 Hello and welcome everyone thanks for coming to this month's poem jam. I'm John Smalley I'm a librarian with the San Francisco Public Library while we're waiting for everyone to join us I want to take a moment to acknowledge our community and to tell you about one or two upcoming programs. So on behalf of the Public Library we wish you welcome you to the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramatush Sholoni who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. As the indigenous stewards and in accordance with their traditions the Ramatush Sholoni have never ceded lost nor forgotten their obligations as caretakers of this place. As guests we who live in their territory recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. We wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders and relatives of the Ramatush community and by affirming their sovereign rights as first peoples. As you all know April is National Poetry Month and we are now about midway through a month of poetry programs and I want to just mention two of those programs now. This Sunday April 16th California's poet Laowate Lee Herrick will be reading with special guest including Kim here and then at the end of the month on April 30th, Tonga Isa Martin the current poet Laowate will lead a program called Harlem Revisits the West. That will and those programs will both be in the Coret auditorium. There are other programs as well you can learn about them and some are online by picking up one of these flyers from the table over there or one of our newsletters. Feel free also to help yourself to coffee and cookies and the limited edition poem jam 2023 button designed by Doug Selen and anything else where you can visit our web page SFPL.org the events calendar to learn more about our exciting programs. Oh one last thing there's also a beautiful poets in memoriam book display on the third floor where we have tens of thousands of poetry books in 41 languages. That exhibit honors poets especially local poets who have died in the last three years and that's all I have to say as regards announcements I'm going to turn the microphone over to Kim Schuck. Please give a warm welcome to Kim. And you can tell that it's National Poetry Month because the poets in the audience are all kind of looking slightly masticated by the month. So I want to introduce just for recognition purposes Megan Wilson whose artwork is on the cover not the photograph but the painting. Megan is part of the Clarion or I don't actually know what your title is anymore is it is has a title in flux with respect to the Clarion Ellie mural project and is one of the people I've been working with a lot lately and I just really love that that cover that for cover art you know painted pavement so this volume is the first in a series of regional anthologies from around California and I figured I'd start with San Francisco because if I goofed up and completely spaced asking somebody that I sort of really wanted to have in it people would forgive me because they know me well enough to know there's another project floating by any minute and you'll be involved in that one. So we had to only have a couple of the readers readers from the book tonight because I'm going to be doing a whole bunch of readings for this book and you've now committed by being here for this reading to being at all of them so if you understand that with respect to the reading on Sunday I love that we're calling me a guest since I booked myself for that one so having organized that event and we hope to see many of you out for that as well. I'm gonna start by introducing Elizabeth Bailey who just when I was a child Fort Point was really important to me and I was delighted that she wrote a poem about it so also we've worked together a bunch and read together at a bunch of different venues and it's just really a delight always to have you at the microphone so welcome up to the microphone Elizabeth Bailey. Since we didn't really deal with this you can be at either one of them if you want to be there you can do that we just pull it down. This one's a little bit. I feel so exposed. Hello everyone. Can you hear me alright? Well wow thank you. This is so wonderful. Happy to be here. Happy you're all here and yes I'll get to the rest of them. Anyway I'll start with top of Fort Point. For the first time I climbed three flights of stairs to the top of Fort Point. I climbed and walked looked and thought about the story in these old bricks. Post gold rush pre-civil war between bay and ocean rescue equipment below the bridge to save the unsaved weakness bound with loss depression desire for more better different another lot in life the commonplace plague unguarded I keep looking for a way to climb to new vantage points to see for the first time again because we're joy visits I want to linger and I'm gonna read Jack's poem in memoriam George gas August 7th 2020 on your birthday George gas a few days after you passed away how can a giant sequoia not be beginning to grow in the woods where you will be buried you who have the same name as that creator of the syllabary of the Cherokee people as you've given brilliant voice to the people of Yorkshire with your paintings grow tall in death George gas with your always deep wit and humor of what is wisdom's highest most glorious sky this is pretty new and I'm gonna dedicate it to my twin sister I've not actually ever really written a poem to her but she's just about the dearest person to me ever it's called halves or not by half while I'm alone living a half-life out and about among others I hear only half conversations the projections were disappointing I can't believe she said that to you prostitute prostitute prostitute I read only half truths on the news app on my phone CEO stabbed to death in Soma office buildings to house the unhoused five things you must know to survive the big one I'm only half trying not to live a half-life half the time I might be right being at the halfway point isn't the 50-yard line nor is it equidistant between start and finish I recently took a class through the Zen Center yes it was on zoom but it was a book study of Suzuki Roshi's Zen mind beginners mind and one of the little tiny informal talks in the in this unbelievable book was called Constancy and there was a lot of great imagery in it so here you go Constancy in the midst of it it's blinding and deafening it's a blank canvas an empty page or avoid to avoid it's stillness itself and clearly opaque without form there are no sides to take no top to rise to no bottom to fall to in a flicker a sky draped in black the new eagle moon smiles as the crow flies by and I'll finish with the title poem my little recent chapbook horizon future full of promise in the persistent distance a flat line alive with buildings mountains waves and people my eyes on the horizon I see the same view from the same place nothing changes but it's a different time of day season later in life the past is different now creating a change future change is infinite as I push my field of vision onward the horizon rolls with the revolving earth changing all the time my edges are called white called woman they travel with me without asking these edges contain my blood brain and bones a transient container acclaimed and blamed contain my heart mind and soul invisible they say enduring universal what makes us human from hedonist to humanist my breath and senses keep up with me as I'm not wandering but headed toward that flat line with no buildings mountains waves or people just me and the horizon that's rising to meet me promises kept future of no changes all change persists thank you thank you so much Elizabeth on my list ek Keith comes next but is that okay there was a delay so let's see ek Keith has been my partner in crime and my friend for some years now I was thinking about it since I was doing readings at well let's see it predates adobe I think yeah since before I was the poet laureate and she's one of the great heroes who's a teacher in this city and as a privilege to know so welcome up to the microphone now that she's unfolding her poems I can actually say this please welcome to the microphone my friendy cakey well hello everybody I'm gonna make this taller choices huh well thank you for all being so wonderful and being here on time you know timeliness is probably some sort of American virtue you know these minutes they just get by me I'm so excited to be here for this little book this wandering state I'm really pleased to be in this book it's I think my it's the coolest book on myself right now is how I feel about it like it's I feel like I'm part of a very interesting choir and so I'm just I think I'll just start with this one colonized American daughters English has left me speechless in at least three other languages my mother tongue ate up all the words that might have been mine if you can't say it you can't think it and you can't do it what's left all that's left a few family keepsakes some quaint old trinkets a recipe or two self-loathing a desire to fit in this is how wisdom gets lost and never comes home thanks for having me in this book yeah so it's always so great to start with a really heavy poem gives me a second here to you know maybe read something else really heavy because that that sometimes happens I wrote this book a few years ago called ordinary villains with nomadic press you know and so I'm gonna gonna pick something out of here just for a little shift I'll give you some love the garden sunshine the flowers have all spread their petals in the heat waiting for hummingbirds to come even the bees sound louder in the Sun the sound of flowers making love waiting for bees for hummingbirds to come the flowers have all filled with nectar floating their thick perfume up to the nostrils of the Sun and you know I got a couple more just take you on a little ride here road trip in in between everybody's at the rest stop it's hot but there's shade over picnic tables mostly empty except for me it's windy the cars been blowing around time to take a break from the road the lane changing the speed dangering that border cops got a lot of nerve looking for normal conversation after pulling every car off the road seems like they should all enroll in a class on American democracy I'm far from home but getting closer to where I'm from so this is Texas again just as complicated as ever and I think you know we'll just do half and half I'll just close out with another love poem after a summer spent apart the refrigerator rose is past its prime but it's okay we drink it anyway we're used to California wine and this is French so we pretend it tastes like it should we sit between tart kisses I missed you and I'm so glad you're home thank you all for coming thank you library thank you Kim for this beautiful book now I have to make it short again a couple of people have asked about the size of this book and I will show you it fits in the pocket of this coat and that was my goal our next reader there are there are poets who write serious lithic angry pieces and there are poets who try to paint the world in better colors with their poetry and there's obviously space for all of that I am nowhere near alone in saying that Jennifer Morone is and just sunshine you know we have a couple of those poets here today Jen was so welcoming to me at her has been so welcoming to me at her readings and I love her madly and welcome up to the microphone Jennifer bro you'll notice I didn't leave till I got the hug thank you for this beautiful book also and being part of this amazing project when I saw it I just saw so many people that I love in this book and it just made me feel so excited about this project and and also just so many people in this room right now that I just I adore adore them as people and also their beautiful poetry that's I've just feel honored to have listened to since I moved to San Francisco so thank you Kim Shack for this beautiful book sounds of the city to when the fog arrived unannounced San Francisco complained she says ships no longer need it given new technologies perhaps we miss the echo of our longing cry into the abyss there is a silence at the edge of the world that could break your heart from the sea it's from the sea our bodies came with their watery emotions a tropical storm a placid wave 98.6 degrees calms the tempest my mother bathing nourishing me I returned to the watery womb it's a tidal wave that swells in dreams reminds me that I can't save everyone I return to the ocean to stars that belong to vastness where forms emerge and depart where I go to mourn a lonely siren what do the stars look like in the middle of the ocean what do the waves feel like are they calm are they placid without wind are they violent as you charge through its swelling between past and future making you seasick but not enough to return only love can make us swim toward an endless horizon not knowing what lies there trusting what is out there might be better than where we left what we don't know better than the desperation of a war-torn home of starvation what does the middle of the ocean feel like where waves meet crashing into each other unknown desolation into an unknown isolation is there a silence so dark you can hear your dreams blaze across the sky and fall into the sea can you see a million of them in a vastness that makes you feel so small so alone only angels can hear your prayers in the middle of the ocean the wind may stop all directions possible the world is seamless here borderless there are mountains beneath the surface a chasm that breaks through the quiet soft emerging there's underwater volcanoes slowly spewing their fire into cool blue among we who wade who burn in the hot baths so grand they house undocumented creatures whose eyes and arms and circle entire ships at night the waves crash upon the deck catapulting squids that ink their yelp on the breast all things are made of star dust mixed into their infinite bodies so why not a woman whose legs become fins split in the middle where all life emerges and we may lay with scaly creatures and find them in our skin if all things come from the sea and water is life made of ocean and salt to taste the ocean that started everything the size friction that became a spark that turned into beads of sweat heavy with earth my flesh longs to return might reflect the sky and the sunlight in the middle of the ocean where I came from where I'm going there is no sound beyond my own breath that can't encompass all or the beating of my heart that pounds like waves against a ship the wind speaks and sings it carries the dreams it carries the cries of all who pass through it why blue has meant sorrow I don't know I dream in shades of blue that carry me across an ever-widening sea blood in my veins burns volcanic red appears in blue rivers that sneak underneath my skin subterranean aquifers nourish me at night I catapult like an arrow to the blue moon I penetrate the cobalt sky elusive Azure disappears as I pass I will move through the ocean once again my mother's small but infinite sea I'll incubate into something new something mysterious and enter the blue planet arriving amorphous as a translucent wave and last we three once I was an egg inside my mother inside my grandmother and we swam for a time together in a small ocean of creation one who breathed and sang one submerged sustained by a snake one an egg waiting to become daughter mother grandmother I'd never meet only in spirit we had this moment together in a watery continuum stoked by love shedding its forms and tamora rhythms created by the song of our mother who hummed her music of the spheres who rubbed her belly in warm spirals and muses who sparked their poetry and sirens cried harmonious melodies and spun in figure eights tell the story she sang when we lived in the grottoes and the sea caves before we crossed the ocean remember when we drank from her breast nourished by the dark waters of love in a bottomless blue ricordi remember we emerged to transform fear and sorrow to break the pattern to return the wild part of us alive in you unafraid to sing so the thing about trying to organize poetry is that it's a ridiculous proposition and so things happen some of the things that happen are that some that I get asked for the reading order at the beginning of the show and I think I do try to stick with it most of the time but I've just gotten this overwhelming desire to hear Charlie getter after because the contrast is sort of delicious Charlie getter in in a sensible world would be internationally known as a poet but it's okay with me that he's ours please welcome Charlie getter that's also okay Charlie if you want that one can you hear me yeah can you hear me in the back hi my name is Charlie nice to meet you I'm no lot of yeah it was just a mailman like 15 minutes ago like sitting there like oh man I got to get done with this crap not that the job is crap it's a job it's crap Spanish boats el vaze espagnols Spanish boats didn't always have a crow's nest to look out from but someone always had to look out so as someone not presumably spry someone had to climb the mast and stand atop the square rig maybe they looped a rope around themselves in case they slipped Spanish boats used to sail across a Spanish ocean though no one thought it was Spanish except for the Spanish and even then probably not all of them especially the Spanish who had to ride and guide those boats Spanish boats used to try to stay together because the ocean was is big and the boats were not not every boat could keep up and sometimes standing atop the sail all you could see is the top of another sail and sometimes no sail at all and you might wonder did they found her did they wander did they remember you were there as I stand on the mast looking out at the vast distance and see your sail dip below the horizon is it your boat going down or just away or should I look down to see if it's me going under a drop in a lake makes a tiny wave in an ocean it's tiny or if you drop a small planet on to a larger one some dinosaurs might suffer if you drop a larger one all dinosaurs might suffer giant things roam free in the cosmos they wander although in a straight line where they encounter other things then they curve toward each other celebrate the dance dictated by the nature of things there are places in this world where people know each other for life people wake up go to sleep every day and wake up and eventually die in the same embrace but most of us over time get peeled off like the rind on Lori's orange leaving the juicy sweet we were born to to ping pong around the universe and are pulled by gravity somewhere with some people we orbit and sometimes collide with and dinosaurs suffered for sure but the dance of planets plays out in the sky and if you have a slide rule and the knowledge base you will see the end when all the orbiting bodies will collide and or explode and all the things that are long after the last dinosaur are turned into a mass of ashes hidden under no sun a cloud of gas unintelligible and all the little bits of everything that has been disintegrated will congeal into something new it'll cool and on top of it in a million indistinguishable drops oceans will settle and there will be dinosaurs who maybe should look up and consider knitting sweaters the world is getting warmer so let's find some proper SPF SPF that the world can do what it wants let's knit sweaters like the dinosaurs should have and let the sun burn down when it wants to and if we melt under that intense light well that's what happens and if your gravity is pulled away somewhere across a crazy universe I pray eventually it's warmed by a beautiful sun where it can turn turn and dance and dance and enjoy all the light of newness which is new because it starts again wake up and open your eyes as the sunlight catches the dust in the air over your head marking the rays as they spray through a crack in the curtains onto your bed mornings are generally misery but not always some days the dust exposes the quiet rays that herald gentle days like today everyone lives a different life we build walls and turrets gates and towers and the waves come and tear them down and out to see you told me about problems that you had and I promised through my clever hands I could build replacements for every part of you that causes you pain but my hands are not clever enough to change everything and they're busy building castles elaborate impenetrable and doomed to fail in the face of the moon and the ruin it brings so the morning I mentioned hasn't happened it's an aspiration a morning un-pressed by anything but it will come and when it does you should text me and thank me because my only biomechanical tool is a pen and it is an imprecise machine wielded by an imperfect operator who is subject to continual buffering by the winds and tides as are we both don't say I didn't warn you so I just saw Adrienne wandering off to the coffee table but I would like for Adrienne to come up to the mic and it can be this mic or that mic the thing about sort of sticking with one or the other is that they are videoing us tonight so it's good if you know I'm pretty sure Charlie was picked up by the microphone no matter where he was because he's used to reading on a street corner but if we could stick towards a mic that'd be great he's no Kenny is better than good Kenny is delightful also I would like to thank Doug as everybody thanks me for the beautiful book Doug laid it out so and now another ray of sunlight Adrienne Arias I will start here with the beautiful book yes perfect pocket any kind of pocket it's amazing I love it I would flowers yay my favorite is spring in your pocket and this is three memories one I cut my nails and I remember my mother she told me Adrienne think carefully mucho cuidado where are you going to leave or throw your nails be careful don't throw away your nails in every part no no no be careful because where they stay you will collect them one by one after you have died yeah I was a child with that story I really take that seriously till now yeah today I left my nails in the forest next time it will be in front of the ocean and perhaps one day in front of your home memory number two at night when I look at the sky I remember my grandmother so beautiful eyes she was pointing to that star that one and she told me look at the end in that one there is a child like you he's already a grandfather confusion you know a child like me and it's already a grandfather okay yeah well and what is happening well he has a granddaughter but his side like you thank me and together they are looking at the sky they are looking over there I know that time I asked so many questions to my grandmother but what I remember the most is the hug she keep me when I start crying memory number three today I dream of the beach of my childhood and I remember my aunts in the kitchen talking talking talking blah blah blah yeah they are talking talking talking and suddenly they start talking to a fish and telling me hey hey don't be scared Adrian we are not crazy it's very important to talk with your food very important okay and also if you have time and you feel like tender give a kiss to your fruits and your veggies I learn a lot with my aunties now I'm kissing my tomatoes caressing my lettuce my carrots and conversing kindly with my olive oil this will be a happy salad this beautiful thing is a collective product is a tarot deck that is coming from a dream and like two years ago and I start inviting visual artists and poets to make this reality thing and now it's here published by nomadic with so beautiful 81 cards Kim create a poems for this book and one image beautiful image and I will be reading a poem that I did for King of Pentacles there is an image by Hugh Dandrade and the idea of creating these poems for the tarot is not exactly to explain the meaning of the card but being in the poetic way that the meaning is for the for every card and it's came from a dream I have this second dream like around August 2020 and a person was reading me the tarot and I I just listened beautiful metaphors and images and I asked this person what is that this is the poem yes I'm reading the tarot with poems yeah when I wake up I was just start calling my friend poets because we need poet poems for the tarot okay King Ray de Oroz King of Pentacles I have the strength of a bull my dreams come true the roots of our ideas grow all over my body they grow for all bodies it's time to be generous it's time to give don't forget to give thank you I introduce Paul Corman Robert so often I should really come up with a whole array of new things to say but he's really been my good right hand for some years now doing poetry stuff and a lot of what I've done actually in this room the people that the camera is not looking at right now there are a lot of people without whom a lot of the projects would not have come off but Paul has pretty much been there for every one of them so among other things as well as doing a his own poetry be several series that have started and faded and started and the Beast crawl this is a seriously powerful organizer and poetry in the Bay Area please welcome to the microphone Paul Corman Robert yeah whoo that organizing it's kicking into high gear again thank God so Charlie just the concept and the idea of dinosaurs implies the existence of dino sweets I'm an Oakland poet or least I get associated or thought of or perceived as an Oakland poet and that's mostly my fault but I am also a San Francisco poet and it's an honor and a privilege to be with this amazing group the longest 12 seconds the 38 express an ugly orange ramshackle accordion segmented bus I board most often around 6 10 a.m. a dragon rolling long through the tapestry of Geary Street the driver Missy rarely shows interest in putting on the brakes all in the name of getting through that next light I am never late for work though I frequently experience back pain one morning deep in the tenderloin the commuter pack next to me a petite elderly Asian woman has the last turn at the exit before she's able to get all the way out one foot on the street the other on the back muni's last doorstep the hydraulics of the bus's back door snap around her ankle but missy needs to get to the next stop the woman's purse leaves behind pens applicators cigarettes and change all bouncing and getting smaller behind her the departing bus drags her flailing form we all scream stop and missy yells I don't stop for no goddamn late fair skippers the longest 12 seconds later the bus comes to a stop and our commute ends with an ambulance ride for a moaning but otherwise okay Chinese woman and a transfer walk for everyone else the Chronicle reports that missy is on her second DMV suspension but thanks to the Union's archaic appeals process I get one more ride with missy later that week the following week I am late to work and sleep great for the first time in years this is also a San Francisco poem I got a theme here and this is kind of I'm kind of calling back to the memorial piece this one didn't get covered a bookstore in California what thoughts I have of you this morning Lawrence furling Getty as I duck onto urban street paths following a mauve brick road towards the sushi trough delirious from my thirst trap of the senses I wander into the upscale cornucopia of plenty not imagining for any of it that I would see you standing tall imposing by the condiment bar the rice smile as you gaze upon my gaze I thought I should say something to you Lawrence furling Getty but what does a neophyte say to a man of letters who has no doubt literally heard and seen it all who also somehow manages to say it all with a smile and a twinkle in the eye that says I know I understand it's nice to meet you too traveler oh this day will go on endlessly where do we go now Lawrence furling Getty in my delirium I stumble into a red neon bookstore of resistance a sanctuary of descent such broadsides and tracks whole communities by night aisles full of citizens seekers tweakers and tourists which direction does your beard slouch toward now Lawrence furling Getty father of the extended family of all extended families we wander in and out of the brilliant stacks of our imagination our sense of the possible following you as we are followed down the shelves by your nervous staffers who to this day know all too well your target demographic this also is a San Francisco this is my oldest San Francisco poem this is a poem I wrote when I first moved to San Francisco over 30 years ago some of you have you ever heard it the serve well market it all starts with me coming home from the telemarketing gig straight up out of the Bart station at 11 every night per always then on up Hyde Street wind corridor for six blocks to the serve well corner liquor pusher for an overpriced court of milk and a partially dehydrated can of raviolis at Ellis Street when a brother in front of me the size of a brick shithouse strolls five maybe six pace six paces out into Hyde Street then worlds 180 degrees on a dime at the sound of some shit talk in the bark of a 40 ounce are smacking off the sidewalk another brother a quarter of a block down Ellis throwing down the corner liquor store gauntlet two young men about to get it on in the heart of the one and only tenderloin and adrenaline ripples out from the intersection rolling downhill pushing uphill and crawling toward the back of every alleyway over a three block radius and it's all going down in front of the serve well market and I got to go yes to read I got to get myself right the fuck across this year traffic right across this year Street and never in my life have I been so happy to see the gorgeous desolation of O'Farrell Street when pistol shots don't sound like they do in the movies no there are pop popping percussion that leaks around street corners and boxes in my ears while I hold in against a cleft in a brick wall with another pedestrian an older darker sister with Canyon deep wisdom etched in her handsome jawbone croaks out ah shit fool's gonna be dealing out they dine right before she takes a ginormous hit off of a tiny glass pipe then grips my shoulders while throwing her left leg around my waist and thrusting her tongue deep into my tonsils allowing her coke and enge flavored crack hail wash into my sinuses leaving me heated swollen and eager leaving me wanting nothing more than to pull this smooth slab of loving neuroelectric carboplasm deep inside me until my wet has somehow consumed her wet but my ears pulse with a bastard cosmic hum of the ether and the distant pop which caresses me warm safe and sexy in the piss baked concrete smell of hide street where I dream the creamy dreams of the possible for a period of time I cannot measure but which only ever ends with me prone and alone in front of the stark steely gray judgment that is the entrance gate to my apartment building miraculously with keys wallet and change somehow all still in place miraculously with my cock still dry and comfortably secured inside these inside these still zipped up Levi's miraculously with the sickly orange streetlight polyvo ferrule street completely abandoned and every storefront bolted down and tucked snug against each other till the coming daylight including I am quite certain my cord of milk and can of partially dehydrated raviolis safely ensconced within the Servwell market thank you for people listening from outside of the city that was very much a tour just there let's see I have introduced the next poet in uncomfortable ways for years so I'm I'm leaning into something else Clarice who is a musician and a poet and a poetry organizer and some very very deep glue in the city and I am delighted to welcome her to my microphone hi everyone so I have San Francisco poems too and I will read my bus poem for you later but we're going to start with this one this one was written during a day of downpour in Chinatown called a good rain Torboy hangar dissolves into a funhouse mirror but Willie Wu Wu has no playmates today one white umbrella bounces down the slope my little jellyfish the water is running road workers old lurkers they go underground all because there's a good rain pouring from the infinity pot cold simmer white tea red lanterns on a tight rope ping-pong ping-pong the grass is fake but the pigeons are real ones for the running feet and ones my love Dennis sculptures and Antonio's art coffee weed and exercise the story goes but who's there to hear it okay thank you okay then we go to my dad's house he lived on 39th Avenue and Fulton and across the street from his house was a Dahlia garden tended by his neighbor Dahlia you tubular fireball Sunstorm velvet a fairies powder puff Dahlia's blooming like young Mexican girls twirling the frogs at a fiesta the old man across the streets sits in his chair and rubs his face stretches his arms up and out bends and straightens his knees a hundred times a day he watches you bold and blushing in the light rain he counts you when the wind is kind he regards you because you remind him of love he picks you to accompany his silence Dahlia if you were a woman he would hold your fullness in his hands and taste you with his tongue and call you by a different name as if she had never left thank you this one was North Beach was doing those lovely times when we had poetry reading in cafes a state of grace picking through the mundane on a warm evening to dislodge mind's crime wandering among city lights inhaling cigarette smoke huddles with roasted garlic salsa and soy sauce silhouettes of pedestrian shape shift overweight middle-aged couples wild hair poets saunter between youth black hair black rim glasses black jeans black jackets black shoes tinkerbell bodies pale faces and lips counting the days to the next therapist appointment in the cafe yeager man babble to tired-looking women dowel grin homeless mumble for change and somewhere in a corner a child's gutted sirens synchronized with a fire engine outside not knowing this already is paradise thank you so this next one is not a place but it's about Manzanita it's about the Franciscan Manzanita which is a rare species native to San Francisco and it had not been seen growing wild since 1947 until was spotted growing in the Presidio of San Francisco in October 2009 so what happened is that they needed the place to build a Doyle drive the Doyle drive replacement project so they transplanted the Manzanita and and they raised funds for it and it was paid by the Federal Highway Administration Caltrains and the Presidio of San Francisco and private donors Manzanita Manzanita how naive of me to think we have finally changed a grove of non-trees carmine congealed on the branches peeled skin from a woman's arms hold tight her love as you become a man bright like a bush bush that opened Moses eye twisted limbs at your fingertips and offering of fruits the promise of sweet taste after bitterness bitterness that seems to go on moment after moment in a garden your bones are discussed between the artist and the architect whether it is more suitable to place them on a table with votive candles or to decorate the entrance of a hall how naive of me to drink your Tissan and without a message possess your body time becomes intolerable Manzanita standing in front of a fleet of tanks Manzanita concrete pouring beautiful the new Doyle drive majestic with spectacular spectacular views no more accidents on windy curves Manzanita you were the only one must we sacrifice ourselves for your beauty did we not spend money on your welfare did we not pick you up with the gentlest hands and tame you in the grove of non-trees thank you thank you I'm gonna finish with my bus poem this is not 38 this is 30 Chinatown two women eating kumquats two Chinese women sit next to each other on the bus breasts folding on top of stomachs on top of thighs their faces earthy and provincial with grey hair chopped away just below the ears one woman pulls out the kumquat from her paper bag eat she urges the other her friend takes a small bite it's sweet she nods and puts the rest into her mouth the bus jerks over a pothole the woman with the kumquats reaches her brown hand over her friends thigh and holds her thus sit closer don't fall they chitchat in Cantonese eating kumquats spitting out the little seeds listening to the graffiti warning spoken in English Spanish and Chinese watching the bus filling up with Latinos blacks whites and Asians passing McDonald's and Walgreens Safeway and Bank of America the bus ride began from a village of rice fields moocows and harvest the fragrance of kumquat flowers in the air and cockroaches before the morning light crossing the ocean their mouse puckered over a mixture of salted kumquat and water that ease their sore throats and land again cable cars and the Golden Gate Bridge under a pagoda roof they huddled in an ESL class with each stop the scene changes as for fish markets police sirens roll past the bus windows the kumquats are always sweet golden in a paperback plum and pick went thank you wow okay I'm going to read my poem from this book and then we'll be done can sort of gossip a little bit before we have to go it's called San Francisco pick any street corner any bench any stoop any fourth star in this city or over it and sit quietly you'll hear the water of time keys rattling heart and innovation Ramatosh one drinks war and colonization and patience and the mint that only grows on the south side of that mountain right there you'll hear the poetry of place popsicle sticks scratching on the curb clap songs and jump rope spells and chess moves and love curses every night in some back room qr hand reads the future in the past in autopsy phrases the Babar poems Bob Kaufman's gorilla words shouted at the unsuspecting somewhere in North Beach the skyline mutters poems that have been and poems to come and if you stand in the cafe lab o'ham's door for too long you might hear Alfoncito yelling what we will choose to call a poem old wise tales still hover faint along Valencia you can listen to the purring of various fogs as they pad over Eureka and Noe peaks Wolos paintings comment quietly on every new show in Kerouac alley and if your hearing is very good Ambrose's dictionary runs on a loop in a certain bar on a certain bar stool and the faint laughter from Sam's jokes will still grind Brett's teeth prayers for the plague victims in more languages than you can count mumble down grant and twine with the poems of the unbound feet three there are songs of burying and unburying to be found all over the Richmond every corner every bench every headstone under the sand at Ocean Beach Mary and Carol Lee and Paula talk story in classrooms at state at tables in cafes turned to bars John's words rattle justice through the rusting bars of Alcatraz and the voices of those taken in Captain Jack's war have made them into their own songs to more wealth and words than all the great libraries that have ever been I like reading that one for people who actually know because you hear giggles around the room at different points yeah thank you so much for being here and thank you to everybody who's watching on the internet I really appreciate your company for this this is the beginning of a labor of love and it's a pleasure to share it with all of you thank you