 How does this sound? 96.5, K-O-I-T. We're not going to hear any of that crap, okay? So my father is a very deep part of the things that I write, and he's a deep inspiration. And this poem really deals with his complexity. And it's called My Father's Music. My father's music percolates and palpitates like hot coffee dreaming, a tap dancer's arrival, hitting throat with the right note, going back deep, unopposed. And my father's music is caught in a kettle whose grease endured screams and flame of gastove decisions where curling irons bent notes and contemplated hooks landing on the chin and announcing a verdict on a rippled canvas. And my father's music is an empty cup of my favorite things where soup is made from pain and love is made from rain. And my father's music is made in wood when he would, then wouldn't, then would again, and would is softer than stone, and wouldn't you know it? And check this out, my father's music is the chamber of cool in the greenness of the son's estate of ecstatic static. Can you dig that, brother? I said my father's music is the chamber of cool poking into the greenness of the son's estate of ecstatic static. And my father's music is sky minus rain divided by sun, multiplied by incense in the smoldering pyramid of branches. And my father's music is the in-time panemime of the heaven-held debate whose defense rests on the eighth day. And my father's music floats and glides from head to thigh and on that other side where up is down and down is up, sticking like flapjacks whose wings lap, lap, lap the tick-tock oil of greasy time. And my father's music skips, bumps, burps, slurps, sizzles on the sunny side of the street. I said my father's music skips, bumps, burps, slurps, sizzles on the sunny side of the street. Crackle, pop, bop, pan-fried with an egg on top. Can you taste that? Crackle, pop, bop, pan-fried with an egg on top. My father's music. So, you know, he was a very complex individual. I would sit at the dinner table with him and, you know, I'd be staring at my food as if it were not food at all, like it was like some kind of like sculpture, you know. And all his complexity, he'd say, you know, if you don't eat all that goddamn food on your plate, I'm going to knock your head off, okay? And that was some real complexity, right? You know, it's funny, you know, when you look for poems to read from your book, you can't find poems and sometimes you can't even find your book because you don't even have a copy of it. You gave all your copies to friends, right? How many of you know what it's like to trip? I mean, really, you're tripping, right? You're tripping. Hold on a second. What is your name, partner? Darius. Darius, and when was the last time you were tripping? Maybe like a month ago. Can I ask you what you were tripping on? Been tripping on a lot of shit, actually. And then this poem's for you. And the poem is even for those of you who don't trip, okay? But this is the trip. Okay, so anyway, tripping, it's called tripping. Tripping over thoughts, tripping over the past, tripping over shoelaces, tripping over yesterday's news, tripping over mirrors that reflect every bad move made on the chessboard of my skin, tripping over the years that hiccup then never fully developed. Tripping when I should be walking, tripping over the extension cord connecting to a record player that doesn't play, radios whose innards have been gutted, tripping over empty cans whose contents doused the flames and left a trail that followed me into the potholes gasping for breath. Tripping over warranties and warrants that extend over lifetimes, tripping over cigarette butts and sucked wind, tripping and slipping into something I can't get out of, tripping over sentences not fully formed, sentences sent, sent to a detention I still trip on. Still tripping, still slipping. What was that old song? Slipping into darkness. Still tripping, still tripping. Don't trip. And anyway, there's this thing that I was, I think I was watching Dr. Phil or Judge Judy or something. And Judge Judy was talking about, say Judge Judy, let me explain. The guy, you know, I was, you know, I put the insurance and partially my name because he couldn't pay the bill. So I put it in my name, make it easy, we had a relationship. So Judge Judy says, hey, look at me, look at me, right? He said, he's a hustler. He's a hustler, right? But anyway, during Dr. Phil, there was this thing called, like mansplaining. Did anybody know what that is? There's a guy that explained it to me one time, right? You know? So anyway, this is a poem, it's called Mansplain. Okay, all of it has collected in my ears. It has hardened over time. All those bosses and supervisors and others deemed superior. Their voices thick with the hoarseness of time. Let me explain something to you. Let me run it down to you. You must not have heard me the first time. Look at me when I'm talking to you. If I gotta repeat myself, I'm gonna knock the white, black, yellow, red, blue off of you. And it was all explained to me. I was listening. Those men had plenty to say, and most of the time, no one was listening. And my ears became overloaded with their excesses. But once in a while, those men would say something like, it's good to see you, how you've been. Have you heard from your daddy? What's mom's been up to? And sometimes they say, you know, I wish I had a daughter just like you. And those things stayed with me. Too many to write down. Too much to explain, so I won't. Well, I'm gonna offer you some choices. Would you like to hear a poem about washing dishes in a restaurant? Can't find anything in there. I'm gonna do one first. It's called The Painted Ladies. We know The Painted Ladies, right? The postcard image, right? Well, these are a pair of Painted Ladies, so you could assume the position of somebody that is taking a walk down Mission Street, one gloomy afternoon, you know? And you're seeing, as you're going block after block, you're seeing the years pass by and you're seeing what's happening now and you're tripping on what happened then and you're trying to make sense of certain things in the town that you were born in. The Painted Ladies. The ladies I see are not painted but have been stripped of much love, trust, rest, dreams. Somehow they keep going forward, presenting themselves in a harvest of hues, despite the weather. And this lady carried the hurt down Mission Street one Friday, walking past the suitcases, looking for a place to unload what is left. Into her cell phone, she unloads. Motherfucker, don't give me that shit. I told you not to mess with me. And her blackness was dyed another shade and walking towards her was an older black woman pushing a grocery basket. And the younger woman continued into her phone. Listen, motherfucker. And the older woman stopped her head rising, her eyes following the younger woman. Excuse me, sister, she said. She walked over to the younger woman and gently took a hold of her arm. And words were said. And soon the younger woman and older woman were laughing. And the younger woman waved her hand as if touched by the spirit and said, Lord, have mercy. I know that's right. And they parted with the words, God bless you, sister. And Mission Street kept going. The street sweeper kept sweeping. The paletero kept selling his ice cream. The palm trees kept being what they were. And the older black woman pushed her empty grocery basket. Suck the marrow from our bones. Gut the innards of our homes. Condemn the history in our walls. Frisco body, frisco soul. Bullet from a cop's gun piercing the black body. Scarlet ripples shiver over the skin of the bay. Frisco body, frisco soul. Our block, our home, our playground, our corner store. The place where I took my first step. The real estate developer's wet dream. Frisco body, frisco soul. The word frisco removed from our flesh and bones by high pressure hoses leaving behind the smell of death. Strip the murals of color. Strip the hearts of blood. Strip skin from bone. Frisco body, frisco soul. The city sits deep in our skin. The light still shines in the sockets of our eyes. The city sits deep in our skin. The light still shines in the sockets of our eyes. Frisco born and bred. Frisco body, frisco soul. Someone fell and skinned their knee. Some poor soul twisted their ankle while marching in a protest. I've walked the streets back and forth, forth and back. I've paced, stomped, slipped, slid, and tripped over various streets with various names. I was a multivariate motherfucker. I've even stubbed my little toe. I have mistaken manhole covers for Aztec calendars. And the streets are a tapestry of an insistent stitching of frowns, fissures, arteries, carvings, canals cut into palms. A spiritual gulf for alms given and spiritual gulf for alms given and lives taken, these sutured streets of ours. And I would like to welcome a poet and an artist in her own right who was a good friend of my uncle. And what we're going to try to do with this poem is we're going to try to incorporate a song. I'd like to welcome Sabrina Taylor. Sabrina? So you got the poem, right? Well, I'll tell you what. My part is sung, so I guess you can have the mic and then where it says, which says me, that's me, and then where it says Jagdan. How many of you like Oldies? Anybody that knows me knows that I like Oldies. Anybody remember Curtis Mayfield's song called I'm So Proud? 96.5. Does anybody remember a song called I'm So Proud by the Impressions? So we're going to do a riff off that with the poem. So why don't we start it? If I shatter glass, please forgive me in advance, okay? Prettier than all the word And I'm so proud, I'm so proud I'm so proud of you I'm so proud of being loved Frisco, where you been? Don't nobody like the word frisco? They say it's a curse. That is, it should never find a place on the tongue frisco. I feel you in the poetry of your movement, in the grace of your shoulders as it dips to the amplitude of the deep brass moans that move the sacred frisco ground under our feet. Frisco, where you been? Frisco, have I told you I love you? You're only one fellow's girl And I'm so proud, I'm so proud I'm so proud of you I'm so proud of being loved by you. Frisco, I haven't forgotten you With frisco eyes I see All that's been taken from you Yet I give you all that I have That's in my frisco bones My frisco voice cries out To you in a frisco night A night when all comes back When all that has been forgotten Comes back clear like a first kiss In a dark sky above frisco And like Curtis Mayfield saying he said Sweeter than the taste of a cherry so sweet And I'm so proud, I'm so proud I'm so proud of you I'm so proud of being loved by you. Your frisco pain I have felt Your frisco evicted heart I have seen I have tasted every drop of frisco rain That has collected in the empty pots Of the places we called home I can't keep the frisco love from my home My pots are filled with frisco love With down home love With adobo love With beans and rice love With gumbo love And cornbread love With arroz con leche love With pancet love With sopa deres love With pupusa love With frisco love Part black, part brown And one big pot Compliments to you From all the people we meet And I'm so proud, I'm so proud Believe me, I love you too I'm so proud of being loved by you Frisco, no earthquake can shake us apart Our love is tight Our frisco love Our frisco blood Our frisco life Our mural of skin Our mural of love Frisco love I'm so proud of being loved by you And can everybody sing that on the count of three? It just goes, I'm so proud of being loved by you. So I'm going to go one, two, three, okay? One, two, three. I'm so proud of being loved by you. Thank you. Very spontaneous, right? Thank you, Sabrina. Yes. All right. So anyway. Yeah, that was an oldie. It's like 1964 or something. That's like way before my... You know, during the Frisco Five, there were times when the mom, right, would come out and Mama Christina, she would take communion, right? And recently they did a march to Sacramento to call more attention to, you know, to start charging, you know, police with these killings, right? And, you know, it was moving to see her strength, you know, the mother of, you know, I think she was the oldest in the Frisco Five and it was nice to see her there taking a stand. So when I looked at her, I was almost looking like she was the mama of a lot of folks, you know. So this poem was about just assuming the position of one of those folks who was coming to Mama Christina and just telling her how he felt. Day 14, hunger striker, Maria Christina. Mama, I'm hurt. I'm sick. I ain't got no food. No place to go. Mama, they took everything from me. Mama, I'm sad, but I don't know how to cry. Mama, my name is Frisco and I don't nobody want me. I've been shot at, spit on. My face pounded into the ground. They even stole the flowers from my grave. Mama, I ain't got no place to go. Can I come and stay with you? Mama, I ain't gonna make no trouble. I just need a place to get it together. Mama, I see what you've been doing out here. I'm thinking about you and Alex Nieto and Maria Woods and Amilcar and Luis Gangora are thinking about you too. They said to me, they said, Frisco, check on Mama for us. But Mama, you know we can't survive without our Mama. None of us could make it if they didn't have and they Mama looking out for them with Mama eyes. The day is cold and the wind is trying to cut me and my name is Frisco. I was just checking on you Mama. Is there anything I can do, anything you need? I'll do anything for you Mama just like you would do anything for me. Maybe I'm overdoing this Frisco thing when we do it again, okay? I was in the Philippines last year, right? And I was in a place called Makati which is in Manila. And I thought, okay I'm in Makati right now I'm not going to think about Frisco because I'm in Manila, right? Vacation, right? So this is what happened, okay? On the balcony of the motel in Makati the buildings in the distance do not hold back the glitter swallowed from streaks of light in prisms split in a thousand pieces. I jump into the Frisco lights whose pools gather below on the streets of cast aside shadows. I leap head first into Frisco feelings like unclaimed fish that escaped the intricate weave of net. Frisco feelings that say, where are you from? Fleeting Frisco feelings whose taste remained when you got on that plane and tried to forget Frisco for a minute, for a lifetime. Frisco, your grip is tight your voice cuts through the smog Frisco feelings fermenting in a bar a flickering neon match keeping Frisco feelings alive in Manila. So yeah, you can't really get away from Frisco I'm gonna check my phone real quick if you don't mind. Let's see here, get to the point. I don't really like reading poems from a handheld device but sometimes there's no choice. How many of you here are single men? One, two, three I know you gotta have more single men than that, okay? You got three single men, four? Okay, all right. I'm not gonna ask you how it feels to be a single man, okay? I won't even get there. But anyway, this poem... Can I see your hands again, the single man? Oh, my man, okay. Okay, all right. This poem is for you. Okay, it's called Disarm. Brother, you raised your hand, right? Single guy? Okay. Brother, there's nothing like it. The feeling of a woman taking a hold of your arm at just the right time. You know what I'm saying? Curling around your arm with her own in a move you didn't see coming but cannot forget. So many of us are armed with so much equipped to do damage to get him before he gets us, right? But let me tell you, brother, there's no feeling like when a woman takes a hold of your arm, man, can you take a hold of his arm? It says more than a book. It says more than can be said, right? When a woman takes a hold of your arm, disarms you. And you let go of what constricts you at that moment. When a woman takes a hold of your arm and gives it a squeeze that reaches your breath, can you give it a squeeze? A squeeze, yeah. Hey, Luke, you know what I'm talking about, right? Yeah, okay. When a woman takes a hold of your arm and gives it a squeeze that reaches your breath, a woman you'd give your breath for, right? It takes a hold of you and takes you to another place. It takes a hold of you and takes you to another place. It takes a hold of you and takes you to another place like another poetry reading in the basement of the library. It takes a hold of you and takes you to another place. And let me tell you, brothers, let me tell you, brothers, no feeling like it. There's no feeling like it. There's no feeling like it when it's the right one. There's no feeling like it. No feeling at all. I was washing dishes in a restaurant, and I'd seen all kinds of folks come through leaving me dirty dish after dirty dish, clink, clink, soiled utensils. And I think about my father, he worked on a high-class hotel on Knob Hill, and when I told him I was washing dishes, he said, oh, you're diving for pearls, huh? And one by one, they'd come in, waiters and waitresses and cooks, and there was Fast Eddie who rode a motorcycle and spoke about a bad case of crabs he had caught in New Jersey, and there was another guy from Oklahoma who was a mass of freckles topped with a wig-like head of red hair who had said the Beatles were overrated music that was too commercial. And there were more folks from everywhere else, and I was from here, and I washed those dishes between classes at City College. So I was washing those dishes between classes at City College, man, I'm telling you. I was putting them in the machine, but I was washing those dishes between classes at City College. And there was another guy who'd worked at the restaurant who'd recently arrived and he was reading books about my hometown, my city, compiling facts and visiting landmarks and places I had missed. Soon, this guy knew more about my hometown than I did, and I continued doing those dishes, and the guy kept telling me about every inch of my city as if he were born here himself. And I gazed at the dirty plates every inch of them, and he told me about every inch of my city except the space of the back of my hand. How many of you guys know Equipto, the rapper? Equipto? You know him? Yeah, he, you know, it's funny, you know, things kind of take on a repeat, you know, history repeats itself. He reminds me of a lot of my uncles when they were younger. He kind of has this vibe that they had, you know, have a great deal of respect for him. And this is called Frisco 5 Hunger Striker Equipto. Equipto. Brother. Capatid. I thought you were Filipino. But you are pure Frisco to the core with a voice chiseled with the landscape spirit of our city. Root of black and brown. You echo the Filipino black-brown spirit of my uncles. So much has been taken away from us, even our voices. Our tongues have been ripped from our mouths, uprooted, discarded, heart swelling with unsaid words crying out for justice. Our lost tongue of Frisco feelings and pain and love find a place in your mouth as they melt into rhymes and lyrics that you spit in the face of injustice. You give us your voice, which is our voice in frequencies that run the course of our streets and in our blood. You give it back because you realize that you can't have nothing if you don't share. The Filipino youth that dropped by asked me, is he Filipino? And how could I tell them that you were Japanese and Colombian when you looked straight up Filipino? And I said, yeah, he's Filipino and a lot of other things too. Then they asked, isn't he part Latino? And all I can say was, yeah, he's that too. And he ain't eight. That was day eight. How many of you like to eat carrots? I noticed, brother, your hand's going up quite a bit at these questions, you know. How many of you like carrots? Let me get into... This is the Bugs Bunny part of the show. Carrots. At 8.50 Bryant, they give you carrots in cellophane bags. They are not carrot sticks, but grated carrots. You tear open the bag and put a few into your mouth. Also in the sack are sandwiches and cheese, peanut butter or bologna for the grown-up crowd. The carrots for the most part are ignored. As you chomp on those grated carrots, a couple of the fellows adorned in orange, like the carrots, toss you their carrot rations. And you sit looking ridiculous, popping those carrots into your mouth, getting bits of carrot between your teeth in the holding tank. And the guys in the holding tank are being held for all kinds of stuff. Some had injuries. Some had been there before, but what else to do but wait, talk, or remain silent and eat your goddamn carrots? An older black man who had done time before skips the carrots and gets to the point. I was with my woman 20 years, he said. It didn't work out, you know. It hurt me for a long time. For many years I was hurting. I liked that song, she used to be my girl. Remember that one? She used to be my girl. She used to be my girl. Man, she was a good woman. He sings a few verses of the song, an oldie that came out when many of us were fresh in high school. Before we had girls, before we had jobs, before we knew anything. Others shake their heads or hum along. He shakes his head and gazes to the floor. Sometimes, he said, you just got to take the loss. And the carrots become sweeter as we chew on the man's words that linger in the holding tank, hovering overhead and into ears and squeaking by under some of our noses. We keep eating them in hell if we didn't begin to see things clearer. After all, our moms used to tell us that carrots were good for our eyes. That was long before we slipped into these orange uniforms. You know what I mean? One more jail thing, okay? The holding tank, trying to hold on to consciousness, attached to a flimsy string, seconds melt into minutes, minutes into hours. The hands on the clocks embrace armored flies swarming in regiments of attached detachment. The benches are narrow with marrow in the grains, moving in one direction while our minds go the other way, dropping in and out of consciousness like senseless yo-yos. The bench is cold and no amount of bench warm memories can alter the temperature. Noses and throats are instruments lubricated with snot and spit enough to lubricate the springs and coils of the apparatus that constricts throats and torment's eyes. The deputy believes he conducts such instruments in a conspiratorial orchestration whose notes are written in fingerprint smudges and hidden from public view with the approbation of God, snores from the deepest places, throb, bump, boil, octaves knocking into octaves, sounds of missteps and hiccups through the nose. It is a choir of snot and the god of ear, nose and throat speaks in deep low baritones, a chorus of woodwinds and brass through the nose and mouth, seeking light in the upper airway, short-changed notes stored in jars that break free. And there's a man black with the skin of burning brass snoring while standing, a vertical expanse, the ember in his throat stoked and a solo takes hold of his dream and he is on stage, the deep notes heading towards the face of the moon, the sleep in his eyes, the pulp of misdirected sunlight, the deepness of sleep hidden in his bones and old cans and dusty covers and whole-ridden clothes and shoes never intended to fit, burst forth in a symphony of sound, a symphony of snores, of solos as we wait in the holding tank, trying to hold a note. So anyway, again, I appreciate you all coming. I'm going to just read a couple more things and there's a couple of events that are happening. We'll be reading at the Daily City Public Library and also at Eastwind Books in Berkeley in the next couple of weeks. I have a blog if you'd like to check it out. This, I don't know if I mentioned this, but this part of the tour it's called the Fingerprints over Frisco Book Tour. So please, you know, let people know that this book is out. And we talked about hunger strike and the hunger. There's a hunger here for a belly empty of lies, for a belly empty of arrogance, for a belly empty of emptiness, for a belly empty of death, for a belly empty of silence, yet there is no hunger. For bullets we've been fed, for shallow acoustic mouths that feed on our shadows, for the pathetic path paved over our eyes, for the day and night lies, for being discarded like day before yesterday's trash, for the burning buildings trapped in our lungs, for the skin of mirrors that don't reflect us, for excavated bones that are fed to us as souvenirs, for executed bones that are fed to us as bread, for confiscated tents and bed sores on the eyes, for newsprint voyeurs with ants crawling in their veins, for every eviction notice that bears the shit stains of John Wayne and Christopher Columbus, for the melted cheese served on a red, white and blue bedpan, for the chards of a wrought iron smile, for a belly filled with unfulfillment, there's a hunger. It's growing, spreading. It's here. And I'll just do one more, and that'll be in this book. My brother, his name is Ace, right? He did the wonderful illustrations for the book. And again, thank you very, very much for coming. I'd like to dedicate this poem for all of you. It's called Thank You. And thank you very, very much. Thank you. You were born... How many were born in San Francisco? Okay. Okay. You were born in San Francisco, and it was said that you never became anything, never achieved anything. And the rumor was that you wanted things to come easy. So you started with your smile, which was readily available, and completely evident, okay? A commodity of the rarest kind that was never for sale. It was as permanent as the hug, as the fog hugging the Golden Gate Bridge in a soggy embrace. And I remember seeing you when I was a kid, hey, it's that guy, I'd say, when I catch a glimpse of you from the backseat of my father's car. And my father would tell me, you got to stay away from guys like that. Guys like that ain't got their shit together. Study. Don't get involved with those guys. You know what I mean? Don't get... And that's all I really knew of you, a glimpse. And as the condos and office buildings planted themselves into the ground and stabbed into the sky, you stayed at about the same level, eye level, more or less. You were a part of my childhood as adulthood snuck up, sanctioned by the powers that thought they knew me. But you knew me better. All it took was a glimpse, which was both my future and my past. And this poem is a glimpse of you and a thank you before you disappear. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. We'd like to thank our audio and visual person. This is going to be on YouTube. Your faces will more than likely not be on YouTube, but your claps, your laughter, occasional boo, and any hisses that went by, those are all captured on audio. Please do likewise. Give it a view. Thanks.