 On this beautiful September morning, good to see you all. I'm Lisa Vijos. I am the poet laureate of Sheboygan. And thank you. It's a very fun thing to be. This morning we're here to participate and celebrate 100,000 poets for change. Most of you have come to these events before and you know that 100,000 poets started in 2011 and we've had a poetry event every year at the end of September kind of in tandem with this worldwide movement where there are poets and people just like us everywhere all over the world literally doing poetry events. This week I have to come clean and tell you that the actual day of 100,000 poets is next Saturday. But I was going to be out of town and so the organizers of this, the originators of this event have always said it's the whole week leading up to it. So I'm like okay, good. I will do that. And the purpose and the meeting behind it is simply to bring poets and voices together to speak about peace, justice, environmental sustainability, change. You know, what do we want to see to make the world a better place? And there's a lot of room in there for all different kinds of poems and voices and words, so no hard-fest rules. But the idea is just to be together and I do want to share one thing before I get everything rolling, which is that, whoa, right, book has been created. This is an anthology that I'm very honored I got to be on the editorial team. 100,000 poets for change, 10 plus years of poetic activism. I have copies. The list price on Amazon is $35, but today, because I love you all, if you want to, you can get it for 20 bucks from me. Here, I have a box of books. So there's essays from the organizers from everywhere. Nigeria, Ireland, Germany, just all over. And it was such an amazing journey to help put this book together. I think I might have told you guys last year that the man who started this whole movement, Michael Rothenberg, he was suffering. He was battling cancer last year at this time. He passed away last November. So this is the first 100,000 poets without Michael Rothenberg present on the planet. But I know he's smiling down and he's super happy to see all of you here and to listen to some great poetry and music. So I think without further ado, I'm going to put the mic down and introduce our local wonderful singer-songwriter, John Dahl, to kick off our event with a beautiful song. Thank you. Welcome, everybody. This is a song that I wrote probably 1970, the spring of 1970. So how long is that? 53 years ago? And it was about a friend that I met. I was on a ship called the World Campus of Float, the SS Rindam, a Dutch ship. And we traveled around the world studying. And I met this person. She was from Newark, New Jersey, going to Bloomfield College. I was at the University of Washington in Seattle, and we traveled together for a period of time. And I wrote this song about her, appropriate for change. The whole world seemed so blind last night when you got up and walked away. The things we'd said seemed also tried like sunshine on a perfect day. You'd said how hard it was to take each other home. I disagreed with you because you changed your forward tone of keeping freedom yourself of keeping freedom within yourself. The pressures of our lives keep constant if we accept and never change. The treasures that we spied will haunt us. Things aren't somehow rearranged. If you're really not much left to learn once you've neglected time and if that happens then we could love and if that happens then we will love. I'm going to start because I'm in charge of the mic. I'm going to read a poem. We're in Stevens Point. We're doing a thing called a poetry walk. We're going to do one in Sheboygan next spring, so keep this in mind, but what they did was they invited poets to submit some poems, and they had a theme, and the theme was to speak in the voice of a character from your favorite book. So here's my poem. See if you can figure out who it is. Oh, and I should say, the poems are going to be posted in store windows all around in Stevens Point, and I don't know where my poem is, but it'll be somewhere, and when we do it in spring, I hope some of you poets will submit and you'll have poems in the shop windows around here. So this one is called To Those Who Have Known Me. Like all things small, I felt kinship with that pig, that terrific and radiant pig. My web became a sparkling signpost of ephemeral messages in Morning Sun. Aiming to awaken and bedazzle the farmer, I wove melodious words that could not go unsung. Call it a miracle. E.B. did. Fern never doubted me. She hoped to save Wilbur, too. A runt among pigs. Could some pig save a life? It could, it did. That humble pig lived beyond me many seasons. No farmer could have ever put him on a platter, served him up as bacon. My words, the reason. And when my story was banned in Kansas, I had to wonder, did those fools not read their Bible? Had they not heard of talking snakes, God's voice in a bush? Had they never known a miracle? Despite their righteousness, and thanks to all their folly, it's plain to see they could never have known me. But Wilbur knew. And I hope, dear reader, when you were young, you did, too. All right. So, our first poet today is a long time, 100,000 poets for change, devotee Emily Cayman. Come on up to the mic, Emily. So, I panic wrote this morning because I realized I didn't really have anything appropriate to read. So, obviously it doesn't have a title because I am firmly against titles. So, here we go. I stand in the woods, the sun low behind me, the moon rising before, on the cusp of eternity, a moment caught in time, like dew on a spider's web, glistening fractals of possible futures, too many to possibly choose from, looking, looking, looking, first sign of fate's hand, until I close my eyes and leap, hoping the wind will guide me through, like the leaves starting to fall. Perhaps I, too, will be carried gently into the ground to decay and arise once more as something new. Good morning, scribble. Totally awesome. Next up, our friend from Appleton, Tom Singleton. Thanks, Lisa. I, I am glad that we're doing it this week and not next week because otherwise you wouldn't be here next week. There'll be 9, there'll only be 999,999 poets for change, right? I have a brief one for you. It's called A Walk in the Heavens. Any of you poets ever walk in the heaven? Or, you know, put yourself up in the stars at night or whatever? Well, this is what this is about. Take the rainbow bridge from our small orb. Walk the path of colors into night. For the world ends not on the mountaintop or even at the glowing moon. It soars through years of light, beyond the beyond. Find the star steps through the long night to other worlds of mystery. Here the walk uncovers our destiny, our destiny in the heavens. Do not, though, discard this earth like an empty tin can by the side of the road. Heal our planet if we are to survive. Survive and be welcomed on others. Healing our planet is healing ourselves. We, the earth and the heavens are one. Beautiful. Thank you. Next up is Mary Kozan. Come on up, Mary. I have, you know, Emily wrote one. Skrubble wrote one this morning. Panic wrote one. I have three poems, the first of which I wrote years ago. They're all very short. And this first one, they're all about language also. This first one is, there is, is there a rhyme for orange? It's a poem in a limerick kind of sort of based on life. Orange is the only one. There is no other, I once told my younger brother. It's the only word without a rhyme. I researched it for quite some time. And then I tried to write a poem about pneumonia. I worked and thought and stretched my brain, puzzled and used and toiled in vain. There just is no rhyme for pneumonia. Until I remembered Livonia and Estonia. And let's not forget about ammonia, but how to work them into a poem about pneumonia. There once was a teacher from Ionia who suffered yearly from pneumonia. But in 2001, she did not succumb, told her doctor, if I do get sick, I'll phonia. But P.S. there still is no rhyme for orange. The reason I'm doing three is that I get applause for each one. The second one is spelling, and it's more of a rant than a poem. There are three ways to spell two and two ways to spell four. There are even two ways to spell one. But there's only one way to spell three. Is that fair? There are three there's and two here's and two where's. There are even two why's and two who's if you count the way the owl spells his who. But there's only one what and only one when. Is that fair? Some words are unnecessarily long, like unnecessarily. Why is there only one way to spell privilege? I'm sure you've figured out what I meant without much trouble, even if I mixed up an I with an E. And what about phenomenon? Whose bright idea was it to use pH instead of an F anyway? What drunken focus group agreed to that idea? I'm just saying that I think we'd have all have a lot less anxiety if we relaxed those spelling words just a little and put some third graders in charge of spelling. I'm not done yet. Mosquito. M-U-S-K-E-E-T-O-E. Mosquito. Believe. B-E-E-L-E-E-V. Massachusetts. M-A-S-A-C-H-E-W-S-E-T-S. Massachusetts. Third graders should be in charge. And the third one is simply called language. Phonemes and morphemes, all parts of speech. Sounds and words we use as we reach. Reach out to the world. Reach into our souls. It's language we use to make ourselves whole. We use it to argue or to make love. We write poems and stories when inspired from above. Words that we think of, words that we say, words that we write down, words that we pray, words that tell jokes, words that make puns, words that make pay compliments, words that poke fun, words that are hateful, words that can't soothe, words that tell lies, words that tell truths, words that set the record straight, words that apologize we hope not too late, words that share delight and entrance, words that elaborate and rich and enhance. Words and sounds, all parts of speech, phonemes and morphemes we use as we reach, reach out to the world or deepen our souls. It's language we use to make ourselves whole. Thank you, Mary. When you were reading the poem about pneumonia, I'd like to think of what before you said it was alphonia. Alphonia. And then you said it. That was so cool. Before I introduce the next reader, I just wanted to make sure, has anybody arrived and needs to sign the open mic list? Okay, I will come over to you. Great. The next person up is James Hamilton. I'm James. Oh, even better. Thank you. So I'm going to try to see this actually, because it's a... Okay. So the first one's not about change. I do a lot of these open mics. I went to spring green this past Monday and while I was in the car, I wrote this going over there, dictated to my phone, I guess. So the first time I'm reading it out there, so brand new. It's called Drive. Paint in lines, green highway signs, reflection stripes, and brush colored brush. Velvety violet gray asphalt on the ground, gravelly grooved concrete slush. Beautiful traction. And I look around, hard on believing, above the sun's beating, the air streaming, and the sound of the trees and the motor screaming. How the road can fill up the hollow inside. Roads between here, there, and everywhere, stifling my run and hide, deflating my polka dot parachute and generally pacifying my jitter buggy mind. So I don't give a s***, so I don't care about any of it. Is it mental masturbation, thought process subjugation, subjective signals and information, distraction, reaction, extrasensory perception dumbed down? And I frown because I lost my place. I lost the why I'm in this race. And then again, was it even a race in the first place where just monkey shines all the time? Or is it all in my mind? Damn. Energy beaming, country rat riddled, visual hallucination, audible paradiddle, telepathy steaming, a long fortune teller programming, rewiring wrong, code flaw, ball crystal mystic, some source sending misery, poison program psyche, energy algorithm pissing on me, duality interchange, one way a captive, one way free, most days neither switch back even feels like me. I shake my head, ears ringing in dread, tears in my eyes, blood pressure rise and I tell myself to focus on the road ahead and just f***ing drive. So there's more about change, but there's more about homeless people. I love this town, I come here, there's a lot of people that don't have anywhere to live in this town and it's not right, it's just not right. $1,800 for a two bedroom apartment is not affordable housing. It's called Under This Bridge. John decide his piercing, pensive pupils glare outward, articulating at best the dire man's life. He scribbles altruistically childlike and emblematic as walls growings can be. He writes in blood and f***ing and rain-soaked mud on pillars of concrete under the bridge, under the highway, among the trash and needles and very crud. His wave and rags and of wick and faith waits on the ground set in her place. A file of sticks and bones and teeth sit just below her windswept face on a box. They're waiting for dinner to be done, a pigeon or maybe a dove splayed on an asphalt griddle searing in the afternoon sun. She swallows her spit and tastes an abscess then fumbling it with her tongue as the cars overhead run and run smoke and exhaust and dust brought their lungs and rust, rust covers everything. Feeding off a steely support lust it is for them whatever the day brings whatever the day must. Happy and irreverent to most drunk and sleeping against the post on the iron and cement and the tar through rise and falls through it all they call this home. Each stealing solace in the fact that neither of them is alone such is life on their edge such is life under this bridge. Georgia Resnire, welcome Georgia. The poem is called The News from Niger. It's a two-part poem and it's the only one I'll read so. The news from Niger arrives before our latest mass shooting. Violent events even from dreamland. Am I addicted to horrendous happenings and confusion? Whenever hope and joy break through not often now I don't know where to put them. They are lovely gifts deserving display in places of honor. Sometimes they even make me forget that we humans linked on the eons long train of evolution are fast approaching the end of the line. The whistle blows almost continuously but goes unnoticed. No one puts on shoes or gathers possessions. Believers believe heaven awaits them. Skeptics anticipate a lot of pain followed by a deep sleep that could last forever an attractive prospect for insomniacs like me. Humanity is getting what we deserve for wasting and despoiling earth failing to live up to our potential for kindness. As for joy it is a succession of rare moments of connection that warm our insides better than cognac. Hope and joy flash past quickly glorious presence but oh so transient. Two peace has to be made with each new day not if you've come to torture me go away but come in and tell me what you have to say. This is sometimes enigmatic as in the peace that passes all understanding. More often it's mundane. You stay on your side of the line I'll stay on mine. What kind of day is this? A day of truths it seems not dread facing facts loss and painful truths but faith in change. It's trusting that some may live to bask in clean air and water again and that peace and justice can prevail if enough of us commit to a place for all to flourish. Today at least there's still a chance to pass the test. Thank you. Thank you Georgia. Next up is Tad Fippin-Wenty. Welcome to the mic. Tad from Fort Washington. Tad from Fort Washington. I should also say one thing. Tad was a teacher for many years at North High School and then at Etude School and many young poets have risen up out of her ranks so thank you Tad Wenty. I don't know where they are today. Okay. One reason I think life is so stressful is because of all the things we can't unlearn. You know once you learn it then there you are. I'm going to read a poem called When the World. I wrote this a while ago. As a child I believe the moon was flat like a circle of paper or felt or color formed plastic stuck to the face of the sky. It followed me from the farm where my grandparents lived in the old white house with tall gray ceilings and an attic. It followed me to my house where I lived with my parents under the Milky Way next to the Great Lake. I would lean my cheek against the car door and stare up through the smooth black glass at my flat moon etched with tree branch shadows and wonder how it could possibly know to follow me along the country highway through two small towns into my own yard to my bedroom window and drop its silvery messages onto the water of the lake for me to see. Last night I viewed the moon from the beach by telescope. At the moment I saw its personal geography scarred skin, its craters puckering embarrassed its beckoning mountains and flat desert lakes. I marveled at the stiff toothpick flag I could not see and worried over footprints and tire tracks are greedy misuse and I think the moon knew I was looking in its glorious night shadow curve it melted in the lens and it still looked flat to me. Dana Boyer from right here in Sheboygan and all over the world she's lived. I'm going to read one poem that's in three parts that I've been working on lately it's called What We Will Be Part One The night follows the sunset lights its lake smoke the French open up their metal shutters one last gasp before tomorrow which will reach 100 degrees like it never has before. A barefoot father walks his baby to sleep across the street already his baby only knows this world she does not need to be prepared he does this for himself. When my son was young very young and saw a picture of the autumn leaves he said fire fire because he already knew exactly how things die the attic window winks the last sunset back part two the sun rises hazed and gasping while Canada burns on the river the weeping willows barely grasp the water it is the shortage so they say and there is not enough water to save all the lives we've left behind and wait if you will listen just a minute there is not enough water to put out the fire in the garage the fire chief's report said buttons were found across it as if my grandpa tried to yank his shirt off in his panic his hands already among the flames forgive me I do not mean to say we all will die of fire only that he did part three on an Okinawan beach my son stops eating sand long enough to watch the dark pile above the horizon Japanese has 1,190 rain-related words and I only know three of them they say the storms in the Pacific are strengthening now that they will keep growing and swirling and adding to themselves that they will build their lightning and feed it heat into their hungry mouths before drowning this island and whatever garage fires are in its way after the typhoon passes my son flattens his face against the window marveling at the flooding streets I write down the words I know suyu, rainy season uchiyami, rain that enters with wind and uteki for single raindrop in these words there is enough water to save some of our grandfathers to save some of our children next up straight from shiboyden falls Marilyn Zelke Wendau come on up Marilyn thank you Lisa for this opportunity and Miidji what can I do for mankind there's a young man who fights homelessness by walking great distances alone with only a backpack as a studious youth in central virginia he walked more than 500 miles to newton massachusetts to attend boston college on a full scholarship his hope in walking was to raise money for those without shelter as he had been via a gofundme fund national alliance to end homelessness he then applied for law school again he walked over 27 miles a day sleeping beneath underpasses companion by stray dogs to law school from caroline georgia to the university of georgia in anthans over several hundred thousand dollars have been raised through his efforts we as individuals see the myriad problems of our society of our country of our earth we ask the question what can I do for mankind there's so many answers plant pollinator gardens recycle plastics adopt a feral cat and get it spayed march in protest of inequality march for climate change reductions vote vote vote right right right use your voice for change for help for progress for equality for understanding for peace i'd like to listen to or watch pbs embrace the gift deepak chopra voices words to me tonight on pbs he speaks of the value of meditation count count breaths count minutes count time let thoughts flow breathe in history remember those who touched your life your grandmother's invitation to enjoy her backyard playhouse walks with your mother on wildflower-strewn paths your father reciting longfellow fuzzy childhood dog friends acknowledge gratitude thank the neighbors for cookies for supplying water to your garden when you're absent for gifting apples, tomatoes from theirs respond with thanks to friends who want to help you in your time of need with transportation, food, companionship friendship truly is a gift a gift to humans a tie that binds the commonality which asks and provides a solution to differences a path to peaceful understanding thank you maryland okay next we have a little musical interlude from the wonderful and amazing shabuagan phenomenon the raging grannies would you come up carol and del lily for met carol written house and teresa moreno come to the stage and wow us with some music and then lily's gonna stay on and do a poem after so there we go raging grannies are not just from shabuagan they are from all over the world wisconsin has probably five or six groups of raging grannies and so um and we'll share our stuff so here we go raging grannies are conspiring to make folks laugh a lot satire is so very frightening it must be a terrorist plot listen to our conversation we rage for peace not war for dignity and democracy hear our voices soar metal in our hips metal in our knees hiding weapons none can see now you found us out you know what we're about peace and social justice conspiracy someone singing for justice someone singing for an end to war someone singing and spreading the truth scaring folks to the core they're scared of gaggles of grannies singing our songs gaggles of grannies make folks wake gaggles of grannies must be washed your security is at stake grannies with our hats a bunch of old bats scaring folks with what we sing if we stay in tune that could spell their doom spreading freedom and democracy we're raging grannies singing for justice grannies singing for an end to war grannies singing and spreading the truth world peace forevermore this land is our land our land together and when we share it it just gets better when we look out for our friends and neighbors that's what America can be this land has people of all religions we're all Americans we need diverse skins if you wear headscarves or hold a rosary this land was made for you and me this land is queer folk and newly-heared folk female and male folk dark-skinned and pale folk with our commitment to love and liberty we'll remake this land for you and me from many countries we brought traditions and we can share them here in Wisconsin for we're together in peace and harmony this land was made for you and me this hand sold some truth to be self-evident that inequality is un-American we live together and we can all be free when this land achieves its destiny this land is our land our land together and when we share it it just gets better when look, look out for our friends and neighbors that's what America can be that's what America will be no, it's okay the poem I'm going to read is one I wrote some time ago it's called The Illusions we like to think that we're the top the ultimate cream of nature's crop our status we're sure will never stop we'll just improve and as to greater heights we soar improving our lot and planning more we don't even bother to ask what for we're in the groove we build our empires and tear them down we pave the planet with city and town with blinding lights screaming sound we make our mark with highways and skyways and ships at sea we harness the land that once was free denuding the forest of every tree to build a park and though we're certain we know the score know who, what, when, where and even what for the truth is the earth holds immeasurably more that we don't know we govern and manage in nature's name we don't know the rules but we play the game we're well intentioned but just the same look out below instead of living as part of earth in respecting nature and knowing it's worth we act as though everything since its birth belongs to man we like to think that we're the elect and they press ultra but I suspect we're nothing more than once more sad reject in nature's plan and when our time of ascendancy is done and earth's once again wild and free its swan and floor on land and sea once more to roam perhaps the next species to multiply will neither reason nor wonder why but find it's sufficient to live and die in earth its home thank you Lily and everyone from the raging grannies awesome to have you here today next up is Mary Fleshman good morning and this is such a wonderful event and I'm so glad I'm still alive to be here so thank you I have two poems, neither of which I have written the first is by Darcy Yamara and some of you may be familiar with her she's a political activist she was born in Nicaragua she's a strong advocate for women's rights she's married, has three children does a lot of lecturing at the university in San Francisco and her poem is titled The Song of Hope one day the fields will be forever green and the earth will be black, sweet and moist our children will grow tall and on hope and the children of our children and they will be as free as the trees and the birds of the wilderness each morning they will awaken the joy of having life and will know that the earth was reconquered for them one day today we plow the parched fields but each furrow is soaked with blood the second is written by Anne Hayden and she is a member of the Mary Knoll sisters she did a lot of work in both Korea and Nicaragua as a public health nurse and she also has worked diligently on Save the Children program so her poem is titled Common Ground there is a common good a best practice of the human community a stance of solidarity and right relationship with all of creation it is as simple as breathing and ordinary as dirt it is as warmly nourishing as newly baked bread strongly supportive as a neighbor's solid shoulders richly fertile as moist earth and as available as an attentive friend this sacred field of communion is turned and tilled by willing hearts seated with honest truth watered with the abundant tears of forgiveness cultivated in service to one another and harvested in a mutually fruitful love it is the good ground we stand on together it is the God's space of our interabiding where we know deeply the communion that is gift to be received given and received again in the round dance of God's life and all thank you Mary for sharing some poems from the book that you brought seems like an anthology of women activists so thank you for that our next reader is George Henniger come on up George there's one more after you and then there's the featured reader who I will introduce in a moment good morning it's good to see everybody here I'm going to try to be a little theatrical about this if you don't mind what I found I now hold so precious and unexpected beauty that obsesses and absorbs just its touch takes me to places I want to be forever then I notice it's not what it was once and the tarnish fades into decay as its whole becomes its parts it starts to slip away what it was before is never more Mount Tears mixed with the dust have another shot this isn't small print sorry many said it was not true even as it happened over and over us versus them those whispered everyday hours is hours period and it had to be protected from those who would take it but the churning never ended from those who would dare to stop progress those little irritations just kept coming again and again and the winds began to change then things became different thank you George next is Heather Hamlin and I see her holding little violet there so bring violet do you want to come up and read poetry with your mom violet maybe stay with daddy could be easier for mom thanks Lisa for having us here I was going to have violet do a little dumpling if you change your mind violet let me know the mic is yours I want to read a poem by Audrey Lord and then I'll read one of my own but I'm so sick of my own poems and I feel like most people can probably relate to that so the poem that I'm going to read that I wrote is like the oldest poem that I still have managed to keep a PDF of in my computer because apparently I'm not sick of that one so this is a poem by Audrey Lord though from her book The Black Unicorn is this a good volume? alright a litany for survival for those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns looking inward and outward at once before and after seeking a now that can breathe futures like bread in our children's mouths so the dreams will not reflect the death of ours for those of us who are imprinted with fear with a faint line in the center of our foreheads learning to be afraid with our mother's milk provide this weapon this illusion of some safety to be found the heavy-footed hoped to silence us for all of us this instant and this triumph we were never meant to survive and when the sun rises we are afraid it might not remain when the sun sets we are afraid we might not rise in the morning when our stomachs are full we are afraid of indigestion when our stomachs are empty we are afraid we may never eat again when we are loved we are afraid love will vanish when we are alone we are afraid love will never return and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid so it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive so this is a poem that I wrote when I was an undergrad which was really long ago and it feels like really long ago now that I have a kid it just feels like it progresses so much more quickly I guess but it just feels weird you know so here we go it's called 1998 in Clair de Lune and it's from former heather to you the spacecraft is searching El Nino is settling in the atmosphere and the people there is movement like the one I played on piano Clair de Lune sometimes Caitlyn wanted to pretend to be boys at recess and sometimes she wanted to pretend to die and we'd laugh our gasping scratched God's ear there's a funny thing it falls up into tornadoes and drips down the cracks of plates who long as they break apart the earth was moving and it was ripping us apart I learned about it in science we also learned about overpopulation but I never worried because if nature didn't take care of it if nature didn't take care of it we would on Mondays I heard about Ontario Philo and Malaya and Belize and Manila and Birmingham every Monday my mother drove me to piano lessons and the radio cracked like sparks and guns through the speakers I used to think the static was on purpose like sound effects and that was January sometimes I hated piano lessons this is Peterson was so stern and she played so fast that the piano began to turn into static too but not Clair de Lune that was all the slow I never ended before it had to I didn't know how rare that was I didn't know how skinny the thread was that everything tread upon when I moved away Caitlyn cried to children moving earthquake and piano lessons and injustice she ran after my car I decided we all died with deaths later I found out who made my doll from Manila later I found out the bombing Birmingham were off in an abortion clinic later I found out I could never really be a boy it's not like I didn't understand death before it was just further away from me now the gasping comes locked up in between tears because I know we are alive always nearing the crack in the radio the last stanza the moon rising and the final black note of Clair de Lune thank you Helder alright our featured reader today is an award winning poet many times over including a Fulbright fellowship in Bangkok, Thailand I learned in email exchange with him that his grandparents lived in Sheboygan and he remembers many a Christmas spent here in his youth he currently lives in Fort Atkinson and is an associate professor of languages and literatures at the University of Wisconsin Whitewater and I am so honored to invite to the mic here at 100,000 Poets for Change our Wisconsin Poet Laureate Nicholas Gulick and a warm Sheboygan welcome is it good? step on it it's nice to be back in Sheboygan my grandparents passed away quite some time ago and I don't make it back here as much as I wish I did but I do have a lot of really wonderful memories growing up here in the summers and Thanksgiving I'm going to read a series of what I think are love, essentially love poems whatever changes we want to see enacted in the world in my sense is that it is because of and for people who are other than ourselves particularly because of our parents who came before us and for our children who come after us this is a poem from a book called Orient called an image of the book in which I hear you if there is standing water in the desert if there is water and I am standing over it staring down into the murk or mirror of the pool if I am breathing if I can see myself in the oasis if I am speaking and there is water and you are there if you are also speaking here across the water our voices carrying in opposite directions, our voices carrying if our language is unspooed in blue drifts against the distance escaping reticence if the distance of our reticence is false if it isn't crossable if we cross it anyway who will carry us if our narratives erase us, if our histories return to us as names if we are living in the error of our alphabets if the center of the letter is hurt master stranger what is water where is water safe if solitude displaces us if we are homeless finally each of us if we wander past each other our faces moored to their reflections the edges wrecked is it imaginary if the images we make we make us if there is mercy in us if our speaking changes and we ourselves are changing making if we are made in the image of the other in ambiguity and contradiction if we consent to not be solitary if we imagine we are somewhere if there is shore so just a few poems a couple of them are longer I don't want to keep you too long it will be like 15 minutes or so these are all from the collection that I'm working on right now which is called The Other Alter and this is a poem called of Genesis the origin of every book is lost there is not a word in the beginning and language always listens to its end tell me what has left its mark upon the names you give to stars that we cannot see and I will try to break the sentence into something strange enough to trust look the world is blue as death down here already the air is poisoned by our breath it's getting difficult to teach our children how to speak by speaking poetry in the breath of the book before the book and after the blue periphery of after and the aperture of speech and the green infinity of reading and the bleak community of loss and the terror of the margins blossoming and the violence of the mind's arrival blossoming and the perforated space of utterance and the unnameable hallucinations of the alphabet and the bright sobriety of awe and the perforated wake of wonder a world unfurling and the mute cathedral of the interior and the still uncertain music of the interior and the porous borders of the image and the day glow ruins of the dictionary and the pregnant lapse of reason and the seedling gaps of exposition and the song drawn logic of the dream and the beautiful collapse of the house of language and the extravagant expanse of the house of language and the structure of a garden's darkness a mouth and the wilderness the tongue unraveling and the light that isn't light in the open doorway of the eye there's a series of homes that I've been working on that are essentially woven together narrative so they're pieces of prose that I've written each about different subjects and this one for example it's prose from my scholarly efforts, studying the poetry of John Keats prose recollecting the Minneapolis riots after the George Floyd lynching trying to planning a garden with my daughter research that I was doing on pollinators things like that, so I'm weaving together different pieces of prose and then it turns into a poem essentially I think one of the insistences that poets have is that the word connects to itself and I suppose this is an experiment of testing that this is called omatidio in Keats' letters the poet makes a specter of his aesthetics beauty should obliterate as the riots burn in Minneapolis I plant b-ball with my daughter in our yard because my friend in prison helps white supremacists write letters to their lovers and blinks himself to sleep the police lights rising from the streets like little tongues beyond the dead insistence of their song upend the dumb capacity for grace what must we forgive to see a single flower in a field of other flowers Keats insists that we abandon our identity the lynching ruptured everything to sustain the colony of worker B goes forth in early light and lingers sitting in the grass we listen the drone of tiny wings adrift between the patchwork patterning of violets a kind of language glittering at first my daughter is afraid when the open field between a thesis and its antithesis evaporates Keats insists the arguments regarding art begin to dovetail in the mind I want to think that he is right the light of a convergence arriving on an altar I imagine centered somewhere in me like a soul the city burning on a live stream will I send messages to friends illuminates my living room when my daughter pushes seeds into the dirt she asks if she is hurting it a violent brightness casts a dark catastrophe across the wall capable of seeing ultraviolet light the sun despite the clouds the compound eyes of bees are covered with tiny follicles that sense the wind's direction a disquisition not dispute on a myriad of subjects strikes me I try to write a letter to my friend and find myself among the numb cacophony of distances admitting my mistakes what is true enough to render this for Keats is the burden of the mystery liberating doubt when my daughter asks if cops are bad I grab her hand and say that in the morning we'll check to see if anything's sprouted this pursuit through volumes illuminates the call of all consideration how beautiful the retired roses folding over in the night wind breaking how fact and reason seem to fall away my faith and people the pistol and the stigma and the seed when the workers first emerge their hair is edged in silver and their wings are soft paper thin and crumbled I tire early in the aftermath and think it's sad that the specific composition of omatidia varies between organisms the world appearing differently as a matter of blind mechanics when I drive across the country to see my friend in the out in federal correction I stand in the line of children in the jail yard waiting with their mothers to see their dads all of us are earth dark I find that cannot exist as Keats it is easier to say what poems should be than write them and so I find myself suspended in a landscape made of years and long apologies in the prison cafeteria my friend says the thing that shocks him most is how illiterate the inmates are queen bees breed their eggs like birds and place them in the pollen ball when my daughter comes home from school she asks if the police would ever hurt her mother and then we sit in silence the silence ruptures us a thing we cannot see that enters slowly through the ear and lingers a wilderness approaching the immediate emergency of wreck not a self so much a subject thus the music of the poem is what the mouth becomes when language leans into uncertainty landscape is imaginary every morning when I wait in line in the luther elementary parking lot among the other parents dropping off their kids I count the thin blue line police flags plastered to the metal bumpers of their trucks colonies exist to feed the queens demand for sweetness and this too is a kind of silence lingerie I want to tell my daughter about the summer of the 17 in minneapolis a punk show at a venue called the bomb shelter how the cops came in and punched the brown kids standing next to me in my memory my mind goes blank on impact my body acting on its own for the first time I find myself beyond myself the crowd erupting all around me and spilling out into the streets of the same precincts burning on my phone today some 20 odd years later I want to tell her that my friends together picked me off the ground and took me to the hospital but instead I tell my students that the poet is at once the possessor and the possessed the colonizer and the colonized and that for Keats language when it is working takes away our names it surprises me to learn that bees have five eyes three of which see only shadow but not the shape that casts it maybe this is beautiful vision is diverse all for a life of sensation rather than thought every morning the flowers we have planted start to fall apart folding inward for a center that is only partially there my friend is out of prison he's married now and has a daughter of his own every month he sends me records in the mail with little notes explaining his experience of song since an image from the compound eyes created from a set of independent elements bees can only see that part of the picture directly there in front of them it is difficult to know the world is someone other than yourself to sense through nothing more than shadow there is in you a garden somewhere planted by a stranger with a spirit you imagine passing through you glides against another person's body like a ghost Keats believes that if the poem does not come naturally like leaves to a tree in spring it should not come at all the riots rise and fall around my daughter like a century the average lifespan of a worker bee is six to seven weeks my dreams do not relieve me in time as the workers cross the distance from one flower to another heading home to feed their queen their wings deteriorate battered by a wind that used to carry them laughing in a pool in colored light my daughter sings my name and arranges yellow petals in a circle at my feet and the chamber of our maiden thought keeps forewarns of darkening the police are everywhere and nowhere my daughter tells me I am standing in the sun three more is that good read a poem for my wife a poem for my dad and a poem for my this is called border work our being here together as the night struck violet plucked from an edge blue curve of air the light does not absolve us because we named our children in the margin of a garden's darkness the white rose listened I love the thousand shades of you every morning our daughters sleep beyond themselves and day glow the house grows quiet in their wake to the place where you should be I lash the ache of every brightness I've disfigured the years that we have left bury with me the bottom half of fence posts in the yard pack the loose dirt harder these days I'm beginning to believe that I belong here because we chose to raise our children in the center of an empire the low grass glistens in the west wind at night the sky edge finds us staring at our hands it is easy to forget we left a world for this one though um this is another one of those poems where I'm weaving prose writing together so this I'm trying to tell of losing my dad on 2015 I'm working on an essay about the poet George Oppen making sense of the racially motivated mass shooting in Buffalo and and I'm talking about this memory that I have from school in a translation class this is why it's fun to go to PhD school as a poet for a translation class I had to destroy a text that I loved so it took one of my favorite books of books of poems out into the woods and shot it this is called book of difference to write the book a second time I shoot it when my father dies I leave the room and stand alone at the end of a long haul looking down on Minnesota I know of no other happiness writes Oppen but the mind rising into what is there it's summer in the middle west and ten are dead in Buffalo I call a friend and weep into the telephone a field of knee high grass surrounds me I lay the book against the tree stump confronted by police the shooter removes his armor in a fluid motion close to grace the hall is empty he sets his weapon briefly against his chin and then surrenders the switch grass sways every time I stare along the rifle spine and pull the trigger buckshot scatters in the bright light the pages separate the book begins to pull itself apart in the racist theory of replacement men like me women like my wife children like my children stand to disenfranchise white men for Oppen the failure of language to be transparent as a failure to move beyond the shipwreck of the singular a falling short of love I used to think there was no one I loved the way I loved but then I had a daughter at night I light a candle and tell his ghost I'm sorry the echo of a gunshot slants against the hills the book begins to blossom although his actions resonate beyond the single moment of their occurrence rippling outward the bullets proving that the borders of the self are porous the shooter is alone when my sister calls to tell me I need to make it home I'm poor and living in a small apartment half a world away in Thailand when I put the phone against my chest and hold it I turn to the woman who is now my wife in the room begins to shrink around a silence the likes of which I know today my children will also have to someday navigate without me in John Raspal's 1973 novel the camp of the saints brown emigrants band together to overrun the continent my daughters scream each other's names and sprint across the yard the weapon heavy in my hand the book unfurling upward I've barely written since I've had kids so when a girl I used to think I'd marry suggests we work together I'm afraid in my memory I set the rifle down and lay alone beside the book and let the light across my face go forth without the need to name it for you and of you I begin I'm growing in the coal stone garden in my basement and then the poem falls out of me like water when my youngest daughter reaches for the picture of my dad above my record she asks me what it means to die the poem prescribes itself just ending a silent litany of grief my daughter pauses death I say is when a person turns just small enough to climb alone into the hearts of those they've left behind and live there it is a place often writes nothing has entered it nothing has left the depth of water pours from all its sources my earliest memory is of a dream in which my father disappears into a painting of a ring of children holding hands that used to decorate my bedroom in it I'm alone and screaming out his name when I wake up the screen remains but this time he's sitting in the room beside me and saying it's okay strangely some 30 odd years later these same words these same words promising my safety of the last I'll hear him speak I cannot even altogether now disengage myself often writes remembering the men he left to die behind him in the world I pick the book up off the ground and carry it as versions of white replacement theory overrun the continent my daughter climbs into my lap puts her head against my chest and says my dad's awake in there when I can't write up home I feel alone in a world of corporations standing in a hall of endings listening the names of the dead according to their faces blur into the general onslaught of the news I too like you when guilty of forgetting in the passing of the great race medicine grant deposits that genetic dissolution cause the west to fall every night my daughter puts her face against my cheek and whispers in my ear Rome begins to burn the second time the ghost of Athens all of Alexandria the book is lighter now and larger because my dad will never meet my kids I'm trying to remember him when he was young the closer that I get the more the form my apprehend appears increasingly transparent his language failing him a day before his body does I want to live forever so that my kids will never need to write a poem like this but so does everyone I think and so my hope is done my daughter kisses me and I promise silently inside myself that I'll remember the weight her face exerts against my own the quiet pressure of her mouth the kind of music moving through me blooming in the garden of my memory I guard the growing darkness of my grave and drag a branch across the wild grass and sing my singing ceases in the room my father is growing smaller and my shoulder slumps against his deathbed I have not and never did have any motive but to achieve clarity that's often my daughter sleeping in the other room appears to me the reason that there's left the absolute singular the unearthly bonds of the singular when he met my mother I often wonder if my dad imagined me if at some point and only for a moment I existed long before my body did a single candle flickers near a picture of my father on an altar in a room reserved for living the book I shot is now alive in this book the light of the pages packed against each other exposes the new day and thank you thank you for being here for hosting events like this in Wisconsin one of the incredibly necessary and surreal experiences I've had since becoming the poet laureate of the state that I was born in in January is being invited to all these little literary pockets in a state where when I was growing up as a writer a young writer you know, a player it felt like I was the only person here I felt like I was the only person doing this thing that felt so important to me Wisconsin was so lonely then and now almost every weekend I'm gone which is lonely I suppose in a different way because I'm always driving there's communities like this all over states I think if anything when I'm done doing this in a couple years I think that's what I'll take with me that's why this position has been so necessary this is a poem from my daughters called eulogy while living if I last long enough to listen these dreams of spring I've tucked into a book will sound the pallid apex of my laps paint them with me, daughter make me brighter the earth is dark as money still I've got a better singer's rendering of God inside me blueprint of the aftermath these seeds of grief perennial if I was ever good to you or if the lake in which the night resolves returns to you your name plant them near me like the living altar of a prayer I fail to offer and teach your girls when they come home to you like lanterns the porous edge of every utterance of soul by the time you're bold enough to read this by the time there isn't time the song does not belong to us forgive me to be remembered thank you I was struck by what you said about you know pockets and communities of poets everywhere throughout the state and it's true and that made me think that I want to put in another plug for the 100,000 Poets for Change book because what I didn't say at the beginning is there's probably close to 100 essays like I said people all over the world all over the US and you read these essays of what people have been doing in their own communities for poetry and activism and you just get goosebumps because it's like it makes me feel like part of something bigger when you write a poem you're sort of like at your desk or wherever you are and you think who cares about this but it's actually something that brings us together and we see reflections of each other in the poems and it was just so beautiful hearing everybody today and thank you for coming Nick it was really really great to have you here and thank you to the Jeanie Gartman and the library for hosting us and just shabuagan is a great place I must say I want to read you one last poem is that okay can I do that and then I'm going to turn the mic over to John who will sing us a song and tell us some cool stuff that's going on also today so hang on got to put this down oh look $20 that's $15 off the list price you really should buy it okay there's lots of pictures in it too one of the fun things about being poet laureate I don't know if you've done this Nick but I've been asked to write what are called occasional poems for things going on in the city and that's always kind of a fun challenge so when our current mayor was in stated he asked me if I would write a poem for his the ceremony so this is what I came up with and it makes me feel like how we're all a part of something so that's why I wanted to share it in closing today it's called if a city if a city was a story it would begin long before streets and structures it would begin with land and people who lived there before it was a city if a city was a poem it would be spoken in slow meandering lines with a litany of occurrences triumphs missteps and revolutions there would be growth and it would not always rhyme if a city was a sentence it would be declarative it would have a noun like neighbor or friend and many verbs igniting action create discover help flourish dream propose remember the adjectives in the city would write themselves and would be testimony to all the good works of the people who live there thriving generous just compassionate and welcoming there would be no period at the end of the sentence because like a poem the city is always unfolding towards something better and everyone who lives in that city adds their voice to the story as a hand in its making take that with you today my city compatriots and yeah John Doe, you're up can you hear me? two announcements this is a great event and I wanted to remind all of you poets and songwriters in general that we have an open mic very much run on the same thing the same sort of format here that we do here it's at Kelly Holstein's Word Haven bookstore and it's in the upstairs now in an old dance studio above Rudnick Jewelers and it's the first Wednesday of each month so the next one coming up is a week from this coming Wednesday on October 4th and it goes from 6 to 8 and a lot of you have been participated in it anybody from anywhere is welcome to show up for that the other event that Lisa mentioned that this afternoon in Sheboygan Falls 101 school street in the old middle school for Sheboygan Falls is a play a musical play that is lasts about 50 minutes and it's a tribute to Evelyn Prevenis I don't know if any of you know Evelyn Prevenis she's a 96 year old treasure of the community she's a poet, a writer in her own right and she's the central character in this production and she's actually in it at 96 years old she was a Tai Chi teacher for 15, 17 years at the old senior center before Jane and I took over the Tai Chi teaching she retired handed it to us when she was 90 years old when she was 79 years old she took up skydiving so she all of this is in this play and I've written some music for it if you have time it's short notice of course if you have time it starts at 2.30 this afternoon so you have time to eat lunch and then get out there and watch it it's a 101 school street it's called the Berkshire now it's a middle school that's converted into a senior living community so 2.30 this afternoon when she's going to fall I'm going to close with a song that I wrote as we were heading into the pandemic probably the week of the pandemic and it's based on based on a sermon that my father in law who was a retired Unitarian minister from Salt Lake City he passed away about 4 or 5 years ago but in his last sermon he talked to, it was titled Equality, Liberty, Fraternity and the just of the sermon was that we have tried equality in the form of communism and it was a dreadful failure and this was this sermon he gave 25 years ago and he said we are at the end of liberty the laissez-faire capitalism run amok the only thing left is fraternity so we've gone beyond the tipping point can't look back we're blind now we must see we've gone beyond the tipping point to the black we've done now we must be trying to make ourselves equal we've tried to make ourselves dream the only other thing we never tried to do is to love each other unconditionally we've gone beyond the tipping point gone beyond the tipping point we're lost in space when do we go from here we've gone beyond the running of this human race our course is now quite clear we've tried to keep ourselves separate trying to make ourselves free the only other thing we never tried to do is to love each other unconditionally we've gone beyond the tipping point where do we we never tried to do is to love each other here we've gone beyond to rush off talk to each other a little it's not noon, we're supposed to go to noon so we've got a little time say hi to a poet, say hi to thank you for the poets, the readers thank you for the listeners thank you to John and Jane our sound person 100,000 poets for change couldn't happen without all of you thank you so much go for it we've gone beyond the tipping point where do we go