular was produced in partnership with the San Francisco Writers Conference, and together we aim to provide low cost or free writing activities to the San Francisco Bay Area, and beyond. Tonight our host is Cheryl B's Boutet, who is a Mechanics Institute member, and also a push cart prize nominee. She's an Oakland multidisciplinary writer whose aim is to explore the politics of race and economics without breaking out of her fictional or poetic narrative. In her poetry collection, she has written with her daughter, Dr. Angela Boutet titled No Poetry, No Peace. So the same name as this event was published in August 20. What year are we 2020 and, and it was such a powerful collection that we decided to name this reading series after it. And thank you so much Cheryl for hosting as always and all the things that you do to make mechanics, a really vibrant place for writers. Well, thank you, Karen. And thank you, poets and I'm so glad that you have all joined us this evening for this wonderful event. I'm looking forward to hearing each and every one of your stunningly beautiful poems I know that's what they are. So this evening, we gather with a group of stunningly gifted poets under the banner of No Poetry, No Peace. And I'd like to open this wonderful reading with this poetic passage from National Poet Laureate, Laureate Joy Harjo, who writes, I gave my mind, the task of holding the door open for the ancestors, the guardians, the winds. When I sing poetry, there is no way in for evil. Welcome poets. Welcome everyone. Let's do some poeting. I understand that I have a little screen problem but I'm going to just keep on going and introduce the first poet and we'll try to get that fixed. The first poet tonight is Manaz Badi, who is an Iranian American poet, painter, and translator whose work has been published in several languages worldwide. Her work has appeared in many literary magazines, including Exiled, Inc., International Poetry Magazine, and Marin Poetry Center Anthology. Welcome Manaz. Thank you very much for your introduction. And hi everyone. Good to be here. I'm honored to be here with all these really great poets tonight. I'm going to start reading a poem from Rumi that I'm sure everyone of you are familiar with Rumi's poems. And then I will read a translation of Rumi's poem, then I will follow with two of my own poems. Jalaluddin Muhammad Rumi, more popularly known simply as Rumi, was a 13th century Persian poet. And this is the poem, one of his poems. This is a poem from Manaz Badi, who is an Iranian poet. Manato B, Manato Jam Shabbi, Maser Shog, Khushu Farik, Zikharafa, Te Parishan Manato, Tutiyan, Falaki, Jomle Shikar Khaw Shavan, Dar Magami, Ki Bekhandeem, Bedansan Manato. This is exact poem that Rumi wrote in 13th century. Another translation of that poem. A moment of happiness. You and I sitting on the Bernada, apparently two, but one in soul, you and I. We feel the flowing water of life here. You and I with the garden's beauty and the birds singing. The stars will be watching us and we will show them what it is to be a thin crescent moon. You and I, unselfed, will be together. You and I, friend two, idols speculation, you and I. The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar as we laugh together, you and I. In one form upon this earth and in another form in a timeless sweet land. So that was Rumi's poem and translation. Now I will read one of my poem called Ocean. The day I was riding on the ferry from San Francisco, I saw someone was walking on the surface of the ocean who was dead years ago. The ocean we love with its endless beauty had a chest filled with drama screaming with the echoing voices of the dead and the wounds of unfortunate sailors and the melody of the corpse of migrating birds. While each new wave was swallowing the previous wave, the ocean had a gift for the forgotten dead. The gift of blood on its shores. The gift of the lifeless body of the little boy, Artin Najad, with a piece of his mother's dress in his hand. The last pair of shoes arriving with each wave from unknown rivers and oceans. I felt the burning of the ocean's heart from black oil dripping on its blue chest from tankers from the black boxes drowned with the destiny of countless lovers. And in the ferry on that foggy morning towards San Quentin, where the body of my friend Faye was found years ago from the window. I looked at the grayish restless water and I saw that Faye's eyes repeating themselves in thousands on the chest of the Pacific Ocean in a circular motion. Her long head has covered the surface of the cold water trying to be a nest for the last birds. I reached my hands to grab her from the threshold of death, but she was disappearing hand in hand with hundreds of people who lost their last breath in the Pacific Ocean. I lost a friend and her image in the same water. Thank you for listening. Now the second poem called Wall. What is it about the walls? Used to be a place we could hide behind as a kid. A place we exchanged our forbidden kisses with the one we loved. The wall in my childhood memory that I watched the sunrise on its shoulder and sunset on its skirt. As I get older, the walls showed me a different meaning. The wall they bombed and poured on poor people's heads. They built to stop human interactions and then demolished the Berlin Wall and enjoying the Hardian Wall built by Roman emperors. While enclave of Melilla fed to the sorrow of Moroccans, knowing Moscow once died behind the Kremlin Wall. All invisible walls. My accent is a wall. Your walls are a wall or believes are wall. Your builders of falls wall of selfishness. Wall of racism. Wall of poverty. Wall of elimination. Wall is made of crime, blood, poverty and separation. Let's ruin the walls. Let's ruin the walls before they are built. Thank you for listening. Angela. Thank you my mom's. You're welcome. Am I done with my time eight minutes. You know, I didn't time you, but I think. Did you time. Probably. Seven minutes. That's fine. I think I'm done. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you everyone for listening. Thank you. Thank you. Beautiful imagery. Thank you. Really wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Michael wars in the house. Michael. Michael is a 2021 San Francisco artists grant. And 2020 Berkeley lifetime achievement award recipient. His books include of poetry and protests. From Emmett till to Trayvon Martin. The Armageddon of funk. And we are all the black boy. Welcome Michael war. Thank you. This is really good to be here with all these wonderful poets. I'm going to read three poems. The first one I'm going to share an image with so bear with me for a second. Oh, please. You gonna see that. Yes. Good. So mall, who's going to be reading later and her partner in good crime, Megan Wilson. They invited me to write a poem. In response to the mural, the will to live in Clarion Alley as part of the wall in response series. Minaz and I did not have any conversation before this, but it just so happens that my phone is also about a wall. It's called This Is More Than A Wall. Dreams escape our mouth at the velocity of hornets fleeing fire. Beneath the surface of our callous and cultivated skin, we repel apartheid tagging. White wash aerosol sprayed and praised at uniform knees on our neck in the streets, olive groves, buffer zones, chains of cells, labyrinth of grotting laws or barrel of an Uzi in the ceaseless invasion of every crease of life. All of this at you excrete will be washed away with American gifted weaponry by the unrelenting reign of resistance and the threat of eventual peace. You may momentarily obscure the obvious by spraying over bravery with treachery, hiding truth with thickets of lies. Still, even your stomach turns silently knowing that oppression nourishes its own demise through the gut-wrenching loss of all innocence, the strangling of simple movement, the daily dismantling of hope, dictating the most basic things that humans cannot do. I urge everyone to go to, you know, on the internet and look up Walden response to upcoming events and also the work of the other poets. It's just remarkable. And also visit Clareden Alley. So the next poem was another poem that was commissioned and it was commissioned by SF Urban Film Fest for this year's festival. As part of its morning, it's an act of love public exhibition at the Yerba Buenos Center for the Arts and it is my pandemic poem. The title is The City Speaks of this moment. Tears roll down my streets and hills as they suffer from emptiness. Some life has disappeared, some life has returned. Coyotes feel safer in the suddenly borderless wilderness and roam through my urban forests. I watch the ripe crowned swallows swell around now lifeless toll boots on a quieter golden gate. I hear them singing a new song. They hear each other say above the den of silent traffic. Since the disowned people come and go, thousands invisible in plain sight, they don't care that the cable cars have deserted me, that coffee shops have turned their tables upside down, that mask wears are superheroes saving innocent lives, that 9-11 happens every day, that black lives never mattered. They do not want things back the way they used to be. They have never been sheltered in time or placed. They crave a new world, a caring centered healing world played by infectious sanity. I see the signs on shuttered eateries predicting that we will survive. Realists calculate not all of us. I hear them shouting on their soapbox from overpriced rooftops that some of us is better than none of us. I know from agonizing experience that we are lost without dreamers. I have burned down before, down to the edges of Venice Avenue. Faults have shaken and broken my body. Bridges cracked, towers toppled, chasms opened, parts stopped. I have survived and recovered from overwhelming loss. I have rebuilt, although not for everyone. This time it could be different. And this last poem is something I just started this weekend. The working title is My No Poetry, No Peace Bucket List. Never shut up, shut down, shut out when truth becomes a sin. Speak when others will not hear whether the words are blunt or bliss. Don't let the shame of white settler ancestry drown your memory in tears. Place history on a pedestal low enough for the smallest child to see. Exposed deniers even as they preach while fondling what they call holy. Write the same poem a thousand times, a thousand ways until no longer needed. Resist confinement behind the bars of bourgeois beauty. Curl words into the high-speed hurricane of the lighting, values, shit, and digital debris. Unmask the faces of friendly fascism. Drop poems like hell on scorched earth. Thank you. Wonderful. I love your No Poetry, No Peace Bucket List. That's a poem in progress. Love it. And you brought that mural to life. Thank you so much. Wonderful. Joan Gelfand is here tonight, author of three poetry collections. Joan Gelfand's reviews, stories, essays, and poetry have appeared in national and international literary journals and magazines. The recipient of 20 writing awards, her debut novel Extreme, was named New Fiction Finalist in the 2020 International Book Awards. Welcome Joan Gelfand. Joan, are you there? Hold on. There we go. Thank you, Cheryl. And also, I'll just give a little shout out because Cheryl and I are WNBA colleagues in PALS, and that's how we met. And just in the name of Synergy Michael, I'm reading from my book, A Dreamer's Guide to Cities and Streams. So you mentioned Dreamers. So, you know, poets, we're all on some kind of wavelengths here. I'm going to start with War Rant. Elena says she wants more passion. Andrea quit reading the morning news. Yvette sees the devil wears Prada twice. Her savior is in fashion. I check on emails, avoid overlong cues, await a daily dose of inspiration, wondering if I've paid enough dues. Adam watches the blogosphere for flash mobs, trends in hot spots, and we all fret about the biosphere, while white girls don't do much hip hop. But for me, I can't help it. Rhythm and words are my companions, true and loyal. So forgive me now. If I don't exactly know how to do it, just say this is a rant. Peace and love style. I want to save the world, do it now, don't get caught by indecision, paralysis, missteps or overwrought. But the world and I have conflicting views on how to end this madness. Stop the bombings, end the wars. I cry, but no one listens to my news. Night times glisten with the sweat of murder, mayhem, slaughter, faction killing, faction, Shiite, Sunni, Kurd, why? We're all mothers, fathers, daughters. I could go over there, I think, land smack down on the pavement. I put on my white gloves, make a stink, shout, what a horror. While dancing on the griddle of hot sand and tar, there is no left, no right, no middle. Stop the killing, end the riddle. But I'd be dead before you could say red. And then I think, if not now, when? Wasn't it I who called myself a warrior? Each day, new news arrives stinking, reeking with tragedies undreamed, tidal waves, heat waves, bodies downstream, a wave of bombings on an unsuspecting train. I voted right, I mean left, is my persistent refrain. I took myself off the list of dinner parties where people complain of gas prices and fish prices and politics not spoken, because I'm sick of being powerless, feeling broken. So come on, people, do one thing today for peace. Save a tree, save a child, sign a paper, beg for release of fighters and lovers for peaceniks and hippies. This battle of West meets East is not exactly what we ordered. The next piece I'm going to read and I'm going to kind of keep going because I have three poems in eight minutes, so I'm just going to keep trucking along. This one is my love letter to the planet. It's called Requiem for a Dying World. I have to explain two words. In the first line there's a word called, that is Hador, and it's like a burqa. It's a covering that females wear. And then in the list of fruits, you're going to hear the word doom, d-u-m, and it's an extinct vegetable. So just so that you know, because it's a little confusing, Requiem for a Dying World. Crouched figure folds into black Hador, four wooden crates balanced on her bent back. She takes the steps into the old city one by one as mosque calls pitties men from shops and homes. She does not pray inside the golden dome. She does not sigh or moan. The fertile crescent shrivels, the seed cannot be planted. Perseo, white lotus, and doom refuse to thrive in drought, dry desert air. Over time, we lose the taste for something gorgeous, the sweet and sour flavor, the one that made you pout and pucker. Further east, in Tertuganga, wisened farmer reflects under hot sun glinting off rice paddies geometry. His children have gone wandering, hustling tourists. What will become of my fields? Who will plant, nurse each stalk? His hat shades his face as worry steams off his body like hillsides after a storm. Over the mountains, foul smoke creeps, wars, detritus, China's factories, solely pristine landscapes halfway around the continent. A wide belt of pollution, clamoring for solutions. The fertile crescent shrivels, the seed cannot be planted. Perseo, white lotus, and doom refuse to thrive in drought, dry desert air. What was once done with ease our women can't conceive is now the labor of specialists. While next door, Dubai thrives on oil, high rises in the desert, and you drive your battered Toyota to the store for milk and something to feed your children. Over the mountain, foul smoke creeps, the taste for cash replaces the taste for something gorgeous. The one that made you pout and pucker. Perseo, white lotus, and doom. At the headwaters, diversion kills the chinooks, starves the natives, so farmers can grow rice in drought ridden California. Down below the equatorial line, messiah, Samoan, wonder, why no rain, why too much rain? We can't grow in the dry, can't go in the cyclone. Special interests, lobby bills against the earth like rotten chocolates. Over the mountains, foul smoke creeps, while we lose our taste buds for Perseo, white lotus, and doom. And the last one is from a different book called The Long Blue Room, published by Benesha Literary Arts, and this one is called While I Am Writing. While I Am Writing, Sampancho's sizzles, cockatoo shivers, hibiscus branch, orange flowers tremble, babbled bird conversations, sky calling, sun seducing, so distracting. While I Am Writing in Sampancho, black chicken tiptoes into yard, shrugs, cackles, birds whistle, loath, thrum, delivered from static radio, mothers scolding. While I Am Writing in Sampancho, netti instructs Suzanne in guitar fingerings, charms with Latin songs of longing, plays with Spanish inflection, great and total affection. While I Am Writing in Sampancho, trucks bounce on cobbled street with wrecked shocks, megaphone hawks, aguiporo, flogas, camarones. While I Am Writing in Sampancho, the Pacific Pounds, Bakes, cocoa fronds, adiputant skirt rustle, frigate bird swoop, swallows dive, parrots sing. While I Am Writing in Sampancho, Haiti digs out it's dead, searches collapse structures, howls its loss. While I Am Writing in Sampancho, the world is living and turning and loving and shaking, yelling and birthing, selling and buying, living and dying. Thank you, John. Always visual, always beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. John Rowe, how you doing John Rowe? John Rowe has been active in the Bay Area poetry community for 25 years, especially with the Bay Area Poets Coalition, a non-profit, volunteer-run organization. He currently hosts a monthly open poetry reading on Zoom for BAPC. His poems have appeared in numerous small press journals and anthologies, and he has authored several poetry chat books, including Beyond Perspective. Welcome, John Rowe. Thank you, Cheryl. Appreciate it. Thank you, Taryn and Mechanics Institute for hosting. And I'm going to start off with a short form, a little sampler of Tonka, five-line poems. So there'll be a little pause or breath between each one. Days go by both faster and slower during the pandemic. You called a pair of ducks. I hear a pair of ducks. A sudden single-filed march of six wild turkeys stopping traffic. Do I stride with such focus into an unknown future? Every time I hear a train in the distance, I picture someone like you waiting on the platform, waving hello or goodbye, remembering this day because of your death, deep within trees, birdsong, your life, your life. Pause for a moment or more than a moment of silence than poetry. This next poem is titled Return. I have let the bird out of its cage for freedom in a room that we're in together. The bird flaps frantically, begins to fly in circles close to the walls, as if even the space of the room is not enough. I whistle a tune, hoping to restore calm, but the bird continues its frenzied flight. We are divided and cannot go on like this. I realize that I must let go. I raise a shade, then open a window. The bird flies away into the clouds swirls sky. I sit down in the center of the room, lament for what is gone. Closing my eyes, I imagine a journey into the unknown, into a place of great silence. A peace grows in this silence. After a while, I open my eyes. To my surprise, the bird has returned, perched on the windowsill, staring at me. This next poem is a palindrome form called Tua Nortza, Astronauts Build Backwards, and it's the second half of the poem repeats the lines of the first half in reverse order. Enter, walking up or down the staircase, step by careful, deliberate step. Where do you want to go from here? In a spacious room with a big open book, the blank page, the journey begins. A hawk circles the before and after sky. Light imagines the dark. Dark imagines the light. An idea is born out of an emptiness. Light imagines the dark. Dark imagines the light. A hawk circles the before and after sky. The blank page, the journey begins. In a spacious room with a big open book, where do you want to go from here? Step by careful, deliberate step. Walking up or down the staircase. Certain questions along the way. Is there a road that never ends? If so, can I spare the time to travel it? And if I tire along the way, will there be a good place to rest? Maybe called the journey's end? And I'll imagine the space ahead growing darker and brighter simultaneously. Will you be there along the way, sitting on a stump off to the side, or gazing skyward at the bellies of a gliding migration? And will you speak to me? Will we recognize each other? Will uncertain answers follow certain questions? And the fence dividing the road and pasture appears to go on forever. Will it resist a forceful wind, bending and creaking as it does, with the brittle limbs until silence? Just a couple more short ones. If he was waiting for the meaning of life, and perhaps would be waiting for some time to come. In the meantime, he fed the pigeons on his lunch hour downtown, right in the center of things. This is how God witnessed him. An ordinary man with no urge to kill anything, not even time. Just before, from a very high perch, the hidden birds sing. Don't give up art for love. Don't give up love for art. Then as if on cue, a golden egg drops down toward the horizon, burning brightly, melding into one indivisible, invisible wish. As a jazz man steps out onto a rooftop, presses his lips to his horn, and blows out a punctuating note while spinning his body 360 degrees. It can happen like this, suddenly, just before death, just before birth. Thank you very much. Thank you, John. As always, your poetry is moving and meaningful. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Cheryl. Ma Shane Wynn. Hello, Ma Shane. She is the first poet laureate of El Cerrito, California, and the author of poetry chapbooks, Ruins of a Glittering Palace, and Score and Bone. Her full-length poetry collection, Storage Unit for the Spirit House, was long-listed for the Penn America Open Book Award. Please welcome Ma Shane Wynn. Thank you, Cheryl. Thank you, Cheryl, and thank you, Taryn and the Mechanics Institute, for hosting this evening. Winter hair. I hear the songbirds more these days. Try to decipher sirens and calls. Tom makes a cocktail for us called Black Lily. I grow out my white roots, winter hair. Arcalico wails at 3 a.m. My mother's losing her hearing. Figs fall from nearby trees. Wild bobcat roams yards of shuttered homes. I read somewhere that Blue Jay's Moult, Un Kent, they fly away. And I'd like to share two new poems, and this one is called Letter from the Waiting Room. Dear H, I'm hanging out in the Waiting Room. I blink into another eye. Gold shades. Sirens again. Seeing another city through the window of another's window. I live in a two-second time lapse. Dear H, I knitted a quilt for you. Slippers of green lint throughout. Warmth in the Waiting Room now. My limbs are soft with pain. Slept last night with ears open. Noted the following. Pollen drift. Vessel crack. Pillar bark. Dear H, missing your dry arms. Crackling eyes. Generous fountains. You threw me a life rope once, and I leapt out of bed to reach. And this. You were standing on a dock and next to you, a large trunk made of bone. Strangers began to gather. You sunk your hand and lifted a spinning plate from the trunk. Applause and more applause. Dear H, my cat visited me from the other world. She witnessed blists busting from the pockets of houses open once again. Bright light from the storehouse. Tinny bell tones. She could smell the dirt from behind the shed. And this is entitled Small Finches. In the dream, the body runs from fire. Throws on a cape and dashes through the door. The body heads for the hills. This was overheard once at a party. Head for the hills. An ambulance speeds by. Blur of rust. The body informs the mind. Emergency. The body tries to soothe the mind. Breathe. In a dream, the body sees the mother in a glass tank. There is water on the floor and the feet of the body are cold. Sometimes I forget I have a body. A therapist once said that I did not have holes in my energy field. However, my ex had many. In the dream, I have powerful legs. My eyes are alert. I fly over burning hills and flash floods. Leap over hospitals and shuttered stores. My body delivers a message. Drink three bottles of ginger water. My mother's body needs a walker, a hospital bed. She reads in her dreams. In the body of the dream, I am swimming. I swim in a deep lake surrounded by furs and ferns. The water soothes the mind. My mother's body rests on a blanket of warm grass. Books turn pages on their own. Small finches sleep in ferns. And this is my last poem. And this was written for a mural by Megan Wilson for an exhibition at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. And the show was called Flower Power. And the title of this poem is Flower Instructions. 1. Blanket streets with plum blossoms. Rest body against warm concrete. Find rose petals on sidewalk. Glimmer of the memory garden. 2. Follow trail of invisible bees. Nectar guides for the lost ones. Fling lasso into summer darkness. Hear whistles and megaphone. 3. Hold body close to body. Breathe in the greenhouse. Wear wet glitter and silver hose. Lick salt on skin. 4. Catch whispers in libraries. Greet strangers with acorns and grapefruit. Remember eyes, ghosts, smoke. Watch brothers as they disappear. 5. Imagine a new world. Keep sisters close. Thank you very much. I almost forgot to unmute myself. I was listening so intently. Thank you, Ma. Thank you. Thank you. Beautiful and precious. Lovely. Thank you. Okay, so now it's my turn. And guess what book I'm going to read from? No poetry, no bees. So sit back in your chair. Close your eyes if you want to, because I'm going to read you a poem called Cutty Sark and Milk. She said, she said, arriving at the kitchen on a Saturday night, two friends prepare for their weekly flight into poetry, prose, confession, and philosophy, a dose of gossip, foundations of truth, reflections on just how it really is just to be. I crouch in the crack of the hide me door and wait for the splash that signals the first pour. Outcome the jelly jars, the quart of foremost milk, the silver bowl of ice makes cocktail silk. The Scotch is Cutty Sark, the label with the ship. Foreign ass upended. They mix, they stir, ease into the no talk luxurious person. I ready my hands to fill my mouth with joys and sins and wait still, so still, for the grand began. On this weekend night, I feast on facts of life. I breathe in tales of love, loss, and personal strife. The more they drink, the more poetic the pull. Cutty and milk float edible stanzas. I devour, I delight, I will never be full. Elbows on the edges, heads caught to the side. Alphabet starts its flow and fly. A full course meal, as long as Smith is alive. And then she said, she said, somebody named Ethics got kidnapped last night. And then this friend, I give a damn, got locked up for life. Fearless was stabbed, bled out on the floor. Truth shot in the heart, left in the empty no more. Access blocked by bigot detours, a daily flight to stay a nickel from poor. Is that all you got? All you got? She said, she said. I heard democracy was held at gunpoint last night. In his own bed. So he snitched on love and left her for dead. Mediocrity is quality, all part of the scheme. Nobody loves you, it's just what it seems. Whistling on their way to murder another dream. She said, she said, hands in the air. I ate what she said. Girl, you too heavy and it's getting dark. So let me tell you about cheating, miss wife, miss Clark. They say she's slutty, but he's nasty too. But they ain't talking about that. It's kind of nutty. Always a woman's problem. Lord, pastor, cutty. She said, she said, I bit off the piece of what she said. Let me fill my glass. Yes, I heard about that. I sure don't blame her. He's such an ass. They say he knows and doesn't care. Then the opposite of the other, neither worth a stare. Hey, what you gonna do about that party next week? Who you going with? What you gonna wear? Can I take a peek? She said, she said her palm on my face. I rubbed her words all over my head. I ain't showing you nothing, you copycat. Last time we stepped in like twins down to the shoes and up to that. The men couldn't choose. I'm not having that. The communists knocked on the door last week, said they would treat us better, give us the freedom we seek. She said, she said, I tasted the salt in what she said. I don't trust them either. Coming to us on a lark, I just put my faith in cutty sark, she said. Ha, ha, he ain't girl, you crazy. But I believe that, yes, I agree. It's getting late. I'll just have one more. Pass the ice, drink up. Cutty's coming to shore. I know you hiding behind that door. Just remember this little girl of mine, a drink with a friend is a good passage of time, but life's twists and turns don't always rhyme. I saw her then, and she saw me, cutty and milk, sales of memories. I kept, I kept what she said, what she said. Thank you, poets. Thank you, Taryn, and thank you, the Mechanics Institute Library and the San Francisco Writers Conference. And thank you, audience, all of you, the people out there for coming to listen to us tonight. And I hope you enjoyed it. And everyone, I hope that you come back for more. And what are we calling this? No poetry. No peace. Thank you, Taryn. And I hope you all have a nice evening. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. Very nice evening. Take care. Bye. Bye. Thank you. Bye.