 I wasn't originally going to do this poem. First of all, thank you to Jankinol, the engineering client and all of the Litquake staff. This is just a tremendous honor to be here. Tremendous honor to read with all these very, very talented poets today. It's a big thrill for me. I wasn't going to read this poem originally, but my wife talked me into it. So this is called the ninth. It doesn't mean the ninth inning. You'll see why at the end. There's a feeling you artistic types perhaps know in relation to the perfect creation, that poem that poured from your heart through your arms out your wrist onto the page in five minutes or less. A poem that needed one edit at most, even that one questionable, such a beautifully crafted poem like it wasn't even you who wrote it. Your beautifully crafted poem quickly made the final round of an esteemed local literary magazine contest. Your beautifully crafted poem quickly made the final round of an esteemed local poetry slam. Your beautifully crafted poem quickly garnered you an orgasm with the most beautiful person, with the most beautiful genitalia you could possibly hope to share an orgasm with. But that's not the feeling I'm talking about. I'm talking about the feeling the day after, when the most beautiful person with the most beautiful genitalia has gone back to their life. When the poetry slam is looking for a new champ and the local lit mag has a new deadline. And you are alone with your beautifully crafted poem and all the space on the page after. And that is how God felt on the eighth day and why war was created on the ninth. This poem I dedicate to my teacher, my great teacher, David Meltzer. This is called Rabbinical Rant 168. Why do so many poets spend so much time crucifying so many other poets? Because there can't merely be cleverness. There can't merely be virtuosity for virtuosity's sake. There must be humor. And humor means someone's going to get hurt. There must be humor or we will be dragging the corpse of academia around with us forever. And perhaps that's why we perpetuate this game as business of usual. What is the passing of the moment? But an interlude between all of these lyrical preludes, where all we're really hoping to do is break out our galleries of adjut porn. Wasn't it romantic remembering our individual points in the high points of a history that pointed towards a source we all came here to search for? An Easter egg hunt for common consciousness by poets who just so happened to be the first lawyers, poets who just so happened to be the first tag artists, poets who just so happened to be the first clergy in an Eden of their making. But if you want prayer, you must take the hajj of your life into the big theater for hymnals and chants of the interior body. Some poets just don't have what it takes to love Lilith, though she's there for us all. Don't complain she's a hard bitch. She's the medicine you need. This brother with his baby girl on the train wants so badly to be loved by the young teen dreamers all dolled up for the season. But the baby girl squirms. She's breaking his cool down in front of the hotties, a man unbabed by his baby. And taint the first time this train has gone down the path of the secular hand. No. Some poets just don't know Lil. But you don't have to baller to love her. Break it down like you mean it, brother. After all, isn't sex just another form of prayer? Reminding us how close we lounge to the reptiles in the big theater? And after all that is said and done, there's still the moment, crying out for your attention, still crying out for your naming. And once you've engaged in this process, you'll never be asked to stop. You'll be lost in a wide open mouth, lost in a process of singing, smoking, sucking, licking, eating, gnashing, swallowing, breathing, all in search of a construct which may or may not belong to God. And all the while you must keep in mind somehow that this is always, always a two-way street. Do you want to record the death and decay of Western society? Well, please do take a number and stand in line. Work sets the self-analyzing monkey free. In this elegy, poet, seduce thyself and know that the inner heaven cylinder is the place that you will see through constructs. Man, I tried to be an atheist. I tried not to believe. But ever since night came to the Mojave redlands, the exorcism never stops. And language poetry, thy cup runneth over and spills out into the greater Los Angeles basin with no regard for whom you may drown along the way. But the survivors will be stronger in the end for this flood over the stage is, over the world, is a stage that the Great Curtain is a colonizer of context beneath which the wizard is naked and horny and leering at Dorothy. But at least we have the United Auto Workers to thank for reminding us why Hegel keeps hanging around like a true jazz man, riffing the apocalypse fantastic from the brim of his felt, pork pie special, all the while asking that we crucify him so that a prophecy might come true. Thank you, San Francisco.