 Um, San Francisco public libraries committed to working. Um, we're not basically we're not in a neutral institution. And that's one thing I love about my job. We are actively working to end systemic racism and to acknowledge it and be part of the solution by providing useful and factual information, as well as information about black joy celebration and black art and everything like that. And I will definitely send everyone a follow up email. And I am relinquishing this all over to the poets now. Well, hi folks. Um, I'm here. I'm glad to see you guys here. I don't know what I'd be doing if it weren't for zoom as much as it gives me a bad headache. I just can't live without seeing y'all. What I was thinking of doing tonight is I mean obviously thank you to the San Francisco Public Library for letting me take up their time and energy doing these poem jams. Also, you know, I've really loved working with John Smalley for the entirety of this so far, and that's really exciting. Tonight we have a really great group of people. It is by no means all of the people in this book but everybody who is reading tonight was in the Civil Liberties United book that Shizue Siegel put together. There are a lot of other incredible people in that book. But I get these horrible zoom headaches and so I kind of have to keep the zooms more sensible. It's entirely on me and I picked who it was. So this is not Shizue's fault at all. But I'm grateful to her for all of the incredible work that she does. And I was going to start out introducing her because she put the book together and because right now is her project. And I just, we're taking this summer to really celebrate a couple of the institutions that really support writing in the San Francisco Bay Area and support writing for various diverse groups in the San Francisco Bay Area. So today it's right now and I'm going to introduce Shizue Siegel right now and she's, I'm hoping she'll say a little bit about right now and then read some. Yeah. Okay. Shizue Siegel. Hey, I always click the little red microphone on my tiny soft one screen as they're doing it down below. So that's the reason for the delay. Anyway, thank you so much, Kim. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you supporting right now. And this is the Civil Liberties United Book. And this was our third anthology and this, it was our second anthology Endangered Species Enduring Values. Civil Liberties has a hundred writers and artists of color and allies. People of color are 60% of the local population and we're still underrepresented. Our voices are underrepresented. And how can we end racism if we don't understand each other. We don't understand the full humanity of the people that are, that we tend to think of as, oh, just the people that wait at our tables and drive our buses, take care of our health. Oh, well, we don't have to see them as people. They're the people that keep us comfortable. And my question is, as civilization starts to disintegrate, maybe we need to listen to what those folks have to say about how to live in a society that is a circle where everyone is valued and where the earth is wiser than any of us creatures on it. So, yeah, I'd like to read a few poems, and I have to say, Kim, I really liked your choices. I'm glad I didn't have to make the choices but Kimi Sugiyoka and Tony Aldorando and James Cagney are all amazing. I was so grateful and honored to have you all in the book. You guys are amazing. And if I, if I can't make it to readings as much as I would like to and hear people like Natasha Dennerstein and Kitty Costello and Susan Dambroff and Richard Sanderl and, you know, all the other people, it's partly because I'm spending a lot of time supporting some of the people of color that are emerging that many of them are brilliant writers they have sensitive brilliant observations and they they don't have necessarily the time or the confidence to get themselves out there. So, so that's one of the things I do with my time and as some of you know I can get really cranky when I'm tired. I see you laughing Tony. Anyway, so let me get started. This is a, this is a, I'm going to start out with a poem from the book and then the other books are more in response to the pandemic, the other poems current the Buddha and St. Francis bum around town trolling for wisdom along the margins. We're all in it together, us and them, a hairs with a part, eyes melting with the moon and folding hearts clutch tight against the erosion of hope. Love always wins, but who sticks around long enough to find out, especially with gentrification. This is fears saying heaven and hell lose direction. Nirvana is a state of mind here and now always accessible if we simply stop to notice. Existence was never easy. Sediments settle slowly as we drift along in this thanks and stew of yes, no, right, wrong, many decisions, microphone moments. The answer is always yes. Elusive Time remains elusive. The ground shifts beneath our feet, sense and schedule virus scattered, but meaning very clear. The earth and sky are calling us to remember who's really in charge. Celestial cycles grind on. Heads of the risen south topple besides Caesar's and Pharaoh's earth mounds and monoliths pyramids and guillotines civilizations have fallen before too many times to count. Big headed creatures who have sold out their humanity don't hold the power. We have only to look up to see how small we are. Skies clear after scattered showers upon a super bloom of spring, a wealth of Dudley in Acacia, native Californians, Australian imports, blossoms fraying, turning to fruit and then seed and a proliferation of tense mushrooms as the world keeps turning, turning upside down and backwards. How the mighty rise and fall, but the people endure by bridging the salt of the earth to the stars in our eyes everlasting gold in our hearts. This one is dedicated to some of the single women I've seen walking in my neighborhood. Alone with COVID. Breathe yourself into a new life, propelled from an enclosing womb where you were bathed in the amniotic fluid of guilt, shame, fear, rage, bathed in others thoughts and the impulse to make things right for them. Now alone with no one to answer to, propelled into new life. Breathe in hope and light and love. Let the universe suffuse you to radiate softly like a tender newborn. You bring joy just by being right here in this moment as dawn lights the sky in a now hushed city. Birds stir to a new day. Strangers wave from across the street. Even cars stop to let you walk. Unfortunately, that didn't last long. The mission. I could stay away no longer. The mission was like a second home, though rarely invited into its dwellings. The streets and shops, a pulse of the city, a thready read, profound connection, how deeply one can love a stranger, a wordless bow from the heart. Sharing a moment, ancient stones calling pueblos, calloused hands, bent backs, children's wide, wide dark eyes, who cannot taste the love in a plateau. The 20% tip returned with it with an extra helping of beans. A clot of homeless shelter in place on a Medusa raft of sidewalk, side by side, huddling close, heads inclined to the same angle, shielding each other from hate that kills as surely as virus. Letter to two unhoused women. To the young woman, a shade lighter than cafe au lait, bleach dreads bunched in a topknot, tied with a scarf, talking loudly on a cell phone. No. She's arguing with herself and shrieking, sharp yips and sudden jumps as if she wanted to jump out of her own body, escape her own skin. I want to take her into my arms. She who fears touch and longs for it, what demons are chasing her and for how long. To the young woman sitting on the sidewalk, legs crossed as if in meditation, hoodie huddled head erect, searching for the peace she knows is there, but not here, not in the grit of Mission Street. She's haloed by orange peels, discards or a gift. Before I can reach her, a man comes out, towers over her screeching like a banty rooster. Her neck shrinks down into her shoulders as he spits invective in Espanol. I wonder if you understand. I wait until he turns away. Sneak close but dare not speak. Our eyes connect as I slip you a five rolled tight so he won't notice that you now have something more he can take. Your face is grimy, brown like the street, a darker shade than when you left Sri Lanka, Kerala. I wish I could tell you how sorry I am. I wish I could take you in. Behind the badge. This is a story from the other side of the street. Yes, there are some good cops. And there are those triggered by rage and terror. There are cops that believe in community policing heart and soul. And cops who know they are warriors of the apocalypse. Cops that glory and camouflage and tanks, cops acting out what they see on TV. Cops that suffer from PTSD, cops on the take, cops on the make, cops that cave to the culture around them, wondering why they ever joined the force. Cops that try and cops that die. My neighbor and Marin was a cop. We lived side by side and starter homes along the marsh. Tom was a patrolman, member of the vice squad and then the squat team and finally the horse patrol. A nice guy, but quiet. Great wife and kids, studied at St. Mary's, aspired to be a Jesuit priest until he discovered girls. Now that he was grown, he and his boyhood pal set up their lawn chairs in the driveway every weekend, cranked up the boombox and drank their way through a whole case of beer, a whole case of course, just the two of them, the brands important. He wore his silence like a like a cloak, secrets to the brotherhood, sanctity of confessional. Sometimes he dropped crumbs about his sprawling family, successful fish merchant dad, gravel voice, canasta loving mom. Tom was the eldest of 10, constantly bailing out his brothers, sobering up his sisters, picking them up after they wrecked their cars. Marin's toxicity is well hidden, but real. And Italians don't quite count, don't quite count as white no matter how much money they make. Tom's partner had steel wall bearings for eyes, walked like a cowboy, a Harley rider even on foot. In vice squad, musty, he bought beers for underage kids and jerked around the homeless just for kicks, especially if they were black. He found his true place on the tax squad. He brought his home with him, his work home with him. He brought his home, he brought his work home with him to and dominated his wife. She pulled a pistol on him once, plucked it out of the console of the pickup truck, held the muzzle to his head in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge and made him let her out because she couldn't stand to be with him one second more. Tom believed in patients, going through channels. He finally got away from that partner, got off the tax squad, made them out at police, patrolled the park, decorated parades. He thought he had it made until the day in the police locker room. He asked his new partner to check out his baby sister's jammed pistol. Why didn't the man think to check the chamber before he pointed the gun at Tom's head and pulled the trigger? There are cops that try and cops that die. And the last one, stubborn weeds. In my neighborhood of stubborn weeds, I hope that COVID came just in time to save us from total eradication, preserving the last of the grit from million dollar scrubs of virgin olive oil, oatmeal and sage used by the pampered, who can afford to bathe their skins and what the lesser folk can eat. Will the virus slow down greed like the bursting of dot com one or the 89 earthquake? Coastal fog used to be enough before global warming to keep away those who did not love this land. The fat fragile interface with sea and sky sometimes unseen all summer long, shrouded by fog tendrils, micro droplets bursting against our cheeks, reminding us like fog horn blasts and mournful bellows signaling ships at sea and land lovers alike that we are all adrift on life. A float on a fragile vessel, reality rising and falling, heaving and lolling by turns. There are no guarantees, only the invitation to risk. We are a hearty people, buckwheat and sorrel, dandelions and succulents. Look down your nose at us, indulge yourself elsewhere with showy blooms and gourmet raisings. We are a plain people whose meager dollars sent a generation to college so they could look down on us too. Now they're learning something priceless. There are no guarantees, except death comes to all of us. Life comes from how you need it. Thank you. Thank you so much. That was excellent. I think that last one was your piece on Palma Day. Is that right? Yes, it was. Thank you for that honor. So if you want to read that in person, you can go onto the Palma Day into the archive and see it. I'd like next, Tony Aldorando, who is one of my favorite reading voices in the area poetry scene right now. I love his work. I love his way of being in the world and I'm really looking forward to hearing you read, Tony. Thank you. Thank you very much, Kim. Thank you. It's an honor to be here. Hi, Natasha. Hi, James. So good to see all these faces because we can't see them walking into the places. Here we go. At the age of eight, the police broke down our door with a battering ram and pointed guns at my daddy's face. They were wearing thick black bulletproof vests. These days they have the letters I see E on them. I heard them talking to each other into their walkie-talkies. And then over all the distortion and noise, I heard the words, stand down, disengage, mailer, we've got the wrong address. I remember after that day, both my parents were a mess. Daddy used to say, son, Miho, many of us are used in the U.S., confused in the U.S. and sometimes told and taught, we are less in the U.S. But that, Miho, they will never confess. You know, I'll never forget that policeman's face wearing that thick black bulletproof vest. Now let me get this off my chest. In this land called our country, I can't believe the things I see. So much police brutality, so much police brutality. Police in blue, I speak to thee. Servant protect, please don't beat me. Servant protect, please don't beat me. Thank you. Here we go. This one's titled Heroes. I speak in Lengua, Franca. Local poets are my heroes. The art exhibition of the dead in my head of Picasso's Frida Kahlo's and Miro's. I've got the spirits of dead poets in my head when I close my eyes, I see them. Like last night, they sold out an open mic at the Oakland Coliseum. Miguel Piñero tocando lo cuero. Peter Tomas reciting verses. Frida Kahlo pintando Frida Kahlo on stage with her colores, her love disperses. With her colores, her love disperses. I've got James Brown and Prince living on the funky graveyard side of my mind. Where the smell of funk is in the air and the music's not hard to find. Where James Brown and Prince don't give a damn that they're constantly on rewind. Played over and over and over again until they blow my mind. Until they blow my mind. I've got Langston Hughes and William Shakespeare living on the poetic side of my mind. Where the pens and quills are in the air and the smell of ink's not hard to find. Where Langston and Shakespeare don't give a damn that they're constantly on rewind. Read over and over and over again until they blow my mind. Until they blow my mind. This next one's titled, Latinos. This is in the book, Civil Liberties. Latinos, Latinos are the colors of the rainbow. I said the rainbow, yo. Latinos are blanquito, negrito, trianguito and afro. Afro-listic, realistic, simplistic, always mystic, always real, really real, sometimes too real, always told we love to steal. So some Latinos become violent. So violent we grow violent and almost everyone we know is violent. Others become angered. So angry and angered some have become endangered. Or misinformed, uninformed and uniformed into the penitentiary. Right into the next century. Others misinformed, uninformed and uniformed into the war. Turned into Uncle Sam's whore. Latinos, I can't take it no more. I said the U.S. military. Well, we're first on the front lines, first to die, then we have to bury. Have you seen how many Latino soldiers are in your national cemetery? We're used in the U.S., abused in the U.S., confused in the U.S. and told we are less in the U.S. Come on, system, confess. We've been infected, rejected, corrected and almost never. Almost never elected. Yet always selected to clean, clean, clean, clean, clean. Those pissed on urinals and shitty stalls. We are the Latina nannies. That white, the mielda out of the president's grandchildren's drawers. Then kiss his ass to cut his grass. For a visa pass. Latinos, Latinos are immigrant slaves with eyes open wide and no place to hide. Latinos risk their lives to reach the U.S. and can't come inside. Latinos are young men and women who serve this country with pride. We're here, there and everywhere, tall, short, bald and even Indian looking with long hair. Latinos are you, Latinos are me, we're straight, queer, yes, LGBT. We rock the baggy pants, love music and dance and we're born to romance. Latinos can become what we dream, can become what we dream if given a chance. Latinos, Latinos are stars, sports stars, movie stars and superstars like Celia Cruz. Latinos influence people around the world like Orquesta de la Luz. Latinos are united farm workers, teachers, preachers, activists, poets. Borinquen, Puerto Rican, New Yorkan poets like Willy Peldomo, Pedro Piedre, Avacha, Pirito Mas, La Bruja y Miguel Piñero. Y nacimos fuerte hasta la muerte como lo machetero. Somos doctores y profesores de colores. Y en dinero, gente como Clemente de los mejores peloteros. Somos híbaros de la montaña y nacimos todos al cero. Hay mis laborinquen como yo te quiero. Te llama Puerto Rico, pero no hay mucho dinero. Te amo, te amo, te amo y me encanta. Y en el nombre de Dios si poesía. Puerto Rico se levanta. Thank you. This next one's we are poets. This one's dedicated to all the poets out there in the house. Here we go. We are poets. We are poets. We're in your neighborhood at open mics. We're not that hard to find. We'll massage your temples, touch your hearts and masturbate your mind. We are poets. We can take pretty words, put them in a poem and plant a mental seed. Or we can take shitty words when we're filled with rage, put them on a page and make it bleed. We can put words together describing an aroma and make you think that page was scented. We are poets. The reason the exclamation point was invented. We write, recite and perform. We never, ever conform. It's the way we poets know damn well we were born. Pushed out performing and crying since birth. Our hearts already broken and torn, but we as poets. We can take pieces of broken words, turn them into spoken words and give a broken heart a fresh new start. Take a young child's broken dreams and mend them with spoken themes. We are poets. Blessed and filled with words. We create with words, relate with words. Transform and relocate hearts and minds with words. We are poets. We say things like five times five divided by pi equals the number of rainbow stars in the sky. And have you asked why? It's simple mathematics times, dramatics factored into a poetical third eye. And the answer in the back of your mind's book is even simpler. We are poets. Love making keyboard, breaking erotic poets. We can make a pen, make love to paper and make it come. Make words intoxicate your mind like a strong Puerto Rican rum. We are poets. From our hearts the words flow through our tongues, mouths and lips. Those words magically know where to go. In our heads the poets of the dead are awoken. We speak from our hearts with the voices of the broken. We are poets. This much we know. We give birth to words, touch mother earth through words and that open mics open our mouths and pull out our hearts through words. We write and rewrite and double check the last rewrite because we know the last rewrite is the one that has to be right. We are poets. We share our breath with words and we will write and recite till our death with words. We are poets. And one last, I'll end with this one. This is a letter to who else but her. A letter to who else but her. How come I need sleep but can't fall asleep but I can write this poem? How come I inspire you when you're my inspiration? How come when I breathe around you life smells so much better? How come when you visit me and it's time to go I never want to let you go? How come roses fade? How come when I look at you I think of us? Spring is my favorite time of year. How come I pray for you at night and forget to pray for me? And how come everyone says I need to slow down? How come we always care what other people think and material possessions mean more to people than people? How come in Puerto Rico it rains when the sun shines? How come I love you more than life itself and what more than anything for you to be happy and free even if it means not being with me? My love is eternal, can't you see? How come you feel like destiny? How come some clowns of sad faces? How come when my pillow smells like you I sleep a whole lot better? How come I'm happy when I light my candles? How come I'm sad when they go out? Maybe it's because I don't have a lot of candles. How come money makes the world go around and love doesn't? Is it because love hurts so much? Do you believe in angels? How come each snowflake is shaped differently? How come? You know when I was a kid and it rained I thought God was crying and sometimes I got so sad that God was crying that I would go to my room and cry with him. I tell him to stop crying. I thought God was in pain. I was just a kid, what did I know? Actually, I still don't know and still have questions that begin with how come? Like, how come there's so much war in that place called the holy land? How come I can close my eyes and see God but I could never ever hold him? How come life's a mystery and a never ending story made up of tears and pain? Where's the glory? How come when we make love we can come together but out in public, out on the street in front of family and friends when they ask about our relationship you say we could never go together? How come? How come you told me you would love me unconditionally? Some people make promises for the simple pleasures of breaking them. How come I knew I would write this letter but would never ever send it? I'll come. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. You have some new projects Tony? Anything you want to advertise? You got to unmute yourself. I'm actually doing a book and I think I'm done with my first one, so I think in August I'll be done with the whole manuscript. I think I'm actually, yeah, so thank you. Yeah, that's it right now. Yeah. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Kimi Sugiyoka. I just looked it up. You haven't been posted yet, but you will be. You're on my list. This is what happens when you do too many things. I edited you into an around with a couple of things. Kimi Sugiyoka is one of the, oh how to say it, just an amazing, an amazing poet with some really great published work as well. New book just came out, right? Yes, ma'am. There it is. Thank you. I'm a very good poet. I'm a really good poet. And a longterm Bay area person and just really somebody who shows up to things, even if they're not reading is very supportive in the community. And it's just sort of generally wonderful. You're laughing, but that's a big deal because there are a lot of people who kind of come in for their set and then, you know, Okay, thank you to Kim, to She's Away, to the San Francisco Public Library for your support and appreciation. I'm grateful. Caroline Casey says, be confident, curious and kind. Good thing to remember in times like these. Can I give you a song poem sandwich? Why would anybody want to see somebody die? Why? Some things are not meant to be burned into your mind. We cannot erase them no matter how hard we try. They traumatize and haunt us until the day we die. A curriculum for fools is what we learned in school. Fools. Now is the time to exhume all the skeletons of truth. Remove every arrow and tend to ever rewound. Repair and restitution are the tools we can use. The blood of the innocent saturates this country, country. This is our inheritance no matter whether or not we believe, believe. This is our inheritance whether or not we believe, believe. This is our inheritance whether or not we believe. Thank you. It's Tuesday in paradise. Held by sand warmed by sun, caressed, rest by wind, kissed by waves. A turn cries and dives fighting the western wind. Hunting, prodigiously hunting. Hurdles east, unable to dive in the grip of the gale. Turns, flies to cry and dive and hunt again. When faced with suicide, overdose, murder and pandemic. No escape from intent or decree. Some are Jacaranda bloom. Whose baby will be found hanging? Whose son will die fighting to breathe? Whose life threatened or taken at random whim? Whose child will disappear in an ice prison? Whose grandmother will die from a lack of COVID prevention? Whose home will be taken? Who will be the next to go hungry, houseless? Whose ears can separate truth from lies? It's Tuesday in paradise. The birds are singing an anthem for us to keep struggling to breathe. Thank you. Breathe. Signs, two morning doves nest in a crown of thorns. Two hummingbirds with ruby throats kiss in midair on the beach, where egrets comically do the Egyptian when they stretch their legs to hunt. Two finches light on a skeletal fern, fern, stay awhile, twittering. A morning dove steps from time to the head of the Buddha in solidarity with tranquility. All this while my inconsolable heart wrestles with death, messengers from the ether are signifying hope. Thank you. When your foyer is flooding and you open the door and try to bail out the three inches of water on your floor, you might want to notice the bear cub playing in your yard. You might want to wait a while to bail because if you are so intent on getting that bucket that you aren't paying attention, you might not see that 400-pound grizzly bear mama barreling towards your door. Thank you. In temptation, I believe this is the one that was in the public library page, poem and date. It's a spell I tried to write. Let the moon interrupt the sun till tides cleanse this empire of sons and fathers whose fortunes rest on the skulls and bones of the ravaged, conquered and murdered. Let fire ebb from coals of rain and loose the fragrance of cedar and sage to bear the seam of mourning to the hem of night, to ignite in us the audacious tenacity of the ancestors who earned and won our continuance. Let us cover our faces with earth, twine life with death that one remembers the other in all acts and intentions, bloody the acts to exact humility from hubris, summon the kestrel and the dove that they may nest and procreate within this crown of thorns. Let the moon interrupt the sun's momentum till the tides cleanse this siege of generation. May all beings flex the muscle of love and tend to the wounds of the world. Thank you. A couple more for you. The days scuttled by like cockroaches on parade. Quarantine is like a congenial house arrest. Simple chores and tasks scaffold day after day. If the virus doesn't kill us, maybe the repetition will. The daily intimacy of human to human contact is ominously reduced to masks and distant encounters. I walk three miles every day along the bay. Birds and babes assave and escape. In a catillion turns cry here. No here. No here. Lone turns are silent. The wavelet sparkle beneath my feet, lapping my ankles with their silvered tongues. Time is an apple, a broken string, a reliquary, a bomb, or a bomb. Okay. So I'm going to try this. I rewrote the words to a song. That I actually wrote for the Lost Coast Writers Retreat. So now I have two versions of the same song. But just felt moved to, to do this, this way. I'm going to try the Lost Writers. Now George. Now George Floyd, he was killed. Because the police didn't believe that his life was, was worth the price of a $20 bill. It's hard to face the truth. For so long we believed that we weren't wise enough to let others, and let others take the lead. Broken is not that layover. Shelter where you can is not that layover. Speak up when we see injustice stand up and start fighting. The game is fog. The people won't change is here to stay. We honor and cheat the devil. But I just rewrote the words yesterday. Thank you again, everyone, for your ears, your hearts, your minds, your souls. Just keep loving each other. Thank you so much, Kimmy. I don't know if you noticed because you were performing, but you had a lot of people singing along. I'm not going to call them out individually. People were singing along. Our next reader is really, I mean, nobody here today was not spectacular. But James Cagney is one of those people who just, I think the job of poets is to change the way you experience events and words. And I think it is undeniable that James Cagney is one of those poets. You know, we met in a funny way. I invite him as regularly as is, as does it look like favoritism. To come read it like that I have control over. But I generally wear my heart on my sleeve. And when I'm feeling like I need something to realign my vision, I usually want to hear James. Your most recent book is Steel Magnolias, right? Yes. Are you going to hold up a copy? Cover it. Cover the book. Long as downstairs. Here we go. There we are. That, that book. That is a necessary book. Okay. I'm going to let you read now. Thank you. Everybody welcome, James Cagney. Thank you guys. Love the Kim. Thank you so, so very much. And Kimmy, that set that you just did was incredible. Much love to you. Love you Tony. Love you. Love all you guys so much. Thank you for being here. Let's, let's go to work. Yeah. The tongue as knife as grenade. The tongue as pilot light to volcano. The tongue as butterfly shrapnel. Spraying radioactive glass. The tongue as battering ram. Acts handle desecrated cross trigger. The tongue as begging puppy as howling wolf. The tongue as assassin. A ninja jangling with blades. Cross stepping the grassy no. The tongue as wooden stake, silver bullet and earthquake with lightning in its hair. The tongue begging kryptonite to free base. The tongue as apple and serpent rolling its jellied eggs into the ear. The tongue loaded and unlicensed and steaming with cordite trying to start something. The tongue as a wall. A trench. A gate. Fools gold in moonlight. The tongue tied into a straight jacket. Scatting. The tongue a lead weight dropped onto a garden of sand. The tongue as a wall. A trench. A gate. Fools gold in moonlight. The tongue tied into a straight jacket. The tongue a lead weight dropped onto a garden of peonies, a nest of starlings. The tongue misfired, misplaced, misspoke in our last conversation. The tongue blows a hole through its nearest cheek, armed with the right language at the wrong time. The tongue thorny and uphill, single-bladed and double-barreled. The tongue as museum, snowing through autumn. The tongue gets it. Yes, yes, yes. But how it loves spinning, no. This was inspired by homeboy holding up a Bible. And this is called Flames of Genesis. Every night I am murdered in my sleep. I am awakened radiant and naked beneath dawn's monsoon of blood. This white genesis occupied by the proudly illiterate after labeling the tree of knowledge a controlled substance. Every night the bushes open its jaws of switches and my shift begins anew. My job in this garden of perennial fistles I am forced to sharecrop, name the bite style of each fresh animal rushing from the double-gated house above me. Describe the complex flavors in poisoned saliva, pepper, citrus, rust. Tag ivory monuments in bubble lettering, new words for being spat out and eaten again. Determine the fine tasting notes between mauling for recreation or slaughter triggered by fear. I am made in the image of illegally moving targets. My ribs open nightly. Blossom of beef mushrooms. It's aroma singing to the sky. Night opens its drooling jaws in praise of me. All right. This is for the ancestors. A bunch of years. I wrote a short story called Inheritance. Shout out to you, Kimmy. This poem is called Inheritance, a keyword you used in your set. This is Inheritance 2. I am the dustpan on kitchen floors of seven great grandmothers. My macrame DNA chain, a potpourri of cornbread crumbs and goose feathers. Swept out one back door, quipped through another. I am the tongue of last Sunday's soloist still in vibrato. My horoscope, a circular arc of lives repeating through me. My father spit me out between tipperillos. I am the yoke of certain truths he was unable to swallow. But his, all his, lit and slid from the end of the bar. It is not me, but the ghosts moving through me needs to kick the walls, throw the porcelain. The revival drums its snake throwing pentecost down my spine. There are rituals of ripple, purification through gun smoke, and a few words said over a pool table, ignited with whiskey. If you catch me hollering on the lawn to an earth erupting hurt, know that it isn't me who screams, but the foaming gumbo pot of men and women simmering through time. All my shit talking uncles on shore leave poured out, set on fire, hung like an ornament for making too many books in spades. Righto, righto you guys. This, I'm working on this huge project about my childhood memory. And this is one of the poems from that piece. This is called invention of intimacy. We liked one another better than our fathers liked us. Our favorite stories were always myths involving vanquishing soldiers eating down to the bone, cities exploding beneath waltzing monsters, wrestlers binding, coiling, adjusting another's will, mechanics of pain. We kick started together once we realized things with aroma had flavor, a plastic action figure, a ribbon of ripped fabric, a golden thigh, a spray of hair, its bushy rabbit, the soft medicinal rule of a tongue tracing folding, Greco Roman pantomimes. Touch me like you're blind. My ribs, my spine, rhyme in braille, punctuation in hair, tiny commas stuttering, periods on sentences left incomplete, thought bubbles, hiccuping ellipses. Pretend it's a joke toppling you into tickles. On the tarot card, the tower, towards a prank that sent everything toppling. Is this too inside like clothes being seasoned for laundry? Red briefs, raw interior, scalding broth, spilling, spraying, springs droplets, boys armed with flowers, promoted to guns or swords, beaten senseless on the fence post, dancing dirty, auditioning for hell, nasty as shovels for ditches, or spoons still needing to be licked. And why don't we do this one? Maybe let me know, Kim, maybe this is my final piece. This is called compliance. Education is a weapon that scares some people. So we've outsourced our knowledge, our memory, our choices to the bugged robot in our pocket. Ask Siri, what do you need me for? Ask Alexa, what should I do now? The day after the world ended, our leaders drew social security cards of the dead to decide whether to shoot any survivors or just poison us with a sweet toxin. I give thanks for choices. Just thanks no bombs ever dropped, it's atomic yoke kicking across the sky. No selfie zombies trudged through the streets starving for likes. Still, the world did end and the poor survived long enough to deliver weed and dildos to the pretty sheltering houses on the hills. Outside appears emptied for grief. Only bird calls and sirens find work now. The curtain closed on our culture and the house lights came on. No one moved or thought to applaud. But still, I give thanks. Fear is not extinct. What people remain still donate plenty of room to me on the sidewalk. Both dressed like train robbers or crash cart nurses. Give thanks. I'm still a threat to you and your family and I don't have to touch you. Give thanks. I haven't heard another living being cough or sneeze or say hello or thank you in months. Give thanks that my phone still works. Who is there to speak with? No one talks anymore except a monologue. There are too many monologues about toilet paper and not enough about how touch quietly got outlawed. If any of my family were still alive, I'd illustrate being a good citizen by letting them die alone. The simplest of funerals, liking my pastor's tweet. I need a real conversation. If you could just stand in the middle distance and nod. For example, should I wear a white face mask or a black one? I guess that depends on where I think I'm headed. All right. Thank you guys very, very much. You stay safe and good out there. I did warn you. Sometimes I feel like I just, it's like my grandmother's cooking, listening to James read. I have a little special surprise for people and this happened. This is why. Paul Corman Roberts is going to read a couple of poems. I'm thinking to, if you will. And the reason that's happening is because at least six different people advertise this gig has also featuring Paul Corman Robert, which he wasn't supposed to be on this. Now that happens because he and I work together so often that it's almost always true that Paul is involved in everything I do. But I figured since I almost never asked him to just read, it would be a good moment to ask him to just read a couple of posts. So I love the idea. And I went fine and texted him today and asked him if he could come by and actually be here for this. So Paul, can you read us a couple of poems, darlin? I got a couple for you. Kim treats me really well despite how hard she works me. She's written the forward for my upcoming full-length collection of poems coming up from the Matic Press later this year. I'm eternally grateful to this wonderful muse in my life. So I'll do a couple of poems from that. And this is a poem about the greatest donut shop in Oakland called Dick's Donuts. Dick's Donuts. Every empty corner. Every wooden, bare, stripped room in receipt of palpitation echoes. Assault and pepper panther party. Retired angry eyes. Cast up from bones on the back table. Shortness and gasp. And repose. Pre-tremor. Pre-view. Yeah, here at the Hotel Indian Wells. Check out. No one slips away with meat sack intact. Just want. Right practice. Right mojo. Right timeline. This is what right looks like Shriners. Some invisible forces are preferable to other invisible forces. Never after the aftermath of all that because nothing is left after all that. And anyway, we need some kind of siren song. Five week two-tone hundred K smile in a lock step cardiac event horizon marching right up to the vortex of the pre-tremor landscape. A butter strewn apocalypse. The hardening of the chi while the token prerequisite in-house soundtrack backdrop buck Dharma song wailing. Did I hear you say that this was victory? Let these shakes go on. It's time we had a break from it. We always needing an excuse to justify this ritual that counts as something. Some kind of wonderful. Some kind of hope. Some kind of somehow. And this next poem is a collaboration between myself and Collet you bozo. This was a poem we wrote together. I'm sorry. It's kind of surprised that she's not surprised that she's not here. She's very hard to get a hold of. She's very mercurial and definitely going off on her own artistic direction. But I appreciate having her in my creative life. And so this is with Collet she and these are all of our words woven together where I end and you begin. The woman who pours my copy here's voices, the voices of ancestors, the voices of guides, the voices of the low level of the world. The woman who is like a black ops illuminati mind control engineers live above her one bedroom apartment, the paper thin ceilings of her afterthought housing development. Broken mirrors chuckle at her misfortune. In the old days during natural catastrophes, people like us would be lassoed and tied to trees because the jails and sanitariums had all burned or collapsed. Fishbowl frenzied ever so sharp and condescending. She's a woman who has been following her when she is brushing her teeth after a shower or when she is going mad with passion on top of her lover's body. She swears they can see her with hidden camera devices. She had the aroma of tenderness, sweet honeysuckles and earthly spice. Her care for others never quite seeped to the bone marrow. I can't tell the difference between the broken ice cubes and broken teeth in my mouth. And yes, I think this lasso is fraying just because I'm still being gaslit. Shadows giggle and dance behind her. Taunting and teasing, shallow with projection depth. I wish you were my lover instead of her lover being her lover even if that means being her lover in a fishbowl staked out by spooks who have nothing better to do with their time than torture the poverty-stricken taint of Stepford Island. Her lover's new vacant eyes withering with appearance of the sun. She tells her it's better than living in a rental storage unit or an unsmogged car. It's like living in a fishbowl. She says she needs to be a good fish. They got lost in her emptiness, safer to be carefully blank, harder to crack further. We all need a rude awakening. We all need to score that union gig in the body, which is probably far more honest than working as a consultant for a green marketing firm. She was just an echo, never a complete. She tells me this as a way of distancing when she realized I might be more than a little interested. Honestly, I didn't expect a gift to be returned with passion or affection, though maybe I hoped, maybe I scare her, maybe there is something scarier than me, no fishbowl for you, poet. You can be yourself on one condition, smile. Submission is always demanded through clenched teeth forever in search of compliant tongues. She dreamed of red, white, and blue, or was it red, white, or blue, maybe just red drenched in sweat, walking nightmares to flames of the burning crosses on her freshly manicured lawn, pinching brown skin and fingers, squeeze skin, the pain connecting her to reality, the unreality, was she being deprogrammed or reprogrammed? I've never questioned the reality of my dream, or is that the dream of my reality? I've never taken the swatting the mosquitoes I never noticed before. Where did they all come from? Madness growing in her interior prison where she has held hostage. Demons are real. Dear bougie, welcome to the real world, sucker. Sorry about your permanent Disneyland. You can be yourself on one condition. Be quiet. They walk among us. You don't know where you can't see them. Predators who need to feast on something more than flesh, bodily fluids that are not easily parted with under any economic crisis. How can we protect the pack when we don't know the shifting sands of currency? She travels on back to the California roads, hiding from fate, destiny, the furies, whatever disaster this month shall bring. Farewell to festivals, farewell to abandon, farewell to Babylon. We're in the new age of the new path and it doesn't smell like incense and peppermint baby. What did you think the man meant when he said your ballroom days are over? I don't know. Twisted carnage, bones, what is the point? We'll be dancing on my grave, this turning in my gut. I don't want the people I love to face this road. Either do I want to face it alone? We may not get to choose. I know what I would choose, but you can only be yourself on one condition. Silence. Don't let them hear us. If you want to live. Thank you. Well, that made me happy. Thank you so much to all of the readers. Shizue, Tony, Kimmy, James, and finally Paul, who really got asked at the very last moment to do this as a whim, because so many people thought he was going to be here. Thank you to the San Francisco Public Library, the people who attend poetry readings, because wow. And this was a pretty big attendance to this one. Thank you so much. Thank you to all the people who keep saying the silly and slightly abusive thing that I should continue to be the poet. Laureate of San Francisco. I really do want to nap. Submit your nominations for whoever you think should be the person and continue to look at the poem of the day, because the poem of the day, man. Everybody's indulging me and there are some, there are some special guests coming up in the next week or so. So definitely keep an eyeball out for it. I love you all. Thank you so much for being here. Oh, you guys are awesome. Quick question, Shizue. I need to buy two books. How do I buy them? Um, you can go to, uh, the easiest thing I think is to go to right at the right now SF.com. And click on the books, um, uh, pull down menu and that'll take you to P's press. Got it. Thanks so much. I'll type it into the chat too. I want to mention that the library is planning to, uh, open up a kind of curbside service for checking out and returning books in August. And we do have some of Shizue's books, including endangered species. Also Kimmy's an earlier book by Kimmy. And of course, uh, James Cagney's Marvel, the steel magnolias. So you'll be able to check those out. And we have a ton of like hundreds of ebooks by poets, including recordings of poets reading their own works. Uh, so that's something else to explore, uh, in the digital collections. I just want to say that, um, that, uh, next month, we're hoping to have the po poets back. I know it's really quick, but things have changed dramatically. And I think their perspective on, uh, poetry and homeless communities is absolutely essential right now. So I feel like people will probably forgive me for having the back so soon. And then, uh, in September, it is my intention to, uh, have the, uh, some people from the Colossus home Colossus, uh, anthology, which is, um, Sarah Beale and, um, Carla Brundage have edited that and it looks really amazing. And, um, you know, lots of exciting things coming up. And my focus for the near soon is basically to have, to feature, um, not collections of, of poets, but rather poets from. Collectives and collections that I think really support. Um, the community and, uh, the poetry community being a community, which we need to do right now. And if you look across the Vista of the people who showed up tonight and the people who generally show up to these kinds of things, I think we're doing pretty well with making sure that a real serious variety of people are being served by this. And I'm really happy about it. So thank you for being here. Thank you again. And honestly, John Smalley, you make my life so much easier. Paul Corman Roberts is basically my right hand. And I think everybody knows that. So we're not going to go into that too deeply because that gets awkward. And Mary G Roberts and you are sitting in my kitchen. I am upstairs directly from, from that woman. So anyway, everybody really delightful to see you. And I guess we're going to close this out now. Thank you. And this as well, who I don't see on my screen, but I'm sure it's here somewhere. Um, so, uh, if you are excited by that book, it looks like, um, Peace Press is linked in, in the chat. And I'm going to go have some water. Take care, everybody. Hi. Come out. Next month. Definitely come out next month. Thank you. Thanks everybody.