 Hello, everyone. Welcome to the San Francisco Public Library. I'm John Smalley, a librarian with the General Collections. Thanks for all, all of you coming to this month's poem jam, which celebrates the legendary poet educator beat generation luminary and former San Francisco poet laureate. And the Prima. All waiting for some more people to join us. I want to take a moment to acknowledge our community and to tell you about a few of our upcoming programs. And on behalf of the public library, we want to welcome you to the unceded ancestral homeland of the raw material only, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco peninsula. In the stewards of this land in an in accordance with their traditions, the raw material only have never seated lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place. As guests, we who reside in their traditional territory, recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. We want to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders and relatives of the raw material community, and by affirming their sovereign rights as first peoples. This Sunday, December 12, please come to the library's free screening of red poet, a film about Jack Kershman, the renowned poet, translator, activist and former poet laureate of San Francisco. The screening will take place in the main libraries, correct auditorium. On Sunday, the panel discussion of authors, including Dodie Bellamy and Eileen Miles will be discussing the legacy of Bellamy's pioneering influential and experimental letters Amina Harka, as well as Bellamy's new memoir, We Rived. Lastly, on Friday, December 17, author Deborah Miranda discusses her book, Bad Indians, A Tribal Memoir. Miranda's beautiful and devastating book has been described as part tribal history, part lyric and part intimate memoir. On Monday, December 20, the libraries on the same page book club will be discussing the same book. So this ends my announcements of upcoming programs I'd like to turn the microphone over now to our poem jam host. Kim Shuck. Please welcome Kim Shuck. Hey, people, how's it going. We're having kind of an exciting time here. I'm delighted to be hosting an event in Silver, it's my favorite. I started a project. A while back, I was hoping to get women to recommend one person who had been instrumental in their writing poetry, and one person that they feel like it's an upcoming inspiration to keep in the future. And in the cohort just slightly under me, pretty much everybody mentioned Diane. She's still with us in a lot of ways inspiring people to do. I want to also apologize. I'm going to sound a little pleasant tonight. I'm going to get right into it because we've got a lot of incredible readers, and I'm just really grateful for the people who have come to do this. So I'm first going to introduce Barton, who is not is not only the laureate America from. Wow, thank you Sonoma I'm like, north of Marin. I'm getting older from Sonoma County, but also somebody I've known since I was about eight years old really good friends. Please welcome Barton. Hi, I am. I knew Diane, I tried to get to know her in the mid 80s when I was in new college but I could never get into her class she was it was all, I was always late, and it was always filled from. Anyway, so I finally got to meet her through Jerry to Giorno in the early 2000s, and I took several classes from her. And we're going to read a poem called fire sale, everything must go. And this one that Diane wrote around 2012 2013. I had the privilege of reading this poem for her because she was ill and couldn't read it and she wanted to fulfill her obligation. Because she said she would read, and so I read for her so this is fire sale, everything must go. Well, we can't build the new society within the shell of the old. Though it seemed a good idea at the time. It's too late for that now. Sorry. I really am. I love those old wobbly songs. We can't just let the state disintegrate because it's it is seems it won't. Instead, it just keeps getting stronger, more solid. We turn back to those other long failed and failing systems. Things must go and let him with him Trotsky to let's stop looking over our shoulders. No good copying Scandinavian socialism, though it works up to a point, but it's too sad. And besides the race for the class for the skinheads and Nazis and tea bag people will kill you before you try. I mean, echo left wing socio scarcity and our co unionist scare you somehow blah blahs will have to go to. You all talk too much and too long are too divisive, and you forget, we have to unite and not just build consensus, even if just to survive. This is the fire next time it's here and it's called oil in the Gulf crack in the ocean floor earthquake and Haiti, Chile, Kobe, Managua, Tibet, it's called hole in the ozone islands underwater. It's called the recession is over while more and more of us are jobless homeless hungry angry cold. And the market recovers and the stocks go up. This is the fire next time fire sale, and everything must go. We can't fix it by figuring out what's wrong, like a car mechanic, looking under the goddamn hood, when the car is totaled. We can get through this by taking a good, hard look at what's possible. Get it. We can get get through this by taking a good hard look at what's possible. Get it. Not what's wrong. What's possible. Repeat after me. We need to look, not at what's wrong. But what is possible. Not what's wrong with capitalism, communism, socialism, imperialism, syndicalism, unionism, you name it. But what is possible. What can be dreamed. What would your fantasy, your imagination say is possible. If reality were no obstacle, which it ain't, who would you be. And what would you be doing. You don't know nothing, except that it starts right here. Don't know nothing, but every vision is holy. So who did you say you are. You too. And you. And you. I am. So much bill. Yeah. The rest of this is important. Um, Next, we have pretty cost fellow. Who is has for a long time been involved with freedom voices for us. And is one of my favorite reading voices in the area. Hello everybody. So good to see all of you. And to share in these reflections and memories and words of Diane. I'm going to focus on Diane as a teacher. I'm going to read some things that I wrote about her, rather than things that she wrote. This is an excerpt from a longer prose piece I'm working on about what I learned from Diane. I was just 23 when I started into a decade of study with Diane. That was about 1979 or 80. She wasn't teaching poetry then she was teaching how to access the inner wellspring that poetry, creativity and healing emerge from the first class I took was called structures of magic and techniques of visioning. She delved us into the tarot, the cabala, the each thing astrology and more delineating the inherent correspondences among these divination traditions. Any aspect of the living world could be divided up and hung on the tree of life gemstones planets plants body parts herbs. God's and goddesses from any culture hurting installed a skeleton of reality inside my young mind and heart where for the rest of my life I could hang anything I learned. She was all about bringing the ancient sacred human arts alive. Here and now among the living. That was the structures of magic part. And if you wanted to know what a tarot card was all about you didn't look it up in a book. No you were led into a sort of trance state diving into your own inner vision your own doorway to the universal unconscious, where you could have your own conversation with the hermit the priestess the queen of swords the fool. That was the techniques of visioning part. Poetry often came out of out of us after these inner journeys but that wasn't the point. The point was learning to access the inner source. And why wasn't she teaching poetry then. As she put it she never wanted to hear another. I cried for you on Sanchez street poem. She wanted to teach people how to go deep to the source. Diane was living exactly as the muse moved her and she wanted all of us to free ourselves from any shoulds or conventions or limiting beliefs that might make a shoehorn ourselves into a life too small for us. An example exuded the question, what is worth doing while you're here don't miss it don't forget don't fall asleep imagine for yourself, you are capable of so much more than anyone ever led you to believe. Don't let this messed up society stop you from being who you really are. Don't deprive the world of the treasures you were meant to bring. And that was just the first class. Other aspects that are not poetry, you know, but they certainly are close cousins of poetry. Okay, so this is something I wrote two days after Diane died and I reading it a lot because it's important to remember that Diane was a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner. There's an epigram at the beginning, write your own death poem. Otherwise, you're just being a warrior. Diane to prima. It's called goodbye Diane hello death. Everything is relentless my running off to get a drink of water make a cup of tea, my washing of already clean hands, my urge to check whether Molly the cat is sending her usual afternoon sunspot, but she is. That's my death poem, at least one, and halfway to finding my journal my mind drifts off again thinking of Diane gone two days now wishing I knew the poha path or practice better to pray her through the bardo stopping just short of Googling it. How busy thinking how big she was how many directions she could zoom in or out to all at the same time, physics alchemy botany history is any piece you find out she once said gems bitter herbs astronomy astrology out onto the front lines are inward to all worlds. How impatient she was with lack of clear intent with willy nearly will with unaware harming's the wake up call gravitating from her core in every direction for miles, all with the jazz beat of Brooklyn accent a diggers soul so non immortal again calling down get back to your own non immortality. The piles of every accumulated thing alive with laughter all around me snickering at predictable human disbelief. The photos that will never find their way to need albums, the multiple one time curricula that will never be retaught. What can I log up into the light who stands beside me in this everyday non tragedy of times ruthless passing this calamity of dying earth. How can she be traveling now through the bardo dreams, untangling hollow phantoms while still flooding this world with awakening so nimble and clear from having left her body weight behind. You're not doing this quite right she would tell me now and as usual she wouldn't be wrong, illuminating more genuine depths more worthwhile alchemy I could be wedding myself to her fierce discernment without blame, pitching those two in a way so rarely seen. Not a gentle shove but a kind one, pushing me back to my own endings into this fading light of this one knowable day, a clear fall afternoon slipping toward the skyline, my own plunge almost known fathoming that I must listen now before the light fades. Before my son goes down and the last piece. I was blessed to attend the last poetics class Diane ever taught that was a five week class in 2018. So after she died I look back at all my notes and I gathered this found poem from the notes I just I didn't know why I was scribbling the madly during the class but this is why. Poetic guidance from Diane de Prima a found poem in the morning when you're not quite you ride that to other times and places over here things trust a tiny piece of memory and keep going. Be completely on your own side. Right at the same time each day and your body will depend on it. Nothing is as important as writing in the time you set aside for writing. Kickstart make a collage sharpened pencils light a candle. What you do with your actual cells is more important than image image is more important than words organizing is as important as anything. Look for clues all senses what happened on that very street in that very spot pick a color see it everywhere you go. Windows shop for a character you might want to wear ask about or two for any poem. Think of those you're writing for not those who will be upset by what you write write the history only you know. Read read read read obituaries keep a notebook of title pages with no content. Let it come or pull down a book and grab a passage to start. See stuff between the lines on the page. Include present moment interruptions in your piece and look for coincidence. Hold the paradox. Study alchemy biology the society you're in. Don't understand it. Don't believe it but know it's true. Take the scary fork in the road. What is your poems darkest secret it's biggest fear. Ask the each thing the tarot right what you must never write. If you're bored hungry can't sit there one more minute. You're probably onto something holds still through all your bad writing through all your fright and jealous critics. If there's something you're doing well they'll pay you anything to stop doing it. Believe the news they never teach you things you hate or waiting to delight you if you take the time to learn them. Cut in dreams cut in comic books right for all beings write your own death poem for heaven's sake don't believe your opinions except the limits of your body. The requirements of our life is the shape of our art. Thank you. Okay. So I have the honor of introducing shepherd. Paul was one of the first people I got to know when I moved to San Francisco in the late 70s and I moved into the flat above him in the Castro. And that was before he and Diane became sweethearts. There was there was always like an album playing at shepherds every time you'd stop by like the loneliest monk or Lord Buckley or Lenny Bruce or Nina Simone I was just getting this whole like download of all kinds of things that I hadn't ever known about before very much. Anyway, he was the person who told me you should go study with Diane which changed my life for good forever. And he wrote for his little bio for this event was that was this shepherd pals an artist and a teacher. He and miss the Prima were crazy in love for the last 42 years of the poet's life. So am I up. Am I unmuted. Good. Yes. Okay. Seven years of Diane's life. She came deeply involved with the life and songs of Sappho and and Carson came out with this fabulous translation, including some newly found parchment fragments and most of the pages. There's a lot of space in them, because it's fragments it's very rare where you'd have a full page of type. Oh, and the other thing that's so beautiful about it is it's bilingual. It has the old Greek on left hand page and and translation on the right. She ended up buying 10 copies of it, because she kept filling them up with poems that the Sappho fragments took her to, and I read some, though now I have no script for our language, nor can I reproduce its syntax. No words for the fruits we shared. And the wine had bubbles that burst blue black on my lips. You gave me a blue rose. awake. I am holding it still call them love marks, Sappho. But it is hardly love. Perhaps he wants to be sure neither you nor I forget who owns me, thou restless, ungathered. The poet said, and I went to see for myself. No mention of mountain. No mountain wind. Just our two hearts uprooted. His and hers. She loves youth. And on those she loves, she bestows it again and again, like a whirlwind uprooting a large oak. No love tore up my heart. Mother, I hunger for you. Bring me to the feast. Awake beside my sweet lover. I wait the dawn. He has no use for the arts you taught me. Doesn't ask me to sing or dance. But today was my hair bound up. My hands burnt from the brazier. I served his mother, his first wife. Sleep on the ground. The restless beauty from which neither God nor man can turn. Quit staring into my eyes. What do you want? I want to be the bravest woman. Who? Or what? Do you want to Aphrodite? The golden. Once more in exile. In beautiful Syracusa. I watch my skin go from gold. I'm still your child. Oh, golden one. Rain of yards. And inner fire prepares. Once again. To burst forth from core of the earth. Told you, I'd see you again. And soon, dear one. I sent you the heart of a dream. She replied with facts. I brush aside. Looking instead. To feast on sweet deception. One more once. Diane in case everybody doesn't know left behind. Easily as much work. As the volume of stuff that she published. She just couldn't take the time to stop. And she loved making books, but it's time consuming. And the stuff just kept coming through her. So. Coming out. For years to come. I found this one last night. I don't know what it's up. Your hot hands. Your hot hands. Must close this window between us. I have tried to gather you, but. I can't breathe. The pages drift. I wish my memories would crumble like your body. You are laughing. Inside me. Knowing we know we know. I knew you were on the way when I dreamed of Noah's Ark. Before they tore you out of me. Making insides out. Are you still a photographer? Send me some prints, would you? So I may burn them. And release myself. And stalk your new ground. Like you stalked your old. After 20 years, the Christmas cactus died. Diane spent easily the second half of her life. Preparing. For death. You know, it's a big deal in the Buddhist world, but to her. Was also, you know, the one journey. We have in common. And she knew her passions. For the things of this life were so strong. She was genuinely afraid. She would. She was distracted. At the time when she really needed to focus. So in the early nineties, she started writing death phones. There are thousands of them. Many of them short. Three to five lines in the kind of. Japanese. Model, but others. I'm going to go back to that. Like this first one a little longer. And it sort of just describes her dilemma. Travel poem for shepherd. Leaving on a 10 day trip. I get back in bed. For the warms. And to feel your body. Against mine. When the time comes. How will I ever leave this world. To leave. Too late now to figure out what to give away. And who to give it to. Just go now. The way out. Is through the door. Now leave. As long as I can see your eyes. I won't go willingly. No matter how many duck he needs. Come to meet me. Can't imagine what magic word will loosen my grass. I can't imagine what magic word will loosen my grass. I can't imagine what magic word will loosen my grass. I can't imagine what magic word speaks in my ear. What do you take me for? So many blackbirds throng the evening sky. Am I the one to fall to earth. Tonight. To death. Come back. Why don't you. After the season of summer troops. Easy to love silence. After all this noise. I think I'll get in a nightgown. And slippers. Maybe I am dying. I find myself saying I love you. To more and more people. Poem on the tip of my tongue. As the world. Goes silent. Hand me my pen. My life may be over. But the poems. Haven't stopped. Thank you. Do I introduce Jenny Joe now. We. Thank you. Do I introduce Jenny Joe now. Yes. That was my 10 minute thing. Jenny Joe came into our lives. When she moved here from Hawaii. Showed up at a. Teaching Diane was doing up in. I think it was Mendocino. And. From then on until she had to move away because. Came impossible to afford living around here. She. Studied with Diane. And. She. Did everything. And Diane. And. I began to think of her as. Like one of her. Daughters. Of the arts. And I ran across this death phone. Too late now to pass on what I know. To someone who already knows. Poetry is sacred. Jenny Joe. Thank you, shepherd. I studied with Diane and had the good luck to teach with her. At the San Francisco public library while she was poet laureate. And at 826 Valencia. So what an honor to be here tonight. She fiercely taught me I could be an artist as well as a mother. As difficult as that has been. And. It wasn't the easy path. It wasn't the easy path. Or considered by most as a significant voice. So I decided to read some of her mother poems tonight. Among other ones. So I will begin with prayer to the mothers. They say you lurk here still. Perhaps in the depths of the earth. Or on some sacred mountain. The sun shines in the air in the sand. Warning, warning, weaving the crooked shape of our deliverance. Anxious, not hasty. Careful. You step among cups. Step out of crystal. Heal with a holy glow of your dark eyes. They say you unveil a green face in the jungle. Where blue in the snows. Dance on our dead. Crune, fuck, embrace our weariness. You lurk here still. Mother in caves. Warn, warn, and weave. Warp of our hope. Link hands against the evil in the stars. Oh rain poison upon us. Acid which eats clean. Weakness like children from a nightmare. Give the slip to the devourers whom I cannot name. The metal men who walk on all our substance. Crushing flesh to swamp. I'm going to humbly attempt. Rant, rant. You cannot write a single line without a cosmology. Layed out before all eyes. There is no part of yourself you can separate out. Saying this is memory. This is sensation. This is the work I care about. This is how I make a living. It is whole. It is a whole. It always was whole. You do not make it so. There is nothing to integrate. You are a presence. You are an appendage of the work. The work stems from hangs from the heaven you create. Every man every woman carries a firmament inside. And the stars in it are not the stars in the sky. Without imagination there is no memory. Without imagination there is no sensation. Without imagination there is no will, no desire. History is a living weapon in your hand. And you have imagined it. It is thus that you find out for yourself. History is the dream of what can be. It is the relation between things in a continuum. What you find out for yourself is what you select. Out of an infinite sea of possibility, no one can inhabit your world. Yet it is not lonely. The ground of imagination is fearlessness. Discourse is videotape of a movie of a shadow play. But the puppets are in your hand. Your counters in a multi-dimensional chess, which is divination, strategy. The war that matters is the war against the imagination. All other wars are subsumed in it. The ultimate famine is the starvation of the imagination. It is death to be sure. But the undead seek to inhabit someone else's world. The ultimate claustrophobia is the syllogism. The ultimate claustrophobia is it all adds up. Nothing adds up and nothing stands in for anything else. The only war that matters is the war against the imagination. The only war that matters is the war against the imagination. The only war that matters is the war against the imagination. All other wars are subsumed in it. There is no way out of the spiritual battle. There is no way you can avoid taking sides. There are no way you cannot have a poetics, no matter what you do, plumber, baker, teacher, you do it in the consciousness of making or not making your world. You have a poetics. You step into the world like a suit of ready-made clothes. Or you etch in light. Your firmament spills into the shape of your room. The shape of the poem, of your body, your loves. A woman's life, a man's life is an allegory. Dig it. There is no way out of the spiritual battle. The war is the war against the imagination. You can't sign up as a conscientious objector. The war of the world hangs here right now in the balance. It is a war for this world to keep it a veil of soul-making. The taste in all our mouths is the taste of our power and it is bitter as death. Brings yourself home to yourself. Enter the garden. The guy at the gate with the flaming sword is yourself. The war is the war for the human imagination and no one can fight it but you and no one can fight it for you. The imagination is not only holy, it is precise. It is not only fierce, it is practical. Men die every day for the lack of it. It is vast and elegant. Intellectus means light of the mind. It is not discourse, it is not even language. The inner sun, the polis is constellated around the sun. The fire is central and I'm almost out of time. So which to decide on. I'm going to read the poetry deal. Excuse me. The poetry deal. I want to say that I don't want anything but the whisper of your scarf as you do the dance of the seven veils. Soft sound of your satin slippers on the carpet and the raw still bloody meat you toss my way that I chew on all night long. I don't want anything you don't already give me. Trips to other worlds, dimensions of light or sound, rides on the back of a leopard, on those black rocks high over some sea or gorge. But it isn't true. I want all that, sheet lightning of quasars that you dance between those colors. Yes, but I want you as mother, sister, stone walls of the cave I lie in, in trance for seven days, the mist around my cabin that makes it invisible. I want the flair and counterpoint of words and I want the nonverbal that what never can be spoken as a foundation. I'd like my daily bread however you arrange it and I'd also like to be bread or sustenance for some others even after I've left. A song they can walk a trail with. I don't think we talked about money or success or fame, whatever that is for a long time. I hope you'd forgot that part. Now I'll do as you say about all that, whatever seems most useful. I'd like to keep learning how to brew bitter herbs and how to make them translucent, edible, almost crystalline. What I offered you wasn't much. You can always wake me like my closest friend or most loved lover. You can burn my favorite snapshot of myself, lead me on paths or non paths anywhere. You cannot make sense for years and I'll still believe you. Drop husbands, tribes and jobs as you wish. You mostly aren't jealous, have taken your place alongside gardens, bread making, children, printing presses. But when your eyes shoot sparks and you say, choose between me and it, it has always gone, except when it was my kids. I took that risk and we worked it out somehow. Now I've come to a place where there are no kids, no tribe, no bread, no garden, only you and your two faces formed and formless. Nothing to hold back now and nothing to offer. I stand before you, a piece of wind with a notebook and pen. Which one of us is it, dances? And which is the quasar? Thank you, thank you. Thank you, thank you, Jennifer. So I was gonna introduce Kimi next. No, no, I'm going to introduce Melissa Otharian-Carr. This is a good moment to point out. This reading has been afflicted with whimsical remedies, which is probably appropriate. Melissa Otharian-Carr is the poet laureate of the story. She's a librarian. She was introduced to me by one of my very favorite people in the world, Linda Moose. If she forgives me for today, she will also be getting the award for most patient human of 2021. Please welcome Melissa Otharian-Carr. Thank you so much, Kim. I'm honored to be here among all of you. I have admired so many of you from afar and some of you I am really grateful to know in my life. And so I'm waving to Jenny-Joan. I'm really excited to be here. And obviously to honor Diane, who was such a force in my life, a pivotal force. And I imagine she was for each of you in your own rights. She touched so many of us in so many ways. The last time I saw Diane, she was teaching two nurses at the hospital about Eastern mysticism while practicing her physical therapy. To me, this feels like an acute snapshot of Diane, teaching, learning, giving, receiving, and balance. As her student friend and later her assistant, I had the great privilege of her presence where I absorbed daily wisdoms in exchanges. We would be chatting while I worked organizing her attack stuff, as she called it. And suddenly we would be discussing various universal mysteries. Like the day she revealed, it is all fluid, all of it. Diane generously gave so much of herself all of the time to poetics and to the universe of knowledge. To her, there seemed to be no distinction. It was all one big poem. This way of being in the world, this understanding was an opening for me and perhaps for others as well. The removal of time gushes from a line we will not follow. Say the word pattern and I will dance footless on a mountain to blur the edges. Poem for Diane as Loba Lioness. I have returned to the wilderness's mouth, a lake and its golden hairs, the internal structures and cilia, my proud mane, its branches, magpie, a cloak of ivory, where canopy, where ground, each a protective cover of wild embrace. To each leaf wrestle a song. I have returned to the wind, rare as my wolf cry, my cells a radial divide dispersed in a cast of grace and grit. Among those leopard spotted hills. To call a chiamare or a radiata, to call and wild or still a meadow, to call and begin to turn into. I have returned to the sea, to the mare and rasp, the conch and roar of it. I have returned to the maiden's wasp, the abalone hull of being held. Lioness of the rolling dirt hills, lioness of dust, protector of the bay, guardian of the sands, promise and time. I have returned to fire, that creative cauldron of energetics, living the metonymy of poems. I have returned to fire. I have returned to earth. I run with the mycelia heart over hand. I run with the silly. I run with limestone over the outcrops and through the forest of loving. I am home. I started writing that piece for Diane last year. Heard she passed and I wasn't sure I would read it, but I decided at the last minute to read that poem that I wrote for her. And here we are. I'm gonna read a few poems from Timebomb, which I had the pleasure of working on her, working alongside her on this book that she self-published. I'll read two poems from Timebomb and then I will attempt to read one poem from Revolutionary Letters if I have time. So Timebomb, I should preface by saying that if you haven't read this, it is a poem, a book-length poem that she wrote in one night from visions that occurred to her, that came to her much like Loba and very different from Loba, but visions nonetheless and poems nonetheless that always kept coming. And this whole book is written in one night. Human hair laid alongside avocado in this final taco. I'm at a period in my own life where nothing works, she said. She was hanging onto a chimney in the wind, just thinking out loud. So hard to choose which poems to read of Diane's because there's just so many. We could have, we should have, we should have a marathon reading of Diane's work. I would love to do that if you all would like to join me. Revolutionary Letter Number 68, Life Chant. May it come that all the radiances will be known as our own radiance, Tibetan Book of the Dead. Cacophony of Small Birds at Dawn. May it continue. Sicky monkey flowers on bare brown hills. May it continue. Bitter taste of early minor's lettuce. May it continue. Music on city streets in the summer nights. May it continue. Kids laughing on roofs, on stoops, on the beach and the snow. May it continue. Triumphal shout of the newborn. May it continue. Deep silence of great rainforests. May it continue. Fine austerity of jungle peoples. May it continue. Rolling fuck of great whales in turquoise ocean. May it continue. Clumsy splash of pelican in smooth bays. May it continue. Astonished human eyeball squinting through eons at a astonished nebula who squint back. May it continue. Clean snow on the mountain. May it continue. Fierce eyes, clear light of the ages. May it continue. Right of birth and of naming. May it continue. Right of instruction. May it continue. Right of passage. May it continue. Love in the morning. Love in the noon sun. Love in the evening among crickets. May it continue. Long tales by fire, by window, in fog, in dusk, on the mesa. May it continue. Love in thick midnight. Fierce joy of old ones loving. May it continue. The night music. May it continue. Grunt of mating hippo giraffe foreplay of snow leopard screeching of cats on the backyard fence. May it continue. Without police. May it continue. Without prisons. May it continue. Without hospitals. Death medicine. Flu and flu vaccine. May it continue. Without madhouses, marriage, high schools that are prisons. May it continue. Without empire. May it continue. In sisterhood. May it continue. Through the wars to come. May it continue. In brotherhood. May it continue. Though the earth seemed lost. May it continue. Through exile and silence. May it continue. With cunning and love. May it continue. As woman continues. May it continue. As breath continues. May it continue. As stars continue. May it continue. May the wind deal kindly with us. May the fire remember our names. May springs flow, rain fall again. May the land grow green. May it swallow our mistakes. We begin the work. May it continue. The great transmutation. May it continue. A new heaven and a new earth. May it continue. May it continue. Thank you. Okay, Katie. So I have the pleasure of introducing Kimi Sugiyoka. Who I have known for like over 40 years now. Kimi and I, I think it was the first like little intimate writing group where we brought our poems and gave each other feedback like back in 1980 or something. We're doing that and we were practicing martial arts together. And Kimi, you can't help but give, you know, one of those glowing introductions because well, she's not just a poet. She's also an amazing singer, songwriter and guitarist. She is the poet laureate of Alameda. She's a graduate of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa, which is just really fun to have a reason to say that out loud. She blessed her heart to that special Ed for decades in the East Bay and was a union activist throughout all that all while she was raising her beautiful son Kai. So Kimi Sugiyoka. Wow, thank you. Thank you, Kitty. That's amazing to think of all the years that have passed. Now honored I am to know you Kitty as and Diane and so happy to see Shep's face after all these years. It has been a very long time since I've seen Diane in person. Fortunately, we used to have dreams about each other just from time to time. And I would hear what she dreamed. I'll hear a little more about that later, but I wanted to read this paragraph from Recollections of My Life as a Woman. She wrote it after, this is after a friend of hers, Peter had died. What I saw then was this fairly obvious faculty of art. That it goes on. It lasts a bit longer than our frail human lives. It offers comfort. The vision is more enduring than our persons. It uplifts us past the vicissitudes of time, uplifts till it too is done or forgotten. 10 years, 500 years. It is the working of our loving hearts brewing out of us into the light of day. Like Bodhisattvas, we bring this liberation, this solace to each other, when we are simply ambitious, working for fame as Keats once thought he was doing, working for money or glory. What we are left with is finally what we leave, this reaching out to touch, to comfort others, to make the world bearable, possible at all. And I just thought that was really beautiful. And I wanted to read one of the local poems. Short one, this book as well as Diane had a very strong influence on me as a poet and a human being. This one is called The Ruses, a coyote tail. Sometimes you take up the trap and run with a metal between your teeth. At times it is better to chew off your leg. You have in this case to consider the trail of blood. Sometimes for weeks it is better not to eat. The meat is poisoned, but you wait it out. Knowing the creatures are not consistent, they forget. Or they will move on. It is hard to explain this to cubs. You keep downwind, stick to the water, journey in thick mist or at the dark of the moon. There come the safe times when we congregate in the snow under large barren trees. And each of us is a flame, an offering to the moon. At such times it is unnecessary to sing. Hmm, I love that. So, uh, the most vivid dream I had of Diane was one where she was a river goddess. She was sitting on a great rock in a river and she had vials of color which she was methodically pouring into the water. I knew that these colors would eventually reach the sea and I was greatly comforted by this. So, I'm going to read one section of a long poem that was inspired by Diane and, you might hear her vaguely referred to. This poem is called Ceremony. Beneath the luminously ticking sky, I wonder, wonder at the minute focus of humans and dogs. Metschen, Foelein, Frau, Nenia, Signorita, Signora. Echo of stones, dropped in my pelvis like ripe figs, scattering fragments of passion gone fallow in this field of breath. The moon struck 12 and down she ran, sucking the wind from virgin forests and untainted sands, a thousand footprints dancing between her thighs, a naked monarch with tattered wings. Driven by drift and blight, the marches tear at the neck and throat, note the knives, the wounds, the codfish belly, breast of snow goose, fallen under rod and gun, downy, unbidden, formulaic. We are at once hunter and prey softly slayed, and rendered taut and still. Alongside the broken arrow, resting sword, unraveled basket, a torn womb, a bitter lining, a bleak narcissist, a bitten bloom, a rattler skin. The fragrance of soot, color of sand, taste of ash and honey, texture of sun melted asphalt, sound of wavelets lapping, lapping. I was unguent unto myself, liven un arpeiton, casse et comere, chanson et theatre, and mother to some 500 lost boys. In the dew of starlight, a snickering angel in the mouth of devotion. Attempted to be healer, prayer, savior, bless me Orion, let me feel joy. In a pebbled brightness, smoothed as seawashed agates, blinded by beauty, serrated unwound. Moved with and by feathers, wings the usual things, a boy who cries over a lost matchbox car, a solitary star over San Francisco, girls fussing over and kissing mutant frogs. You might find me at daybreak, slurred with sleep, damp with longing or unbending stiff bones before a fire of buffalo chip and microwave or microwave. You might find me at twilight, undaunted but wilting with grief over senselessly slain beasts. You might break in at midnight, a warrior, a lover, a sleepless mockingbird. You might spin my poems into silk. I, the worm, I, the crow, the doormat, the sleepy child, the wind chime, the hopeless angel, the fierce mother, steeped in tuberoys, tuberose, oil of myrrh, incest of sky, music of the Shinto goddess Benton. Bent, stuck, withered, caught in the fibers of decades without ambition or glory, but seeking sumptuous perpetual virginity. I of crater and musk am dying the river's crimson, mother of 10,000 things under one roof. Amaranth, whiskey, the sound of light, the color of odor, unbidden elements reframed the text. Must have been the texture of your hair filled with sun, sand and salt. O ocean, wood that you could drown our sins, our one sinister synapse, so we might return as a heliotropic owl or lunar flower. Rapture, raptor, the bone-crushing joy of praying mantis falcon, condor, hawk. Traverse this fallen angel's past. Path, this false angle, this gaunt epiphany. We come here full and spill ourselves out. So thank you. There is so much more I could say. Yeah, let's have that marathon Diane reading. And bless you to all of you. Thank you for letting me be here. Maybe there was no other way. Yes, absolutely, I'm on team marathon reading also. What a great idea. Um, I'm going to go as a Martin is from a friend and family. You know, there are those people in your life who you're completely convinced that if there was a really bad situation, you could call them and they'd say, you know, I feel that way about him. He'd just say that way about me. I'd lay down in the traffic for him. He's also the current court lawyer in San Francisco. Condor, Revolutionary letter number nine, advocating the overthrow of government is a crime. Overthrowing it is something else altogether. It is sometimes called revolution. But don't kid yourself. Government is not where it's at. It's only a good place to start. Number one, killhead of Dow Chemical. To destroy it, plant. Three, make it unprofitable for them to build again. IE destroy the concept of money as we know it. Get rid of interest, savings, inheritance, pounds, money as dated coupons that come in the mail to everyone and are void in 30 days is still a good idea. Or let's start with no money at all and invent it if we need it. Or maybe a graph it and everyone print as much as they want and see what happens to clear a moratorium on debt. The Continental Congress did on all debts, public and private. And no one owns the land. It can be held for use. No man holding more than he can work himself and family working. Let no one work for another, except for love. And what you may above the knees be given to the tribe of common wealth. None of us knows the answers. Think about these things. The days will come when we have to know the answers. Revolutionary letter number twenty three. A lack of faith is simply a lack of courage. One who says I wish I could believe that means simply that he is coward. Is pleased to be spectator on this scene where there are no spectators where all hands not actually working or working against as they lie idle folded in lap or holding the newspapers full of lies or wrapped around steering wheels on one more pleasure trip. Revolutionary letter number twenty nine. Beware of those who say we are beautiful losers. Who stand in their long hair and wait to be punished to weep on beaches for isolation. We are not alone. We have brothers in all the hills. We have sisters in the jungles and in the Ozarks. We have brothers on the frozen tundra. They sit by their fire fires. They sing. They gather arms. They multiply. They will reclaim the earth. Nowhere we can go. But they are waiting for us. No, but nowhere we can go. But they are waiting for us. No eggs out where we will not hear welcome home. Good morning, sister. Let me work with you. Good morning, brother. Let me fight by your side. Revolutionary letter number forty. If the power of the word is anything. America, your oil fields burning your cities in ruins, smoldering pillage by children, your cars broken down at a standstill, choking the roads, your citizens standing beside them, bewildered or choosing a packed load of objects, but they can carry away if the power of the word lives. America, your power lines down. Eagle line lines of electric of telephone towers with radio transmission toppled and raking in the field, setting the hay ablaze, your newspapers useless, your populace illiterate, wiping their asses with them. If the word has power, you shall not stand, America. The wilderness is spreading from the parks you have fenced it into already desert blows through Las Vegas, the sea licks its chop at the oil, the edges of Los Angeles, the camels are breeding the bears, the elk are increasing. So are the Indians in the very poor do stir in your sleep. America, do you dream of your power? Pastel colored oil tranks from sea to shining sea. Sleep well, America. We stand by your bedside. The word has power. The chant is going up. Revolutionary, let her know. Free Julian Black, free Timothy Leary, free seven million starving in Pakistan, free all political prisoners, free Angela Davis, free solid dad brothers, free Martin Sobel, free Stockholm and Vicente, free big Bill Hayward, free sitting bull, free crazy horse, free all political prisoners, free Billy the Kid, free Jesse James, free all political prisoners, free Nathan Hale, free Jonah Art, free Galileo and Bruno and Eckhart, free Jesus Christ, free Socrates, free all political prisoners, free all political prisoners. All prisoners are political prisoners. Every pot smoker, a political prisoner, every holder, a man, a political prisoner, every forger, a political prisoner, every angry kid who smashed a window, a political prisoner, every whore, a pimp, murderer, a political prisoner, every petty rass dealer, drunk driver, burglar, poacher, striker, strike breaker, rapist, polar bear and San Francisco zoo, political prisoner, ancient wise turtle at the Detroit Aquarium, political prisoner, flamingos dying in scenic tourist park, political prisoners, outers in Tucson Desert Museum, political prisoners, elk and Wyoming grazing behind barbed wire, political prisoners, prairie dogs poisoned in New Mexico, war casualties, mass grave of Wyoming, bald egos, a battlefield, every kid in school, a political prisoner, every lawyer in this cubicle, a political prisoner, every doctor brainwashed by NMA, a political prisoner, every housewife, a political prisoner, every teaching line, every teacher line every statique, a political prisoner, every Indian on reservation, a political prisoner, every black man, a political prisoner, every vagate hiding in a bar, a political prisoner, every junkie shooting up in the john, a political prisoner, every woman, a political prisoner, every woman, a political prisoner, you are a political prisoner locked in tents, body, you are a political prisoner locked in stiff mind, you're a political prisoner locked in your pants, locked here, locked, you are a political prisoner locked to your past, free yourself, free yourself, I'm a political prisoner locked in anger, have an unpolitical prisoner, like the greed have it unpolitical prisoner, Like the fear have it, unpolitical inertia locked in those senses, unpolitical prisoner locked in them flesh, free me, free me, help to free me, free yourself, help to free me, free 0 there Goldwater helped to free me, free governor Wildツ, Free President Nixon, Free Jaeger Hoover, Freedom, free yourself, Freedom, Free yourself, Freed yourself, Freedom, Free yourself, help to free me, free us. Dance. Wow. Next we have Devorah Luger, who has been a boss on occasion and mentor, and has been told a lot of other people. So much I could say about Devorah and not gonna understand the story. He is the third poet where he has been with Devorah Luger and a phenomenal woman, Devorah. Well, originally I was going to do rant because I just, actually one of the last conversations I remember having with Diane was at the birthday party that was held for her in North Beach a few years ago at I believe the Live Worms Gallery. And she was giving out a poem which I couldn't put my fingers on it today. And I said, you know, I just love your rant. I'm always telling my classes the only war that matters is the war against the imagination. We had a brief laugh over that. Anyway, although it's worth hearing twice, I quickly ran down two other poems, of small poems of hers and quote, I am a shadow and quote. I am a shadow crossing ice. I am rusting knife in the water. I am pear tree bitten by frost. I uphold the mountain with my hand. My feet are cut by glass. I walk in the windy forest after dark. I am wrapped in a gold cloud. I whistle through my teeth. I lose my hat. My eyes are fed to eagles and my jaw is locked with silver wire. I have burned often and my bones are soup. I am stone giant statue on a cliff. I am mad as a blizzard. I stare out of broken cupboards. And also I thought that the Buddhist New Year song and it's so near the new year. It was not that far when she crossed over last year from it. Buddhist New Year song. I saw you in green velvet, wide full sleeve seated in front of a fireplace. Our house made somehow more gracious and you said, there are stars in your hair. It was truth I brought down with me to this sullen and dingy place that we must make golden, make precious and mythical. Somehow it is our nature and it is truth that we came here. I told you from other planets where we were lords, we were sent here for some purpose. The golden mask I had seen before that fitted so beautifully over your face did not return nor did the face of a bull you had acquired amid northern peoples. Nomads, the Gobi desert. I did not see those tents again nor the wagons infinitely slow on the infinitely windy planes. So cold every star in the sky was a different color. The sky itself a tangled tapestry glowing, but almost. I could see the planet from which we had come. I could not remember then what our purpose was but remembering the name of Mahakala in the dawn in the dawn confronted Shiva. The cold light revealed the mind born worlds as simply that. I watched them propagated flowing out or more simply one mirror reflecting another then broke the mirrors. You were no longer in sight nor any purpose. Stared at this new blackness, the mind born worlds fled and the mind turned off. A madness or a beginning. And I'm going to read this very short poem. One of the things I saw Diane as always was a woman of resistance throughout her seeking a certain kind of detachment throughout her seeking the Buddha sensibilities. And before that, before that she was consistent in her politics consistently growing in her spirit. Resistance woman, when you count the fallen that one woman will not have fallen. When you count those who quietly accepted prisons of tears and madness. When you take the time to count those who did not see the use for struggle and those who had not find the time. When you find the withered who lost the dream the bent saplings who never found one. When you look for complacency she will not be in their numbers. She refused to throw up her hands and wring them into spare. In the face of odds that called her dreams a long shot she played to win. Saw time as a road and traveled it hard refused it to be an unlisted casualty of war refused to forget refused to be subdued to find revolution in armchair profession or summertime fat. When you count you will see that this one unmiracle maker is going to be a part of the dream when it happens. She refuses genocide will be a spirit catcher will struggle for the dream when the body fails when the heart stops. When you count the fallen she will not be in their numbers. Thank you. Thank you so much to war. I'm going to push us off with one small piece of roba which felt as if it was. Inviting it to a niche and plotting a way out of the cave. Marlila, tumbling on the ground climbing over the wall, fasting, plotting, turning your death to the scene, you certainly disagree with the ear woman. Olympia, Augusta, Eleanor of Occupy, my eighth. I got your vibe in my class but I'll take it with me just a little bit more. Thank you all for being here for the celebration this time. We'll talk about it, but I think there needs to be some kind of and then we'll see what we can do. And I think that's a problem we're trying to see with you to participate with me. Thank you to everybody who's attended. Thank you to the small library as always it's an incredible privilege to be in a world of terracotta, and on the surface terracotta and in my person you love me. Thank you all. Keep taking off the scale. We got work to do. Thank you, Kim. Thank you everybody. Happy holidays and come back second Thursday of January the 13th. Yeah, we've got a really powerful and remuneration. Thank you. Take care. Have a good night. Take care to all.