 All right. Hey, welcome everybody. Thank you so much to coming to our open mic, our pandemic poetry and open mic night tonight. We're going to get started in just a few minutes. We have a lot of people still joining so we're going to give it just a minute or two more. And I want to make a special note that we are recording this program. So if anyone is concerned and doesn't want their face to be in the video, just make sure that you disable your video, you just press a little stop video button at the bottom of your screen. And you can mute your audio in the meantime until you get to the point where we're going to have the open mic. Just to let you know we are recording and we have started recording. We started in just a minute. There's a man element Oh and his hip hop song about Long Beach called 1888 he had that son, that song that went on he said, make this money outside of town and bring it back down to Long Beach. Any type of human can be found when you're moving around Long Beach. One of my favorite Long Beach centric songs 1888. All right. Okay. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Angela Scott, and I am the library assistant here at the Billy Jean King main libraries Miller special collections room. On behalf of our senior librarian of collection services Jade Wheeler, our special collections librarian Jeff Wayland, and all the staff here at the Long Beach Public Library. I'd like to welcome you to the first online event of the Miller room spoken words spoken art series celebrating poetry and the spoken word. Today we are very pleased to present this very special end of the year pandemic poetry and open Mike night program with Mike songs and and friends. This is one of a series of poetry programs that will be presented periodically in the Miller room throughout the year. In addition to our local history lecture series, our art of nature lecture series or poetry and fiction writing workshops. We also have musical performance programs book club short story reading group art programming is so much more. Please keep an eye on our LBPL calendar website for upcoming events and we hope you'll join us again for more of these special programs as they become available. Now while we have you all here we'd also like to mention some new online programs coming to the Miller room in January. January 23 from 230 to 4pm. Please join us for our next Miller room book club meeting which will be featuring a variety of short stories from various authors. So if you're limited on time but want to start reading more as one of your new year's resolutions, consider joining our book club and short story reading group. The book club currently meets online via zoom and is limited to a maximum of 10 to 12 people per meeting. So pre registration RSVPs are necessary. For more information or to join the Miller room book clubs email list, please visit our LBPL website at lbpl.org and check out our calendar of events. You can also call the main library for more information or message me in the live chat after our program today. I'd also like to mention our next big local history lecture series and book talk program on Saturday, January 30 from three to 4pm. The program is entitled When Water Was Everywhere, a novel view of life in early California and will be presented by local author Barbara Crane. You'll see Long Beach and Southern California as it looked 200 years ago portrayed in Miss Crane's award-winning historical novel entitled When Water Was Everywhere. So historic maps, photos, short readings, our local landscape will be re-envisioned through the eyes of the people who once lived here. American immigrants, Mexican Californios, Tongva, Gabriolino Indians, and Spanish Padres will all come to life in this richly imagined past. So please keep an eye on our website and calendar to sign up for the zoom program. It will be going up on our website next week for advanced sign ups and stay tuned for other programs that will be rolling out in the next few months. Now, getting back to our program for today. It is our pleasure to once again welcome and introduce our featured speaker this afternoon, Mike Songson, aka Mike the Poet. Mike was born at St. Mary's Hospital right here in Long Beach and is a third generation LA native who has lived his entire life in Los Angeles County. He grew up riding his bike around El Dorado Park and down the San Gabriel River through East Long Beach. Following his graduation from UCLA in 1997, he's published over 500 essays and poems, and his poetry celebrates Southern California history and geography. Mike has an interdisciplinary master of arts in English and history, and his prose and poetry has been included in programs with the mayor's office, the Los Angeles Public Libraries made in LA series, Grand Park, the Music Center, and the Friends of the Los Angeles River. He's taught at Cal State Los Angeles Southwest College and is currently a professor at Woodbury University in the San Fernando Valley. In addition to writing poetry and performing across the Southland, he enjoys sharing his gifts and talents as a poet, scholar, and mentor with hundreds of young writers across Southern California. A number of pieces in his book, Letters to my City, also celebrate Long Beach sites like Cambodia Town, Bixby Knolls, North Long Beach, and Rotor Row. Mr. Songson's essays have been recognized by the Los Angeles Press Club, and he's published widely with KCET, the Academy of American Poets, Poets and Writers magazines, and dozens of other publications. In today's program, Mike will be presenting a lively reading and performance of his own poetry, as well as hosting our end of the year open mic with a few special guests and anyone interested in reflecting and sharing their thoughts on life, 2020 and the pandemic, the new year, or whatever moves you. During today's program, if you'd like to sign up for the public open mic portions of the program, please type your name in the chat and let us know that you'd like to do a reading. Open mic will be first come first served, so please sign up early and we'll announce your names as time permits. If you don't want your video to show during the reading, please just make sure to leave your video disabled at the bottom of your screen. Otherwise, you can turn your video on so the audience can see you while you're reading. At the end of the program, if there's time, we'll also have a Q&A that will be moderated through our chat. If you have any questions, please type them into the chat bar and you'll also see the chat button at the bottom of your screen, and you can type and submit your questions there. Mike and his guests will answer questions as time permits. The program will officially end at 530pm if you need to leave, which are welcome to stay and continue asking questions via chat until 545. We'll be sending out an email soon with a link to the archived video recording of this program so you can also watch it later at your leisure. Finally, as I mentioned earlier, we are recording this program today, so if you don't want your face to be seen in the video during the program, please make sure to disable your video feed by clicking on the stop video button at the bottom of your screen. You'll still be able to see the presentation, but we just won't be able to see you. So if you're having difficulty with your audio or video, please let us know in the chat so we can assist you remotely. So thank you again for joining us today, everyone. And without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, the Miller Room is pleased to present our very special guests, Mike, the poet and friends. Thank you very much, Angela Long Beach. Yeah. Hey, it's really great to see everybody. And I want to tell you a story about a year and a half ago I was driving down the 17 and I exited Broadway. And as I went east on Broadway, I looked to my right and saw a beautiful brand new building. And I was like, you know, what is that. And I circle back around. And I saw the sign. Yeah, coming up opening the brand new Billy Jean King Library in Long Beach and Billy Jean King, of course, was the great tennis star who who went to Polly High School. And she also, by the way, went to Cal State LA, interestingly enough, it's named a location after Cal State LA as well. But the Billy Jean King New Library is gorgeous. It is a really beautiful library. And I immediately got in touch with them and I did a reading for my book Letters to My City about a year ago, shortly after the library opened in early January. And so as 2020, nobody foresaw the pandemic, of course, in January. So here we are ending 2020. And what a better way to close out the year at the very beautiful library that I started it at. I'm going to do a poem right now, but then I'm going to try to get up as many poets as possible. We're going to start off with a few special guests. And then we're going to try to get up as many folks as possible. So this is really about the community and about sharing space and build the bridge, lay down the bricks, fill in the ridges, stack the sticks, feed the fire, consider the cost, take it up higher, the city is ours. All right, folks. So I'm going to read a poem right now. This poem is called Parallel Parking on Memory Lane. Born in Long Beach in 1974, sooner than later, my parents divorced. My mom shut the door and went back to work teaching elementary in North Long Beach. My dad moved out to Orange County. A few years later over to Arizona. Every few Sundays he came over. Reese was the word, my sister on roller skates. We lived in Cerritos in a tracked house. My grandparents lived in Long Beach just south, down the 605 freeway west of El Dorado Park. We saw them almost every single day. Summer evening suffers in the backyard, we barbecued and then had some mores. Saturday bike rides with my grandfather. Sunday morning drives with my father. Friday night TV with my grandma, the Sears catalog for my pajamas. Original rituals that make a family. Homemade vegetable soup in the late afternoon. I was riding shotgun and my mom's blue Malibu. Driving to Seal Beach, south on Seal Beach. Los Cerritos wetlands with willow thickets. Trees versus technology, my childhood sanctuary, my sister running cross country. I was riding across L.A. County, buying baseball cards and Hawaiian gardens. Whenever I close my eyes, I'm still riding. Bundled up after El Nino Rain, parallel parking on memory lane. I memorized facts looking at maps. Driving down Zolamo brings it all back. Driving down Zolamo brings it all back, folks. You know how these streets are. And before the freeways, the streets were the freeways. The major Boulevard was the 91. San Fernando Road was the five. Sepulveda was the 405. Olympic Boulevard was 10th Street. And Imperial Highway was the 105. So this is how we do it live and direct. It's beautiful to see everybody. And I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I have five special guests who are going to do short sets of about two pieces each. And then we're going to start bringing up the open mic. So whenever I host these open mics, I do my best to get everybody up. So we're really, we're about community service. We're trying to get everybody up. But right off the bat, our very first special guest, when I first did a gig in Long Beach in January at the library, I saw one of this woman. I saw her poem hung up like a painting in the library itself. And she's organized a lot of great readings in Long Beach. She's an award-winning teacher. She wants something called the Emerging Voices Fellowship. And so she's an award-winning poet. And I couldn't think of a better person to start off this reading with than this woman, because she's doing some really wonderful work. And as I said, I saw her poem that was displayed in the library like it was a painting. So without further ado, can we give it up for Ms. Nancy Manay-Woo. Hi, everyone. Oh, Mike, it's great to see you and to see everyone here and to see a photograph of the Miller Room. Thank you so much. Okay. Woo! Go ahead and first let me just pull up a poem here real quick, because that is a thing I should have available to me. Okay, so I'm going to start with a poem that I wrote during, you know, this quarantine time. This is right now. It's called Cafe Gazelle. So I know we're in Long Beach. Anybody, anybody know this great Italian restaurant on Second Street called Cafe Gazelle? Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, it's real good. Wrote a poem about it during the time when, you know, we're allowed to go out and sit outside in a restaurant. She did one time. So this is called Cafe Gazelle. Okay. Two white cloth napkins are brought to the table laid down with care. A pair of paper place masks are set and smooth. The waiter's eyes, black pyramid above his mask, following the arrangement of spoons, knives and dinner fork, salad fork, we wait and watch. One gray parking meter guards this thin strip of tables outside, bulbous gargoyle eyes staring down the small crowd, empty of coins, listening in on the light chatter and gently clinking plates. This is a celebration. The waiter phones away and talk of our accomplishments. He passed his certification exam. I completed a three week festival of cleaning. The chef's silhouette hovers behind large glass windows. Someone is always lingering near the door. A glass of wine, a glass of liquor and cheap plastic lanterns. Spaced evenly among hand sanitizers. And what could be fake greenery? Flowing vines and succulents pulsing out of wicker baskets. Hearts of artichoke materialize on ceramic. Onion soup, delicate and buttery disappears. Sweet salad dressed in startling pinkness. Gone. We sit quietly, looking. I think I see the tiny shadow of a fairy on the makeshift railing. The waiters care for us, bring us chicken arm and yak and clam when gleaning. Alliance-based flashes in the perfectly crumbled snow of Parmesan. Our water glasses are never half empty. Finally, a tray of rainbow cakes appears before us. We choose. We linger in the foggy mist of not yet cold, then float home full as the moon overhead ripening. I'm remembering how the cake was yellow, too, and lustrous. Nancy. Thank you. Yeah, let me pick one real quick. Okay, I'll do this one. I don't like maybe some of us. You know, we're just at home and I have dreams of traveling. So this is called somewhere in Montana, maybe. I have pockets of questions spilling out answers to nothing. Like, do dogs in space still kick in their sleep? What's the plot of land that 50,000 feet costs? How many saints will fit in the heaven of tomorrow? Honestly, I am plagued. The pleasure of thought decays. Imagine how easy it would be to destroy the entire known universe in pursuit of the perfect paper clip. Polar bears are not a high priority for whom. I know them. Who am I kidding though? My long hot baths don't give a damn. I sleep with my phone in my hand. Do something. Save the post office. Glossy marbles tumble out my socket, gloss in the red, orange amber hues of confusion. One you disagree with is right in some way. So I knock logic against faith and keep the winners. How much is an impression worth these days? How about an hourglass shapes like a rat skull trickling coal? F4, kneeling on a fault line I've taken nonsense of my mate for life. It beats trying to decipher the slobber of suits on screen talking bottom lines. We're going to a loathe soon and leave the world of presidential equations behind. Some people just aren't cut out for the straight lines of the city. All of us bumping along and beeping at each other blowing darks and secrets. Where we're going, there won't be sirens or dishwashers. Just bunkers of books and lounge chairs, trickling rivers of translucent water and a slowness that starts to feel like being wrapped in fresh butter. We might know we're headed for the oven and adorn our lips with rosemary. The place I call home is dried up and burning. I want simplicity. I want to be the rodeo I think I am. Equal parts open spaces to roam and a coin slot bucking machine. Why Montana? A friend of a friend said something about quail and a pillow of stars. My eyeballs are footballs I want to throw like a lasso around the grandeur of ellipses. What kind of adventure is this after all? I was born into a world of language. We have everything we need, my truest lover and I, hocus pocus, blabbling, baloney, gibberish junk. We can make anything up and lose sense of the difference between a scarecrow and a balloon animal. Nothing's at stake. No one is forgetting the Holocaust. We will all live forever. The edges of the cornfield start to wiggle. A body left out here won't be found for days. When circus clowns circle overhead, we play dead and then spoke it back to the bus station, yanking furiously, staring through glass. Those are both kind of long. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Nancy. Thank you very much. What was the name of that writer's group in Long Beach you have? I have a few over the years. We have the Long Beach Literary Arts Center. I think they're still going. They're a non-profit. They're moving towards non-profit right now. And I actually run a poetry workshop called Surprise the Line, which I'm building a website I'm about to launch. So yeah, if anyone's interested in poetry workshops, maybe I'll put a link in the chat. I'll put a link in the chat for sure. You know folks are really all about building communities. So I definitely want folks to connect in the chat and not only check each other's work out or whatever, but sign up for writing workshops. And the nice thing about Zoom is that anybody anywhere can do it. And this next poet I'm going to bring up, he's a great man. He's got a lot of charisma. He's an award winning poet. He always brings great energy. And he and I have been talking about how Zoom is leveled the playing field. And he does a lot of work mentoring young writers and teen writers and what he likes about Zoom is that both he and I are the kind of people that we've driven our students around and gone all over town. But now he doesn't have to run around town and pick up all his students. He just tells them to log on on Zoom and he emails them. So you guys, this is a great dude. He's my man. Can we give it up for Marcus or Mari? I'm mute. I'm mute. I'm mute. I'm mute. We're good. We're good on vocals, everybody. Thumbs up. Just like my students, thumbs up. Everybody can hear me. All right. All right. Well, thank you, Mike, for the invitation. And gosh, it's just so amazing to see everyone's faces here. A few familiar faces, a few new faces. But listen, we can take all the faces we can get right now on this second or third or fourth, stay at home order. I don't even know what we're on right now. But it's just a blessing to be with you all. So let me just drive into a few pieces and be on. Be on my way. We would ask that all those present, please remove your hearts before entering this bridal chamber. We would ask that all those present, please remove your hearts. Slide them off like tormented slippers, silver, ruby, gold, glass, or otherwise. Shed them off like monstrous aboriginal masks, exposing eroding parisal art inscribed in winter, equinox, autumn, solstice, or otherwise. Behold them aloft like star-crossed sage smoldering omen of Icarus smudging amber-faced ecliptic moons, flamed out benediction of the phoenix ruined. Albeit blessed to fall out of favor, out of flight, out of heaven, emberian, aether, or otherwise. Amen. Either way, amen. We would ask all those present to please remove their hearts. Snatch them back to the chronicles from whence they came. Bind them by the seat of their souls to the tear-stained precipice cast them deep into the folds of the earth, amongst the flesh of other stillborn dinner gods. Now somebody turn to your neighbor. Somebody turn to your Zoom neighbor and say, neighbor, please remove your hearts and open your minds if you would. Turn back to the book on broken promises. Turn back, I say. Turn back to chapter 13, verse 8. Exhale when you have it. All hail when you have it. Exhale when you have it. All hail when you have it. Shall we begin? Shall we begin with a tale of she, mahogany sireen of rose-red hair who carries a Palestinian touch. Gentile sting refreshes my memory like bumblebees and chrysanthemums. She is crouched in heroin position beneath the stone table, bow bent back and strung with the remaining locks of her own hair. The rest of which went to temple. The rest of which went overseas. The rest of which is being sold off slosson right now at Cold War prices to women who are busy doing battle with the images themselves in the mirror daily. But through the looking glass, she is Yamaya, face-pointed with face-printed with soil and pomegranate, listening for echoes of her epilogue in the sea, searching for the scent of salvation in the air, fading into visions of her crown in the surf, bleeding out in the shadows of the altar aching for one last shot. Shall we begin? Shall we begin with a tale of he, alchemist of earth, sand and stone of washed face and of rinsed mouth, who with the touch of his hand healed a splintered mermaid's fin and lo, she was a butterfly, scaling skies in perfect pitch with a green-eyed sun who had also come to the palace in the desert, dragging the severed head of the purple unicorn in tow, a sacrifice to reality, a prelude of imagination's feast. We shall pick our teeth clean tonight, excavate golden calf meat from our molars, water the earth with our saliva and whiskey spittle. Please remove your hearts, sharpen your tears and fashion a spear from the spine of the first dream that turned its back on you. Open your minds, if you would. Your unheralded superheroes teeter on a ledge twelve stories up, capes of fear rung as blindfolds over their eyes, ready to step out on a faith that has eluded them. Please remove your hearts, open your minds, if you would. Turn back to the book on broken promises. Turn back, I say. Chapter 13, verse 8. Turn back to the book on lost children. Turn back, I say. Chapter 6, verse 11. Turn back to the book on new beginnings. Turn back, I say. Chapter 1, verse 1. Chapter 1, verse 1. All hail when you have it. Exhale when you have it. Exhale when you have it. All hail when you have it. Exhale when you have it. All hail when you have it. Shall we begin? Shall we begin? In the beginning, in the beginning, in the beginning. And shimmering a Looking for from your estuary of the mouth. It came before forgiveness, before forgiveness, there was acceptance before acceptance. acceptance that came. My iron and wood. Before iron and wood. I don't know. It's hard to say. Rain maybe. Rain and stars and dreams and bang. That's the verse one. That's me snapping myself since it's so quiet up in here. Let me shuffle on again such a blessing to just just to share man and get the energy out. That's right. I mean doing yeah if you guys can see man I'm rocking the hell out of this chair. I'm used to just standing and getting all that energy out so it feels good to be here. This is for a friend of mine. It's that scene where the one you let get by drives off into the sunrise. Blowing kisses and putting up peace signs. Backwards house your inside walk you as peculiar smile not worth the straightening of purpose hangs. Slant face like our ass faked and stained glass Shiloh Baptist shepherds. It's that scene to lay full stop. It's that scene three motionless emotionless isolated interest into post-bemirnium Saturday kneeling before broken Bermuda linen harbors treading time in the wake of waters of a ghost ship of grief waiting anchorless in and out of the hour on her soft fugitive scent of her bath and her body casting out consciousness baited on the first faith that squirms reeling in only only to reel in infantile dreams of matter Lake Lullaby meowing camels hitchhiking up PCH of water gypsies wailing Pisces parables beach just south of Andromeda of someone delicate as glass boned by the balmy breath of serenity shattering on the scent of sincerity discovering invulnerability in the chaos of death in the stillness of being only someone something special only something to someone not only being someone special something as art is or not just art is not this we royal tears crowning the lips of wine glasses art not we this oil and ash fish rib and rain scorched earth and exodus bread and bane lime in the coconut pansies and rosemary's for the insane a breath held for need for things and when in need plenty of love to breathe in this portrait of dreams this art is we it's that scene where the one you let get by drives off into the sunrise blowing kisses and putting up peace signs and scene Marcus Omari yeah give it up for Marcus you guys he always sparks me and always thank you Marcus always dynamite bro man well folks we're gonna keep the heat on you know i know it's been a little bit frosty for southern california so we got you here and uh this next man i'm gonna bring up every time i turn around he's polishing another poem he's i sometimes wonder if the man sleeps he writes a lot and he's always writing some heat and he cracked me up recently about this one with these guys fighting over an amazon package so this man can hit you with the sublime and he can also hit you with some comedy and he's just a really thoughtful dude and he's the right way is kevin ridgeway give it up for my man kevin ridge can you hear me we can hear you excellent okay this poem i'm gonna open with is called the death of the copper tone girl the billboard stood above interstate five it featured a pretty cartoon girl with her bikini bottoms pulled down in a mechanical tug of war with a deranged cartoon dog which showed off the tan line of her pale derriere she lost one of her legs during a storm that left the dog decapitated and with less of an appetite for bikinis they both stood there until the bitter end when they disappeared and the sign turned into a large ad that read sharp at walmart which forced me to grieve the loss of the first woman i fell in love with and could not save um i'm gonna do something for my book called kamikaze summer early that last june of school i received dozens of get well soon letters from classmates in response to a week earlier when i swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills that landed me in an adolescent psychiatric ward flowers many great big stuffed animals waiting at the front hospital desk i cannot remember much about that day other than all the revisions my suicide letter went through and i nearly lost my nerve with brian wilson singing on top of a teenage symphony to god that made me dwell too much on small tragedies and my brother flew out from new york city not knowing what to say while my teachers all felt sorry for me enough to pass me without completing my final exams and rumors that i was disfigured in my feeble attempt at death were quashed when i marched with a class of over 400 students at our commencement still breathing but just another lonely name they announced that hot afternoon that echoed off the bleachers of their football stadium before it rocketed beyond the clouds to the outer limits of uncertainty kevin thank you thank you that bungalow tonight bro california bungalow um kevin thank you man i always love your work and i love it how you you write about something and you'll be talking about at lannick and 10th street i'm like yo i was born at a lannick and 10th street so that's a true poet kevin and thank you brother um give it up for kevin thank you thank you thank you thank you man appreciate it thank you thank you um folks all right well we're gonna i'm trying to like i said we're gonna keep it moving um this next man up is an award-winning poet and professor and just a great dude and he's taught me a lot and we take a lot of fun missions together we go eat some lunch together we'll take a walk along the great wall of los angeles and and he teaches me a lot of things this is my homeboy alanekino let me make sure that everyone okay so everyone can hear me okay i just want to be sure you're doing great all right thank you thank you very much um i'm just gonna read one piece and uh it's it's uh it's i'll just say that's a very self-explanatory um kind of commentary editorial about uh what's going on in the world and uh it is thematically appropriate to our you know event here today so i'm just gonna jump right into it to put it plainly i survived a severe corona experience spans a dozen plus nights from november 16th onward the first two nights i can't smell anything not even the vapor burn of rubbing alcohol and there's a tingle in my shoulders so i know the check is in the mail night three onward i sweat as if i'd run two miles and yet i'm shivering as if i'm neck deep in ice water my muscles ache as sudden sporadic cramps hit me like knives in random places my palms my ribs my foot my stomach they're covered with ants luckily i can more or less control my breath and i don't have a migraine but nonetheless my head feels like a swollen water balloon and i can't sleep unless i take at least a double dose of Advil of course i'd love to eat but my stomach assures me that i'm going to puke aside from a mini box of raisins i avoid solid food for days i force down a vitamins cocktail twice a day chased by gallons of water every time i swallow my insides rattle with anger arrow is frigid my clothes and bedsheets are saturated i sink into uneven naps like a hibernating laptop i close my eyes and breathe i meditate and pray in the darkness and every night feels like i'm performing the roman exorcism on myself even though my covid symptoms might be considered mild they are a formidable demon there's a moment during the height of my delirium when i call out to my long deceased i'm the div of what i am doing there's a corner of my consciousness that literally articulates dude you're talking aloud to dead people but it's okay say that shit at one point i'm laughing aloud as if the three of us shared a joke i don't remember everything i said but i remember uttering something along the lines of anyway i'll be home soon okay can't wait to see you i confess i had a sense that i could die of a brain edema or just stop breathing but the thought of dying doesn't scare me so it's just fear of pain and the unknown in fact my fever makes me feel more annoyed and angry i hate how people still don't mask up and just carry on as if the world is not in danger i pray those arrogant folks get lessons in humility i hate how warped their priorities are as if the reality of what i and millions of others are literally enduring is just a mild inconvenience that they can sidestep people are simply not taking this pandemic seriously enough because the only thing that'll piss me off more than coronavirus itself is an avalanche of condescending comments and pointless questions but no matter amidst my silence my thanksgiving evening my fever and cough simmer down i feel some strength returning and i turn a little more hopeful by sunday the 29th i'm happy to hold down a normal meal i must say that meditation enables me to meant in a motion picture and that is how i baby step through this ordeal without despairing or losing my marbles pain strikes me but i will let the pain go and not waste a moment resenting it it arrives and leaves and i simply breathe and keep moving forth one step one moment at a time now please understand that i do mask up and i am quite sanitary and extremely caution and yet i nonetheless caught crank of will nothing you can say or think or do will change what happened to me all i will say is i am lucky to be alive no human being deserves this disease which absolutely does not discriminate and so i will continue to rest and recover i will continue to get up and work because i am not finished with this world i pray for humanity i believe we are all being called to be we are best and i do believe global battle unlike any we've ever known i believe that the strength we need is all around us so thank you all for listening peace and one love and please take care of yourselves and give it up for alan akino man thank you alan thank you alan love you bro i'm so glad you're here man hey alan did a reading with me folks in the middle of that and he didn't even tell me until afterwards that he had the virus alan is a hardcore stoic trooper he hit me like a week later when he was recovering he was like hey man i didn't tell you but that reading he did on the 20th man i man alan yeah yeah there are there there are a couple of other uh some of you here who joined our last reading on November 20th and i was actually quite sick during that reading but i managed to play it off uh but you know anyway well thank you all for your kind attention man great job alan thank you man and that's alan akino folks give it up for alan man alan is the dude thank you man man oh man um well we're gonna we're gonna keep it moving and our next poet up he's a true blue angelo man he really knows the city and he can talk to you about neighborhood history and redlining and restricted housing covenants and just authentic authentic angelo ish man and he's jt the la storyteller jimmy rest knows he's got a great blog and this dude is a prolific writer give it up for my man jt the la storyteller hello hello can you hear me yes yes you can hear you thanks so much for your poetic words everyone and i am honored to participate in this really special end of the year event with you all and i'm just going to share one poem that i've been working on it may or may not be finished but i i would love to just get it out to you all and and just put it down for for this open mic today oh liz beth goymann it's great to see you too talk to you soon okay this is called american american removal begins with a language it starts with indians as uncivilized savages it expands with black civilization deemed as n words and three fifths it proliferates with providence but only for arian destiny by the millions an american removal embraces its robes with an indian removal act followed by a war on dirty mexicans followed by a chinese exclusion act followed by filipinos as n words followed by japs keep moving american removal tests its first psas with public enemies hobos tramps and vagrants but ultimately settles for black and brown youth as gangs it then settles it's it then sews its modern seeds with a red line red line maps delineate our colors separating undesirables and subversive racial elements from homogenous single family white homes until a war to end all wars that is two atom bombs dropped on japs but none on german nazis or italian fascists after the war it grows to include unamerican black radicals and communist hippies into its lexicon once these begin to ring hollow american removal reinvigorates itself black drugs and gangs black welfare queens and latinx and asian immigrant invasions it then sanctifies itself calling on property owners to revolt followed by national publication on a generation of new super predators predators followed by calls to save our state followed by english only for our children at the dawn of the 21st century american removal finds still new lifeblood global war on muslims as terrorists extremists and once again radical a generation later it relishes in good people on both sides shithole countries stand back and stand by and on but when you ask american removal about a million bodies burned by drones in the global south since 2001 or when you ask american removal about its uniform shooting down black men women and children when you ask american removal about the forced sterilization of incarcerated latina women or when you ask american removal about the gentrification of our neighborhoods its homeless cleanups even as police patrol new hotels around the corners when you ask american removal if it may dignify those it's uprooted with only so much as an acknowledgement all you get is silence american removal concludes with a silence thank you everyone hey folks that's jimmy rest knows aka jt the la storyteller aka jimbo times great job jt jt thank you bro and my man is always blogging and he he writes poems he writes essays check him out man he's he's doing really great work and he's writing a lot right now about not just east hollywood but the intersection of pico union macarthur park historic filipino town little armenia ty town korea town and he's tying it all together and he's going to bring you the history and and connected generations thank you jt and also many makes some really dull putties and i got one for my daughter and she she's rocking it those quintos um yeah man those quintos check it out mix and cool masks too thank you jt all right well folks we're just going to keep it moving and you know what here's the thing i i i pride myself on getting everybody up so if everyone can do me a favor everyone uh that reads if you can keep it to just under about three minutes that way because we have about 13 14 people here and i want to get everybody up i want to hear everybody so um i love your eight minute poems people but if you cannot don't bring eight minute poem today if you got you got eight minute joint rock it next time um today if you can keep it to about three minutes that will be fantastic just because i want to get everybody up and you know i love everybody we love everybody equally so we're trying to get everybody up so on that note um but tell you what our next poet i'm going to bring up she's fantastic she does a lot of programming and she's a poet and she does some organizing in orange county at the museo uh great museum and i did a poetry program with her and marcus just last month and she's awesome can we give it up for natalia lane hello hello hello to all the creators on the line hi marcus how are you um just uh i'll keep it moving quick and fast uh i am a southern girl i'm actually here in texas right now but i currently reside in orange county california i've been there about two years so i'm also a yoga instructor so let's get going and um although i didn't kind of go with the whole pandemic thing but i guess overall uh you could think of it as a way of evolving through this pandemic so uh this is a piece i wrote a long time ago but nonetheless here it goes evolution a woman she is everything i need to know the green garden full of flawless red flowers she is graced with a gorgeous garment unbreakable black bold beautiful intuitive and strong the matriarch the stabilizer the earth's backbone unbreakable black bold blessed and beautiful she is graced with a gorgeous garment charming and cheerful and full of boisterous stability from the beginning she excels determined to survive in her womb the seed of millions through the ages she will provide she is unfazed by obstacles perpetual in her drive kings and queens of all royalty alike are inherently in her bloodline the green garden full of flawless red flowers unbreakable black bold bless and beautiful she is graced with a gorgeous garment against all eyes she presses on not a moment does her love wane her aura of invincibility her spirit of strong will her disposition of i will succeed regardless of the mountainous hills she is black unbreakable bold and beautiful the green garden full of flawless red flowers she is graced with a gorgeous garment her strength personified from birth she is the matriarch the unbreakable black bold and beautiful the backbone of the earth and give it up for natalie elaine thank you natalie thank you thank you yeah and the museo um put the link in that's about the museo museum because you're doing a lot of really great programming over there yes we have uh events coming up starting the first of the year uh every quarter so i'll definitely be looking for um creatives to uh join me if they like so definitely i'll put that information in the uh in the link below and my information that way you can just reach out to me directly if you'd like thank you so much natalie give it a thank you mike thank you hey folks we really pride ourselves on three generations on the same page three three generations on the same stage all the ancestors on the same page this next poet i'm going to bring up right now he's sometimes moonlight's a santa claus he's kind of tired because he hit two billion homes the other night but he was just on a recent commercial plan old saint nick and he's always hilarious he they call him brotherly love and he's got he's got some history and he's an old friend of mine guys give it up for the one and only lead back you're still mutedly oh hang on no we got you you got me now you're good okay it's great to be here great to see hear all of you and to see all of you this called the power of never the ache is deep or is it the frustration angst pushing uselessly for something that cannot be the way you want it to be it can't happen acceptance of that is impossible the power of never nevertheless make it happen this is why we have our own little universes even if you want it and it can't happen it still is happening in your head it's part of you already you won't let it go congratulations you can envision how good life would be with it if only things could be the way you see it a perfect spot like a perfect phone call everything and everyone complying this one's called never again is now the disgusting site of concentration camps in the us again a genuine repeat as if as a country we haven't learned a thing we have a hard time always a struggle to make progress for human rights and against racism and sexism we can somehow justify these concentration camps or at least tolerate them otherwise the streets would be full of protests like in chili where the people hit the streets by the thousands just because the subway fares were raised in the us the streets could be full because immigrant children are being taken separated and even stolen from their parents and incarcerated locked up innocent children often in for-profit concentration camps only misuse and abuse can follow because the plan and the perceived need for the plan is wicked and concocted racist opportunistic criminal and fascist it's wrong for humanity for our survival we must learn to live together in peace motivated by more than greed personal gain and dominance the need to be top dog dominance american exceptionalism the great nation great again the race bait again like a big fish hooked hooked on the horror mega wannabe superior the minute you think you're superior you drop to mega inferior these kids are going to grow up one day remembering how you took them away put them in a cage a cage like animals a cake cake cage concentration camps for kids actual born children thank you hey that's me back you guys give it up for lee man lee beck man brother lee loves thank you lee thank you lee brother enjoyed being here yeah man all right well we're gonna keep we're gonna keep it moving um this next man we're bringing up i met him out on hollywood boulevard we both uh gave some city tours and he can tell you about venice boulevard and he can tell you about the boardwalk and he can tell you about power 106 and he can tell you about what songs j dilla sampled this is my man arman canard how's everybody feeling can you hear me okay i don't know which mic whether it's this one or the webcam or what you're doing great excellent thank you for having me and for those of you that i know i wish i could hug you right now for those of you that i do not know i wish i could stand next to you and smell you right now that might come off strange but all right so i wrote these two today here we go first one walk forward into the distance leave the fears in your dust white mountains ahead clear spirit blow into me stepping forward under the blue rain makes la feel brand new heart sing silent streets concrete jungle cables overhead the site of the awakening continues breath of love struggling to exist the soaring of birds watchers scoping and probing seeking and swooping sky blue freedom view all men repetitive steps one line along the trail of hope standing firm since my grandmother's birth elevation elevation of my vision i stretch my feeling of joy around the world to all man this second piece um the west boulevard bridge thank you the west boulevard boulevard bridge i walked over it today and um this is the view that i got and this is for you guys get up get over get up get over feel your power ignite breathe in your birthright let the strength within you permeate no matter what around you agitates get up get over get up get over see what most do not see beyond your physical property vibrations shift from your thoughts alleviate all the negatives you caught get up go over get up go over create a new pattern draw a new image you're the only barrier that's in front of you free thought is the village allow your feeling to unmask only then will your joys last get up go over get up go over the bridge thank you get up get over that bridge that west bridge is a beautiful bridge man yeah man folks if you ever head east on venice boulevard um and actually um it's west kind of connects like basically the crencha district to mid-city huh yeah goes it goes over uh venice boulevard the bridge actually so venice is 1933 wow you you catch some sunsets out there sometimes huh you go stand out there on the sunset or whatever absolutely it's a great view of the west from that bridge it's uh it was really beautiful today you know the day after it rains all is well in la for a couple hours huh our mind can already folks that's he's always always golden thank you our mind thank you love you guys thank you well thank you man yeah man um man all right well gosh we got we got a lot of heat here um let me see here you know what we're gonna bring we're gonna fly in a man right now all the way coming down from sacramento and he used to live on la and i would rock at home about venice and he talked about he used to he used to teach in san pedro and he lived out venice this is my man peter real oh man thank you so much everybody for having me thank you mike what's up mike what's up alan what's up jesse everybody else that i haven't met don't know great to see you thanks for having me i met my wife at long beach my daughter was born at 10th and atlantic st mary's so i have great love for long beach uh in this poem here the she is my grandma and he is my grandpa it's called she was frank sinatra he was pericomo she was frank sinatra and he was pericomo they say that opposites attract their marriage exhibit a she yelled he spoke gravely yet warmly she's saying he hummed she groaned he sighed she exclaimed he explained she was demonstrative he demonstrated she cried he felt she loved loudly he loudly loved she was chairman of the board he was the humble son of humble beginnings she sold out arenas he made them demand an encore she was neon lights he was the back rooms of barbershops she was cocktails and glitz he was card games and beer she was loyalty he was loyalty perry and frank frank and perry can you imagine that duet in the sky that was that one and i've got one called letter to jay on the day of her leaving for college letter to jay on the day of her leaving for college remember when i told you that you would see her again not just in doggie heaven but when you got older you won't remember when i told you that you'd know when you found the one you might not remember when i told you that a friend who used bad language was not a friend at all you might be remember when i told you that anyone who has to drink to have a good time is lying to himself he might not be remember when i told you that good things happen to good people they don't always remember when i told you that beauty is secondary to brains and heart it is but it may take you a while to figure it out remember when i told you that i married my best friend even best friends fight sometimes remember when i told you that this would hurt me more than it would hurt you it did and it does and if it didn't it must have hurt you a whole hell of a lot remember when i told you that mommy and i loved each other so much that we couldn't live together anymore i lied remember when i told you that uncle sal didn't know any better that's just the way he was raised to see people raised to see people who are different as inferior that he couldn't help it he can help it remember when i told you that you must have a beautiful soul since the eyes are the windows to the soul daddy was right about some things remember when i told you that the homeless man was not mean just that life had been mean to him if life were a person it'd be going to hell remember when i told you that you make your own luck in life that god helps those who help themselves i'm sorry remember when i told you that no stranger could ever hurt you with words because daddy would never let anyone hurt you i wish i would have included family in my productive net remember when i told you but not until much later that it wasn't your fault that the milk messed up my keyboard that daddy had had a lot of stress at work that's how young women become battered wives remember when i told you that i would love you forever and always be your biggest fan i will and lord knows i have been and will continue to be and i hope that maybe one night when the party has died down and it's way too late and i've been asleep through the prime hours of a college student's night you will remember me my phone will ring and just like the first time i heard it your voice will make me cry and it'll make me smile thank you and i hope i didn't go too long mike and that's my man peter real give it up for me guys thank you thank you so much and peter's got a really killer podcast chills that will podcast and i was on there last month and uh peter's doing a lot of really cool works different different things connecting dots and communities and uh does really cool projects with the students and has them writing poems about california so thank you peter always good to see you brother peter real all right um you know what let me see here um we're gonna bring up a woman uh who's really thoughtful always does fantastic work can we give it up for miss lis beth coinin hey you got me by surprise there i'm glad i'm prepared i'm gonna read something short if i fall silent today my hair will weave verses in silver strands in the white spaces between the black lines ellipses will well my eyes round down the cobble streets of my face while question marks like ornaments will dangle from my ear lobes attentive to the silences of others my tongue we added the past mistakes of my actions the scar on my face will spell agony in all caps molded letters will grow from the tips of my nails the freckles on my back will tell impossible stories of the tropical land that reds under my eyelids the keloid on my nevel will zipper the wounds of birth with future stitches the sweat under my breast and armpits will draw descriptions of the solitary roads i transit without making a sound like run-on sentences in the social distances between us my knees will ride prayers with thick chalk sticks on the sidewalk punctuate them with each deformed pore of my skin if i fall silent today my body will speak for me that's it that's the point lis beth coinin thank you thank you lis beth thank you thank you for calling me out i was just observing always great to see you thank you so much thank you very much always a pleasure always a pleasure always a pleasure thank you thank you all right folks well we're gonna keep it moving um our next poet uh is a surrealist poet any and he's also close with my man will alexander who's one of my favorite poets we're gonna give it up for my man dc good evening good evening can y'all hear me yes hear me and see me uh thanks for providing the space mic and thanks to all the poets who have read tonight thus far i appreciate it's a blessing to share this space with y'all i'm reading a poem from my book called the longest breath it's called continuum as the oracle has indicated our atomic windows are not cut out for looking twice if you see a crime where you see my joy you will have no recompense from your past voices or their ages the pressure on the nuclear family to raise good customers has become explosive i would have phoned before just showing up but there were no amulets in your ears when the collection plate was passed around a new day is a new breath and night becomes a new reason to provoke the bones to prostration shimney's awaken crows like mourning in your wounds this is nowhere to rest the shadow after jousting with the year of the ram a light is a light is a voice for missing persons the dogs of war show their teeth at the floor of your dust factory the ears are bent towards old souls tied around telephone wire the crowds have gathered to watch al make these mountains new again voices of the dead make you feel alive and holy a moon in a moon in a room lit in flickering transmuted in a dream in a dream the crowbar in the mind or marigolds on the counter i've never forgotten anything of mountains or madhouses it is only worlds within worlds within worlds still the eyes refuse to speak thank you dc and that longest breath is adult book man thank you mike i appreciate you man appreciate you man thank you knowledge right uh um what was that clothing line again oh uh i'll make i'll make i'm actually i'm i'm rocking it tonight i'll make and you're part of one of the designers right you're part of the team with that yeah i was i was one of my best friends who's saying he uh he he was the main designer and i was working with him for a few years yeah man well gc thanks for all you do bro thank you so much mike appreciate you man give it up for dc folks yeah he had a cool blurb on his book from will alexander who is maybe the premier surrealist poet on the planet and um the dc is always great nice to see a dc um all right you know what this next poll we're gonna bring up um where i teach is a place called winberry university and we host an open mic they're called verse come verse serve and this next young man is not only taking a couple classes with me but he is the host of the poetry event on campus that i um that i've helped start and produce and he's a fantastic dude he's always on top of these poems we give it up for my man josh with jones appreciate you mike man appreciate being here um if you guys have somebody that you care about and that you hold down or you have somebody that cares about you and is holding you down always love and take care of them you give my heart peace the way you smile makes me feel at ease and you make me believe love is possible and you give my heart peace the way your breath hits the air and forms into word calms my anxieties and i desire to be right there in your heart as you hold me with your eyes there's no need to wonder what your love lies and you give my heart peace you make me feel like more than a man in ways that i'll never understand and i wish that my hand wasn't so small so i could love you more and i adore everything about you and you give my heart peace i sit down and feast on your majesty and i'm encapsulated by your radiance and i thank you for your patience and you give my heart peace you stole my heart like a thief and you eliminated my unbelief and i thank god my ribs are the best part of me and you give my heart peace i lay my head on your chest and the song of your heart beats steals my breath the sound coming from your chest is my favorite song the way you hold on to me makes me realize that you love me and don't want me to go you show me that you love me that you show me that love is more than just a four letter word it's more than a noun and a noun and deeper than a verb in fact it's a three letter word it's you all that you are all that you represent time you spent pouring into me all that you are all that you be you embody love and i'm thankful you share it with me i'm not too proud to see that a woman like you is not found easily if only you existed in reality and were not something that i created a mere fallacy and i could be as happy as i pretend to be thank you josh with jones on that poem josh jones we have an event called verse come verse serve that we do every other tuesday uh usually from 12 to 1 at woodbury university we do it on um ring central which is woodbury's version of zoom or whatever but we've had alan akina was a guest we've had christopher siders as a guest we've had j tdla storyteller as a guest and if any of you are ever interested in being a guest and reading some poems for your our students including josh and others holler please let me know because uh the students really enjoy hearing new people and it's just it's about exchange we love to get folks together so um yeah verse come verse serve and and josh is the co-founder of that so all right well you know we are going to keep it moving um we're going to bring it up for a man who's coming out of enrovia california and he's he likes to build bridges and he's a thoughtful dude and he connected me to a great space in enrovia called the espresso mi cultura this is my man jesse tovar give it up for jesse well thank you mike for that i really appreciate that and uh hello p uh alan marcus and everyone else here hello miller miller room so i'm going to read for you real quick is a post pandemic poem that hasn't published in um harvest international at cow pie pomona and it's titled when they grab a light beer when they grab a light beer together again they will sit together they won't share fries they will talk and they won't poke each other's arms they will laugh and they'll try their best not to touch their faces they will eat cashew cheese pizza together again before they go there are separate ways they will say later instead of side hugging or bumping fists thank you jesse thank you jesse um do we still have um so pretty patra i'm here it's pretty how you doing i'm doing great uh happy to have you here please share something okay um i'm a 15 year old uh my freshman in the betas high school santa claire county um my poem is the proposed pandemic it's named learn let me start we lived through so much we lost so many we got so many survivors we fought so many wars we fought for rights we questioned our morals we doubted our choices after so much we still doubt ourselves is it our capability is it our personality is it our opinions or is it us why do i let them choose me why am i still with them do i need their support or do they need mine if none of those matter how did i let them define me how did i let them label me i reflected on my actions i questioned my decisions i integrated with my past how did i miss this why did i believe grass on the other side is greener did they fool me so much that i lost my path after so much consideration i finally found my path people gave me options memories showed me reality love gave me strength time let me think people leave footprints not make my future if them have made up my present it's about time to retract my path thank you that's it thank you so much thank you and you know what reading the piece already at 15 that's a fantastic sign i think i was 2223 before i hit my first little open mic so um keep your foot on the gas keep it moving keep it moving for real fantastic um okay you know what we're gonna bring up um gentlemen i'm at a cal state la this is my man doug remone thanks mike hi everybody thank you for having me thank you thank you for making some room for me tonight i'm going to read a pandemic piece i wrote back in the beginning of may i call it the new new normal and uh it should come with a parental advisory there is some profanity here one catastrophic worry after another over letting this stream of anxiety that spikes and drops as news reports narrates some new problem to add to our new new normal of the week it started with the pandemic then toilet paper shortages no hand sanitizer or wipes food supply disruptions meat shortages the threat of worldwide hunger and starvation economic collapse fucking murder hornets thousands of people protesting for black justice white militias on the streets propaganda spreading faster than the virus millions who believe this is all an overblown hoax governments coaxed up to expand their powers of surveillance and oppression the latter half being true worldwide isolation depression anxiety despair and it's only been two months two months what the fuck i write this as i sit on the toilet because like feces expelling the body i need to get this shit out of my mind the news and social media flood me with toxins i need to filter out from useful information to keep up to date with what we face it all does more harm than good in higher doses regardless of filter you can't consume too much of this because you wind up with cerebral indigestion you wind up journaling on the toilet because you can't think of anything else you wipe you wind up having to wipe your tears among other things and you have to remind yourself daily hourly minute by minute to protect yourself not just from an airborne virus but from the contagion of anxiety panic propaganda and spin they're manufacturing our feelings and our thoughts and we have to nourish and protect ourselves from that too thank you everybody jessie thank you so much jessie folks jessie's doing a bunch of stuff at the espresso microtura hosting different events and so sorry for interrupting mic this is doug Ramon oh doug doug doug you know what i knew that my bad dude you know what i'm i'm doing too many things right now um hey give it up it's all good man it's a busy night thank you thank you again thank you yeah thank you doug Ramon and um man we got two more people but i'm gonna try to get up one or two more people after that um we're gonna bring up a man who's a teacher from long beach bill yumlo can you hear me yes you're coming in okay let me just change my view thank you towards the night before lockdown went all through the state not a human restoring not even at the gate the masks were all hung neatly in a row in hopes that by daybreak they'd be ready to go the restaurantiers were serving up their final call while customers were traversing throughout the mall and families in their outfits and i and my sweats had picked out our presence that would be sure bets when on the escalator below there occurred a loud noise we sprang from our seats and saw all the boys who were being chased so far from behind that it nearly blew our collective mind it seems that their faces were exposed to the world and officers in full force after them hurled and then the lads split up to avoid any tickets though dozens of cops resembled a thicket we were all fearful of said tumult below that pursuit of said lads might come to blow after blow but into their midst there a hailed a red suit drone powered he did most rapidly scoot on toriota on honda he shouted loudly on ford on shivy he repeated in glee on plumbeth on subaru his voice again echoed on dodge on jeep as forward he strode to the freeway they went the lads did that away bent while santa yelled line up to one at all let us flee from this unsafe mall the cops stood still super amazed that their pursuit had become so totally crazed their sirens soon became such a roar even as each vehicle closed every door speed signs were ignored into the pursuit as the bearded one tossed out his sleigh's loot crashes were heard as patrol cars piled high and santa was heard to give a big sigh his drone powered sleigh did suddenly lift all kiddie driven cars each was a gift into the air they flew like a flash as the pursuers gave up their last dash the children that night grinned ear to ear exposing their smiles without any fear because santa knew as did they that lives must be lived every day that xmas eve santa unlocked lockdown not to mention lock up and turned all that no into a positive yupp a present towards to all humankind freedom from fear towards a remind rights sacrificed are really regain and thus humanity itself still remain so this holiday season may you have a reason to be safe however you see fit to be with your loved ones even a bit bill young love give it up for bill thank you bill our next poet i'm bringing up he just ran a venue for 20 years and he has mentioned literally hundreds of poets former high school teacher a man has worn a lot of hats he was on hbo death poetry jam back in the day and he's been a coach and he's just a man that got a lot of love and a fantastic dude with one of the freshest steps can we give it up for my man kori koh for aka best yep hello everybody um thank you very much mike for having me out here for having something like this being a part of this lone beach library not adult poets and storytellers i really needed this especially for the end of the 2020 year good poem good stories good company when the masks come off and the smiles come back and the kids start playing and their smiles come back and they're running again footballing again playground and again clowning with friends let the sun shine in i told my seeds go in camp koh for again we go for the wind like penny loafers when it's over we put dimes up in them so when dimes in the bubble sun shining again ice cube triple double lickers winning again miami heat got beat they supersonic back then superpowers on the hour chatted with bozeman in them took off his mask for the ass he was stronger than them he'll be a blast from our past he'll live longer and then there'll be a slew of black panthers up in oakland again i'm hoping again i hope for my friends i'm hopeful for the hopeless with hopelessly thin pockets full of mass now they're breathing again rainbow at the end we finally seeing again i hope you wish i would win because i wish you would win don't want to see another sold out store of tissue again too many issues with and i watched my fiscals up and it's like poverty and homelessness done tripled again furloughs and no go i'm one layoff from them congress passed 600 what's the payoff for them when the mass come off we'll see them grinning again me and their men and women hella winning again i'm a constituent with advice for them if we ain't right then it shouldn't be right for them while we watch them swim we up your drowning again when the mass come off you'll see us frowning again thank you cori koh for aka best cap give it up for best cap thank you folks cori koh for started a mic and dim lights in september october of 2000 and i went on the first night and uh i originally met cori at the fly poet showcase before it was all before it was a showcase when fly was an open mic in a Santa Monica man remember thursday promenade yeah thursday promenade 33 and the third and all that cori koh for folks thank you mic thank you cori always fantastic happy new year king really good to see you bro yeah man um folks were um the last official poll we have um he just survived cove in 19 similar to alan a kino and his story is similar uh uh with his own version but he went through it himself and he was the first student of mine to ever publish his publish a book and he's published another one too and this man's got a heart bigger than alaska and also texas and he knows more about underground hip hop than probably anybody on the planet this is my man christopher james justice ciders yo yo yo what up what up can y'all hear me y'all getting me good yeah uh for sure um uh yeah i'll explain the whole coping thing after after the piece um so this piece is called unapologetic i hope y'all dig it and yeah god fed us breadcrumbs to live off a minimal rinsing off a black skin to be a white hill karythians missing from 66 versions mary poppin still claims to be a fucking virgin mobile still room with no a drop all powers in red room he remains unsunned in the fucking patreon while homophobic you rise from the freaking grave y'all i'll be tired y'all i'll be tired y'all seeing the same demons behind different faces anger issues with happiness while i chase it down these dark tunnels echoing that crash talk 21 floating savages whole red balloons fear exhaust how much it costs how much it costs here's some tokens for some wise thoughts eating away your innocence dancing king sing some horrors making it hard to be vulnerable in this minstrel white folks don't get i've been illich playing victim with good intentions admittedly done that amongst my male privilege attending the risk that tears out the blood of my sacrifices ripening the fiction strange drip fruition at the root of us as children hands very raised in drunken fate staggering diddy bops across johnny's plane double d's in a fight club holding threes y'all breaking bad greed and lust for 25 cents an extra quarter get you many men dying of paranoia ripping off the wings of mackamon vultures blackboard fly no matter how controversial every time i've been in love i ain't never been sober too afraid to be in love too afraid to burn these bridges and use the ashes for comfort but i'm never too afraid to bring the motherfucking ruckus when my name is spoken too afraid to change too much of the same as a groundhog inferior to mountain tops i died off caution as an imposter to send the roam and feminist ideology the toxicity of my intimacy risa bet uncut and holding call fields tip drills fetishizing conversations of the mud hope to be escort to a different place amongst the touch because time and time again this world has not shown where i belong aside from entertainment where i pimp my soul for the relation to your seat i rather live in sin if it meant to be authentic lies led to lynches to smoke emits from false whistles that blow to avalanche tornadoes amongst a gemaji fabo never raided by karen screaming stories bloodshed when it's not theirs leaking on the concrete dripping from batons covered by rubber bullets this is the gilscott apocalypse of unrest poets now we can't get along if america gotta die for us to be freed in shit so long welcome to the terror dawn christopher james justice ciders oh uh yeah wear a mask wear a mask please i almost didn't survive kovat my respiratory system failed and i had pneumonia and i was in the hospital for a week so it's real please wear a mask and take care of yourselves love please love you chris folks i was sending text messages to chris like just sending you energy chris sending you know and um fortunately chris is right here and he's doing just fine now but man i'm two two months ago right chris like less than two months ago yeah uh the week before my birthday in september uh i got exposed on the on the fifth test the positive on the ninth and went to the hospital on the 18th and came out the 25th man man oh man man well here's cheers to christopher ciders man thank you thank you chris um we're just about at the end here but um a couple of things i wanted to say um when the pandemic ends i'm going to be doing quarterly events at and actually we're even going to keep doing them over zoom too but um at the long beach downtown public library the billy jean king library is a super beautiful space in the miller room the room the room and the space that is is sponsoring today's event is just a beautiful beautiful room and i i did a i did a reading there way back in january but i'm going to be doing quarterly events uh with them and i want to encourage you all to check out that library but also here in the chat i'm going to do one final poem is to kind of wrap this up right here but um here in the chat i wanted to say um please bill bridges and connect with folks and get get email addresses or get web links um add each other on ig and and you know twitter and everything else you know and uh as nancy just said poets are our tribe you know our tribe um the church of poetry right you know this is the this is it right here folks you know um so i was born in long beach so i have a i have a close connection to long beach so i always like to talk about that but i'm gonna just do a quick little final poem and and uh and that's it the 562 the 562 is a nexus a suburban urban cross section a small town big city a fluent yet gritty the 562 is somewhere between hollywood and urvine san harmonica and anaheim the 562 is a good time because its people are down to earth blessed by birth to be born where the vibes are warm catch that cool ocean breeze blown in from the beach and the clouds they come from the south as the coast winds around the peninsula palace birdies the temperature is perfect this land was once marshlands and willow thickets intercepted by the la river but now surfers and grandparents kicking the 562 is all american multicultural folks from iowa to cambodia el salvador to ethiopia aviation okies in the aerospace industry and denizens of long beach groove the snoop dog and sublime garage rockers and freestyle rhyme and on the streets of long beach you can find oil and signal hill broadways alternative lifestyles art in the east village downtown lofts and rockabilly chillers and how many poly players are in the nfl from jojo's to the prospector coheba to the blue cafe drinking sangria on a hot day the bar flies from the 49er to belmont shore ferns to the vroom and private parties used to get loose at this blue scoose the 562 is a window into the future with lots of history like the powerful earthquake of 33 the pike used to be the place to be and can we salute Cameron Diaz and her flavorful family respect to lakewood serritos bellflower norwalk cuta hey south gate compton to dam near bell gardens not to be confused with 310 this is the 562 in the middle of so cal but its own little world it's another beautiful day in eldorado park in the place of my birth and in the home of my heart this is the 562 thank you people thank you so much everybody um and you know what i'm gonna turn it back over to angela our librarian in the middle room and um angela take it away well i just want to thank you everybody so much thank you to mike and to all of our special guests who have participated in our program tonight you guys have amazing vision voice emotion passion it's powerful it really moved me and i'm sure everybody can say the same thing here it's just been so inspiring and i want to thank you all again for joining us and all of our patrons in the community have been listening in and just sucking all of this up today um i want to also thank our library administration and staff friends of the library the lbpl foundation and all of our contacts in the poet poetry community and elsewhere who have helped to get this uh out to everyone today and i hope that you'll um join us again in the future we have more upcoming programs um have a very safe healthy happy new year we're going to stick around for another 10 minutes or so until about 545 and then we're going to have a hard stop of the program but um if you want to you know unmute yourselves and chat or ask any questions um michael takes some q and a uh if anybody has anything they want to say feel free to do it now um but again thank you so much for joining us and uh take it away mike thanks everybody thank you everybody and um you know like i said connect connect with some folks and um we really appreciate you all and thanks everybody and um fantastic job everyone thank you all right so anybody have any questions or if you have any information you want to share in the chat go right ahead um i also have some information here i'm going to put up on the screen for um some of our guest poets earlier um if you want you can copy this information down as well okay and uh can everybody see this so mike we had a few quick questions if you have chance um uh some of the websites dedicated to poetry do you have any that you recommend in particular you know definitely the most popular poetry websites are like the poetry foundation dot org and academy of american poets but there is a lot of great poetry websites and um anybody here that has a favorite poetry website type it into the chat because it's great to connect dots and a local site there's a site called cultural weekly that's published four or five of the poets here with us today i think alan ikino and alman canard and chris ciders um i think nancy have been published on cultural weekly so um please if if any of you have any favorite poetry websites type it into the chat and uh there is a great online poetry community anybody want to add anything to that yeah feel free to unmute yourselves guys if you have anything you want to contribute let's see uh i'm organizing a poetry and perils event series at myplace cafe in pasadena california and on january eighth um we're gonna have um cal state long beach mfa graduate uh andrew lew uh read out of his uh thesis aka poetry collection so you can uh we will like for all of you guys to tune in it's gonna be available on youtube i'll probably put the link to the youtube channel right here once i get it right now but that's my only announcement awesome thank you um is there anybody else who has anything they want to contribute joshua um i had already put it in the chat but if you guys didn't see i'm um interning at the community with the community league literature initiative at the sims poetry of library which is on um florents and fifth avenue here in england and we're looking for poetry books written by anybody um we were trying to fill up our shelves for the black and latin ex poets um i have some of you guys's books some of the people here that i know have written books i've um already have them but if you have books sitting at home um that are poetry books you would like to donate please you can contact me i'll put my email in in the description in the chat below or you can email the library's email and do that stuff or if you just want to donate financially we're trying to grow it's uh it's a great organization run by um hyrum sims um so please help out send information that would be great awesome i'm a student at the community literature initiative and i approve this message yeah just thank you everyone and and happy new year we've got a new year on the horizon years are still happening i know so much to look forward to um oh can i make an announcement yes um hey everyone my name my name is chris ciders uh just formally introduce um myself um i just did uh an hour set poetry last night to raise money for uh dorthy's place it's a women's shelter in uh selenus california it's about five and a half six hours north from here in uh monorail county so if you i'm just asking if folks could uh please donate to dorthy's place because you know times are you know really hard with covid and whatnot we're just trying to you know really help out the community and i just typed out the uh the website link dorthy's place dot or g in the in the chat so can you please donate whatever you can uh it'll be greatly appreciated thank you thank you so much um mike we had a quick question um and i noticed that we did have some younger writers here today which i thought was really amazing um suprati i think was probably the youngest who joined us today and that was just fabulous so inspiring um what advice you have for younger writers uh mike if you have any thoughts on that you can share well you can never read too much you know that's i guess that's a starting point is just reading a lot but um i always talk to um you know students about not only reading a lot but you know even just journaling every day and a lot of times journaling even if you're just journaling about your everyday life because writing is thinking and the more you write the better you'll be and so also you know writing gives you some good inner unity it gives you that helps you uh get the spiders out of the corners right you know yeah all right okay i have something to say and i'm gonna echo mike's words like five years ago i'd run into him in a in in one reading is keep showing up go as to many open mics as you can show your face don't be afraid to make mistakes don't be afraid to bomb the poem in front of the stage just do it just do it keep writing and keep showing up let people know who you are let people hear your words your who your words have value don't be afraid liz but you know what um it's so cool how many different events i've seen you at and um and you really always support folks i see you um at people's book parties and and uh i really appreciate how you how you really build community i started late so i have to start i have to be more aggressive but you know your dedication is is and you know remember you told me about your 200 page thesis that you wrote about sonia sanchez yes man elizabeth is a serious poach you want to get down on some poetry you want to talk about the history of poetry she can talk to you about not just social justice but about um the history in the last 50 60 70 years um yeah um i wrote about i when i was a young student in venezuela um i i i had i was an english major in venezuela and um i chose to write about african-american women writers and specifically about sonia sanchez so in venezuela you to do your be your your your bachelor's you don't do four years you do five years and at the end of the five years you have to produce a book and this is mine hey much respect lisbeth much respect all right well it looks like we are just right at 545 and we've pretty much wrapped up our questions for now um thank you again everyone for joining us have a very safe healthy and happy new year we look forward to seeing you again soon more upcoming programs with the miller room and with the long beach public library so thanks again everyone and good night and thank you again mike and all the work that you put into this for us too um folks stay in touch and if anybody needs to email me mike poadla at gmail.com but i mean let's reach out and connect dots and thank you angela thank you and looking forward to more events at the miller room yeah we're gonna have another poetry um open mic special program in um april yeah as well so we'll keep everybody informed happy new year everybody and thank you we continue thank you so much everyone thank you happy new year all right happy new year thank you mike happy new year to all thank you all right thank you all right that was awesome much love yeah yeah yeah all right thanks again all right thank you