 Hi, Linda. Thanks for joining us. And Cynthia. Cynthia, can you turn your camera on and unmute. Hey. I have a Valentine for Renee and Jackie. I guess Dennis decided to do a show live he was just going to pre record it. I don't know if he changed his mind. So, but we'll have him later. I think I'll put links in the chat as we go along to our, our code pink pages on these various countries. There's seven of us. Um, yeah, we're just, yeah, we're a bunch of people are early. I'm going to move. Susan, I and Raphael are here, but I'm going to move you up to the screen when it's your turn. I'm Susan, if you want, if you or Raphael have any questions before we start. Yeah, I do. Oh, cool. Right. That was my question. Can you hear me? Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. And you see me. Not yet. You have to turn your. Oh, how do we, how do we do that? I can't find any. Just give me a second. I'd like to promote you to be a panelist. Join us. There we go. And here I am. Hey, Raphael, just, just, uh, I'm, I'm taking care of it. It's okay. I'm going to expand. Well, I'm still messy. Okay. Here's your name. There you are. Okay. Good evening. Hi. Oh, that really isn't me. Hello, Susan. I feel why, why, why isn't the real me showing? It's just a photograph of me. Um, do you have your camera on? Well, how, oh, start video now that wasn't there before. Okay. Hi. Hello. How are you? You're okay. Good. Yeah. There you are, Susan. Oh, here I am. There you are, Raphael. How are you? I see you. Good joy. I'm reading Lorca today. A little bit of Lorca. Oh, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. It's wonderful. Thank you. So do you, um, you both know the, um, order that you're arriving in and I'll be spotlighting, um, the speakers. So, um, well, can you remind me who comes right before me? Yes. I'm sorry to introduce you. So, um, yeah. But Kelly, I believe comes right before you. Yes. Kelly. Kelly Curry. Oh my gosh. Wait. I am getting all the scumbabulated here. Something is, um, okay. We can see and hear you. So can you hear me? Yes, I could hear you. Okay. I know that things gotten lost on your screen. Just pull things. Lost to my screen. Let me just make things small and you'll find us. Well, uh, I'm going to try to. I mean, Do you need to share a screen? What do you know? You don't need to share a screen. Just a second. I am going to, uh, I think Jennifer should be. I need a. Here we go. Yes. Well, you're probably in the waiting room. Let me tell Joe. There's no waiting room. There's no waiting room. I need a, um, Okay. The video button. It's, it wasn't there originally, but then it comes at some point. So I'm going to go ahead and do that. I'm going to go ahead and do that. I'm going to go ahead and do that. Joe. Is there something you can do to make the start video thing available to. Here we go. There they are. Hi. Okay. Thank you. Of course. Hi. Hi. Hi, everybody. Okay. Hi, Joanna. So I'm going to ask all the panelists. To mute and start. I'm so, so I can start. And oh, there's the mute button right there. Cool. So, um, Welcome to our love for the world. I'm going to wait a little while to start the program. Um, and, and let more folks in. Um, I think. We've got everyone who's on the program up. Uh, Except. Um, Kelly Curry, if you're, have another name than your own, please alert me so I can raise you to the top. Um, but this is a happy Valentine's Day to everyone. Uh, the day of peace and love. And, um, I'm here with, uh, Um, partner in, in, In love and peace. Uh, Cynthia paper master, uh, who's partnering, um, to bring us this program today. Um, So yay, Cynthia. Um, And we have an amazing lineup of folks to share. And I just want to wait a tad, uh, To get a little bit of a picture of the United States. The, uh, The color of the text that we're drawing in. So, you know, for code pink were. First of all, we're pink. And, um, we didn't. It was a color we chose because Bush was frightening. The American people into war with color-coded alerts, orange red and yellow. And so we called pink for peace. on the day of love that spreads the joy of pink in its messaging. But I just wanna say that we learn the power of pink and it is quite a powerful color, this color of love and the heart. And one thing, Bremmer used to wonder how I got into his inner sanctum is because it melts people's hearts because they feel heart opened next to you and people used to ask, how does Code Pink keep getting into things? Because it's a disarming color and that's what Code Pink is, where we disarm. The world stays in place when we're in this way fighting with each other and instead of being in the fight, what we try to do is open hearts and be disarming and open people into the conversation about what can we do to get to peace and love because that's really where everyone wants to be even though they do get used by the narrative of the war economy and the State Department and their own angers and their othering of others into making it a competition. And I liked what Medea said last weekend before as we were doing our 77 actions across the country to try to stop the war on Russia. And she said, when you look at and you read the media they say, Russia is evil, US is good. And it's like our message at Code Pink is, war is evil, diplomacy is good. So just this day of peace and pink and love is really at the core of the work that is Code Pink. It's why we go to all the countries because we know that the people of the countries are all beautiful. We're all human beings. We all inhabit this very generous, beautiful planet and it's the governments and the greedy and those that are making a killing on killing that are behind the war machine that's stealing our tax dollars and killing people, murdering people with it and building nuclear weapons, which are insane. So our work has always been in connectivity and caring and loving and that we know it is through love that we get to peace. I remember seven years ago, I think 350 Code Pinkers we went to Cuba together and one of the ways we usually spend V-Day is with our V, our formerly Eve Ensler, our friend from V-Day and we were in Cuba dancing the one billion rising dance with all the folks with thousands of people in Cuba who were dancing with us. And so yes, dancing and singing and yes poetry the language of the heart is as core to Code Pink. So it's really thrilling to be able to be together today and share. So I just wanted to say that Kelly Curry and Raymond Knapp Turner are both attendees right now. Okay. Thank you. Well, so I wanna turn it over now. So, I just wanna say that Code Pink, we tried at End War, bring the profits home to the needs of the people so that we say we cut the Pentagon for people, planet, peace and a future. And we'll give you little things to do today along with as we listen to the poetry. So now I wanna turn it over to the amazing rock star activist organizer, deep hearted and endlessly inspiring Cynthia Paper Master, who's been with Code Pink since our very first days 20 years ago, Cynthia. Well, thank you, Jodi. And hi, Mr. Turner. You've joined us. Thank you. Jodi asked me just to say a couple of words about my long tenure with Code Pink. I came to Code Pink because I was so attracted to the idea of a peace group, an activist peace group that was women led. And that was very refreshing for me and just a really, I was welcomed so much. I'm still with Code Pink today. I've learned a lot about how to be empowered and how to speak out. I love how fierce Code Pink is. And I really would like to invite everybody to join us locally in the Bay Area but also nationally go to codepink.org to see what we're doing campaign-wise. And you can send me an email, I'll put my email address in the chat and you'll be put on our action alert list. So you can find out what we're up to here. We're gonna be doing in April, we're gonna be doing a People's Assembly at Nancy Pelosi's house, speakers Pelosi. She controls the federal budget, we think. And so we really have to make demands and put a fun piece instead of war. I think that I will introduce Rafael Jesus Gonzalez now and just say a few words about him. Rafael Jesus Gonzalez is professor emeritus of literature and creative writing and the poet laureates of Berkeley. He was born and raised bi-culturally, in El Paso, Texas. Juarez Chihuahua and taught at University of Oregon, Western State College of Colorado, Central Washington State University, University of Texas El Paso and Laney College in Oakland, California where he founded the Department of Mexican and Latin American Studies. Rafael, I'm going to turn it over to you for our land acknowledgement and a poem. Thank you, so honored. Thank you, Cynthia. It's an honor to join you. And yes, we speak to you from the land of the Oloni, the original peoples of this part of the world, little part of the world, and we honor them. As Cynthia mentioned, I was born and raised right on the border so that consequently, heir to tomb uses and all my work, or 99% of it is in both Spanish and English and I will share it with you such. I have three short poems, both in Spanish and English to share with you in the celebration of the day, in the celebration of peace and justice. And because of the day, and because of my great admiration for Code Pink and my love for Cynthia and everyone of the Code Pink that I know, I will start with San Valentin para código rosa. No rojo mucho menos con volantes, sino una rosa destenido de muchos años de lucha por la tierra, por la justicia, por la paz. Sin embargo, una rosa udaz desafiante rosa cálido, rosa mexicano decimos. Pues en México el color no se desculpa, es el color que inundó las calles cuando el tipo de cara naranja, pelo amarillo, orines y cuello rojizo hizo al arde de agarrar panocha y mis hermanos y hermanos marcharon en gorras de punto rosadas con orejas de gatito puntiagudas. El rosa es código de principios de amor intenso en defensa de la tierra, justicia y paz. El código rosa hace nuestra revolución. Valentine for Code Pink. Not read much less freely, but faded pink for many years of struggle for the earth, for justice, for peace. Nonetheless, a bold defiant pink, a hot pink, Mexican pink we say, for in Mexico, color is not apologetic. It is the color that flooded the streets when that guy of orange face, his yellow hair and ruddy neck bragged about grabbing pussy. And my sisters and brothers marched in pink knit hats with pointy kitten ears. Pink is the code for principles of keen love in defense of the earth, justice, peace. Code Pink makes our revolution. And that is the revolution we must make, we must wage is the revolution of the heart and of the mind for the only thing that's gonna save us. I don't say ourselves because I know nothing of that but our sweet asses. Cambio climatico. Poema es, se derrite el hielo del artico, suben los mares, sequías más intensas y prolongadas, huracanes e inundaciones más terribles, en 500 años donde quiera y algunos ciegos por desgracia o por terca voluntar dicen cuales cambios, no hay cambio alguno y otros dicen no somos responsables. Es cosa de Dios, los líderes comprados con la misma moneda hacen poco aquí menos allá y sigue herida la tierra sanándose como pueda arrasando con la perversa humanidad. Climate change, is it a poll? The Arctic ice melts, the oceans rise, droughts more intense and prolonged, hurricanes and floods more terrible, it is for over the ages. It really matters to say who is the one that is responsible for our nature. We have to move forward with our lives so we can live in a better world. At this point, we're moving forward with our lives so we can live in a better world. So we're moving forward with our lives so we can live and we can stand and fight and fight against it. do little here, less there, and the earth remains wounded, healing as it can, demolishing perverse humanity. And la llamada. No puedo, qué puedo decir para incitarte a defender la tierra. Recordarte cómo se siente el sol. El sabor de la sal. El olor de la ruel. El chirrido del grillo en noche de verano. El arcoiris después de lluvia. Lo que es amar. Implonaré a tu goce o a tu favor. Puede ser terrible la tierra. En sus tormentas y en sus temblores. Pero es la medida de cuál paraíso imaginemos jamás. Tú y yo moriremos demasiado pronto. Pero que no siga la vida es más allá de aceptable. Qué puedo decir para que ames la vida. Suficiente para que actúes y haces la voz en su defensa. Mi amor, qué puedo decir para que empeño a defender la tierra. Recuerda cómo el sol se siente. El sabor de la sal. El olor de la ruel. El chirrido del grillo en noche de verano. El olor de la ruel. Lo que es amar. Implonaré a tu goce o a tu favor. Puede ser terrible la tierra. En sus tormentas y en sus temblores. Pero es la medida de cuál paraíso imaginemos jamás. Tú y yo moriremos demasiado pronto. Pero que la vida no irá más allá de aceptable. Qué puedo decir para que ames la vida. Suficiente para que actúes y haces la voz en su defensa. Qué puedo decir para que empeño a defender la tierra. Qué puedo decir para que empeño a defender la tierra. El olor de la ruel. Mi amor. What he done to save us. We die for lack of love. The earth suffers for lack of love. Life, human life, itself is a steak for lack of love. So that's what we have to learn. We have to learn it fast because it has to be a revolution and that revolution is now. Our love must be fierce. It's not the little hallmark, greedy little flying cubits and little pierced hearts. It is a fierce love that commits us to action and that commits us to join one another for love of the earth, our brothers and sisters, the other animals, the plants and the trees and the grasses and the minerals, the sands and the salt and the pebbles. And we ain't got no other choice. So love you, bless you and let's make a revolution. Oh my God, that was so beautiful. Thank you very, very much. Rafael, thank you. Deep hearted gratitude. Yes, this revolution of love, so needed. So next, you know, there's the poets and there's those who are raising up the need for love. And next we have an activist. Marcy Winograd was my choice two times to be the Congress member in my district and she's now the coordinator of Code Pink Congress. She's a longtime anti-war activist who served as a 2020 DNC delegate to Bernie Sanders and has co-founded the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party. Marcy's activism began in high school when she marched against the Vietnam War and later she joined the defense team of the Pentagon Papers whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg. She's a retired English and government teacher and blogs about militarism and foreign policy at LA Progressive. Marcy, welcome and thank you for joining us. Thank you so much, Jody, for that very eloquent introduction and thank you for welcoming me into the Code Pink family. It is with great love in my heart that I joined this family and carry on in the spirit of Code Pink. Code Pink is a rare, a very rare organization that is driven as Rafael said by love. Thank you, Rafael, for highlighting how important it is to embrace the joy in life because that's what makes it worth struggling for, right? To protect and your poetry was beautiful. Tonight, I'm really proud to wear this Code Pink medallion that Code Pink gave to my mother, my beloved mother, her work for peace and so I hope to carry on in her spirit as well. Tonight, I wanted to engage all of you, thank you for joining us and wishing a happy Valentine's Day to two people who really need to feel our love all the time, coming their way because they are suffering. I'm talking about two people that we know of who have taken very courageous stands, one of them being Juliana Sange who is sitting in Belmarsh prison and I don't know if he's allowed to see anyone right now. I know for quite a while he was not allowed to see anyone and there's a great movement in Europe and in the United States to demand that these charges be dropped. That this isn't really a threat to the First Amendment. It's a threat to all of us who believe in freedom of the press. And so I want to send love to Juliana Sange and ask that you post your Valentine's Day message to Juliana in the chat so that when this is over, we can send those messages to Juliana. There's also another Valentine, I would like us to send Valentine message and that is to another political prisoner and that is Daniel Hale. Daniel Hale, he's a hero, right? The New York Times just published a piece about all the civilians that have been killed as a result of executive drone attacks. And we knew this, right? We knew this has been going on, that this is really nothing but assassinations, no due process, no trial for charges, just drone strikes and assassinations. Daniel Hale had the courage to blow the whistle on this, to release documents, the drone papers. And for that, he has to spend years in prison. He's been sentenced to years in prison. So please take a moment to wish Daniel Hale a happy Valentine's Day as well. Again, we're going to send Daniel and Julien your Valentine's Day wishes. So while I'm talking, I'm free to write. I was very honored to meet Juliana Sages. I believe she's now his wife, Stella Morris. She joined us on Codepin Congress as well as his father and his brother who came to California and with Jody. He held a rally with them in Venice and a good crowd, a spirited crowd. People are cheering Julien and they're cheering for Daniel and for his cat. Because I know he was concerned about his cat. I wrote him a letter and he wrote back and said, not to worry, his cat is feeling loved, his cat is being taken care of. So that's a good thing. And if you wanna send him a message for his cat, well, so yeah, as we continue, feel free to write your Valentine's Day messages for two people who really need our love right now. And we will send it to him and to them, to both Daniel and Julien. Thank you. Thank you so much, Marcy. I'll turn it back over to Cynthia. Thank you, Marcy. Please put your messages to Julien and Daniel in the chat. Thank you. I would like to now introduce Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows. We are so fortunate to have the incomparable Joanna Macy with us today. Joanna is the author of 14 books and she is a Buddhist teacher and philosophy of ecology, philosopher of ecology. And she is an activist for the planet, which I love her so much for. And she's the root teacher of the work that reconnects. And together with Anita Barrows, they have translated, I think, three volumes of poetry of Rainier Wilka. Not sure I'm saying is it. Anita is a psychologist and poet. She's translated Wilka with Joanna. Her most recent poetry collection is called Testimony. So please Joanna and Anita, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Welcome. Yes, so glad to be here because we got to be reminded again. We are made for love. And we have known that for a long time in our civilized treasury of poetry and you can remember early, from early on in the song of songs, King Solomon built a pavilion from the cedars of Lebanon. It's pillars he made of silver, cushions of gold, couches of purple linen and the daughters of Jerusalem paved it with love. Come out, oh daughters of Zion. Gaze at Solomon the king. See the crown his mother set upon his head on the day of his wedding, the day of his heart's great joy. How beautiful you are, my love, my friend. The doves of your eyes looking out from the thicket of your hair, your hair. Like a flock of goats bounding down from Mount Gilead, your teeth white-yews all alike that come up fresh from the pond. A crimson ribbon your lips how I'd listen for your voice. The curve of your cheek, a pomegranate in the thicket of your hair. Your neck is a tower of David raised in splendor. Your breasts are two fawns, twins of a gazelle grazing in a field of lilies. Before day breathes, before the shadows of night are gone. I will hurry to the mountain of myrrh, the hill of frankincense. You are all beautiful, my love, my perfect one. That is a translation by Hannah Bloch who was a friend of some of ours, Susan, myself and Arielle Bloch, the song of songs. And I am going to read from our old friend William Shakespeare. This is Sonnet 116. Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds or bends with the remover to remove. Oh, no, it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken. It is the star to every wandering bark whose worth's unknown, although its height be taken. Love's not time's fool, the rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks but bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be ever and upon me proved, I never writ nor no man ever loved. And turning to what we have together found what we most love to do, which is to translate together. If you can find this one for me, I can't seem to find it. Yes, yes. And the, in the book of hours, one from his earliest, the earliest work that Rilke owned as part of his of what he wanted to be remembered for was a series of poems that just flowed through him as if dictated by some heavenly chorus right away. But there's one that kind of stands out that's so clear. It's meant, it's in this book as if it were a poem to God but actually you can tell that there was a more earthly passion that was seizing the poet. And it was, and we heard him as soon as he wrote it, he put it at the door of his beloved Lou Andrea Salome very soon after they met when he was 21 and she 36. Lesh me o the au gnaz, si kan di zein. So that's the German, now here's our English. Extinguish my eyes, I'll go on seeing you. Seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you. And without feet I can make my way to you without a mouth I can swear your name. Break off my arms, I'll take hold of you with my heart as with a hand. Stop my heart and my brain will start to beat. And if you consume my brain with fire, I'll feel you burn in every drop of my blood. Ich liebe dich, du sanftestes Gesetz. I love you, gentlest of ways, who ripened us as we wrestled with you. You, the great homesickness we could never shake off. You, the forest that always surrounded us. You, the song we sang in every silence. You, dark net threading through us. On the day you made us, you created yourself and we grew sturdy in your sunlight. Let your hand rest on the rim of heaven now and mutely bear the darkness we bring over you. Still from the book of hours, I love the dark hours of my being. My mind deepens into them. There I can find as in old letters the days of my life already lived and held like a legend and understood. Then the knowing comes. I can open to another life that's wide and timeless. So I am sometimes like a tree rustling over a grave site and making real the dream of the one it's living roots embrace. The dream once lost among sorrows and songs. God speaks to you no more. And he in macht God speaks to each of us as he makes us. Then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear. You sent out beyond your recall go to the limits of your longing. Embody me, flare up like flame and make big shadows I can move in. Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror, just keep going. No feeling is final. Don't let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand. What will you do God when I die? I am your pitcher. When I shatter, I am your drink. When I go bitter, I your garment, I your craft. Without me, what reason have you? Without me, what house where intimate words await you? I velvet sandal that falls from your foot. I cloak dropping from your shoulder. Your gaze, which I welcome now as it warms my cheek. Will search for me hour after hour and lie at sunset spent on an empty beach among unfamiliar stones. This is our latest translation is not poetry, but prose, the letters to a young poet. And there is one that we wanted to bring to you, which is letter chapter seven. And thank you for your patience. In the seventh letter to he of 27 years old to his would be young poet, who's 19 says, love is good. And it's good for love is difficult for one person to care for another. That is perhaps the most difficult thing required of us, the utmost and final test, the work for which all other things are but a preparation. With our whole being, with all the strength we have gathered, we must learn to love. This learning is ever committed and enduring process. To love is not about merging. It is a noble calling for the individual to ripen, to differentiate, to become a world in oneself in response to one another. It is a great, immodest call that singles out a person and summons them beyond all boundaries. Only in this sense, may we use the love that has been given us. It's humanity's task for which we are still barely ready, we have yet to find a way of approaching love as the way we don't know yet how to approach death. To both of them, the way is concealed and passed on without opening the gate, without any soulful communal practices to help us walk in. But to the extent that we begin to take in these great forces, they become to meet us in our own individual lives. The demands that the hard work of love makes on our attention are overwhelming. At the start, we're not up to them. Then, despite that, we endure and take this love upon ourselves as task and teacher. Our humanity is hidden from the seriousness of existence. Such will be an illumination for all of us in progress, for all who come back to us too. Ah, that would be a lot. Oh, Rilke. I'm going to read from my book, Testimony, that was published in May. It's a sequence of 20 poems and a coda. And they're not specifically about love, although they are. They're love and praise and grief and the juxtaposition of all that, but threading through all of it is the love for the world. So this one is number seven. The Nora in this poem is my daughter, Nora Barrow Friedman. Nora saw a child and her father crossing a checkpoint. The child was wearing a new pink belt. And when the soldier, pointing his gun at her, told her to remove the belt and hand it to him, she cried, refused. New pink, shiny plastic belt like patent leather, but not clearly new because when the father knelt down in front of his child and pleaded with her, tears running down his cheeks. And the child kept refusing and crying, crying and refusing. Her father begging her, gently stroking her cheek, the gun still pointed. When it last the child gave in and took the belt off, there was no crease yet in the belt where if the child had had it even a matter of weeks, the buckle would have worn a light groove in the stiff pink plastic. An old woman in line behind them, trying to comfort child father. The soldier fingering his belt now as though it were filth, fingering the belt now as though it were filth, throwing it back at the child, hurrying them through the checkpoint, no time even to slip the belt back through the cotton loops of her jeans. A child holding a pink plastic belt, buckle scraping the ground. Sadly, as though suddenly it had lost its meaning. Her father behind her, walking head down, watching the silver metal buckle drag through the dust. A testimony of senselessness. Nora, my daughter, my grown child, watching, documenting. When I was 10, I hauled some boards on a rope up to a crook between the top branches of an elm. For months climbed the rope, afternoons after school, an apple, a book, an empty lot near where I lived. Then one Thursday came home to the truck, the men, the buzz of the saw. My board strewn on the ground, the perfectly angled branches gone. I ran screaming across the weedy lot, raging against the men who went on sawing. Too loud the sound of the chainsaw, not even a word to me, skinny and audible girl and my green plaid skirt, thinking the single, the last act of love I could perform for the tree I had failed to save was to stand and witness its dismemberment. I stood till they drove away. Am I writing a litany of failure? Late October, the light nearly bronze, oak leaves and sycamore mulch in the gardens, a smell of everything that is going to die and be pressed by rain into memory, into the earth. A spider is weaving her web outside my window, filaments catching the light. The wings of some large insect she has caught, half consumed, transparent, laid over the transparent web, sear my heart with their beauty. Do I cast my lot now with this spider, not attempting to do anything exceptional, making from air and dust and the elements of her body some durable gesture of survival. Thank you. Thank you so much, Joanna and Anita. I'm kind of teary now. But let's go on. That was so beautiful. Thank you. I just want to express some love for the people of Ukraine right now. The people of Ukraine, I can't imagine what they're feeling and fear they must be experiencing right now. And we in Code Pink have a campaign. I mean, I hope that you'll take some action to try to stop this rush to war. And we're really trying to pressure Biden to negotiate and not escalate the war, stop the arms shipment and the expansion of NATO, which is threatening Russia's security, understandably threatening Russia's security. I put in the chat a link to a page on Code Pink where you can take action. And I'm going to put a second item in the chat as well, which is a link to watch Oliver Stone's documentary called Fire in Ukraine or Ukraine on Fire. It's an eye-opener about the history of Ukraine and how it's been used by a lot of other countries to gain power. And the United States is very much behind this whole thing. So I recommend you watch that. And let me hand it back to Jodi now to introduce Kelly. Thank you. And thank you so much, Amanda and Joanna, that was beautiful. So now I want to introduce you to the amazing and brilliant Kelly Curry, who's a local peace economy organizer with Code Pink based in Oakland. Kelly is an author, publisher, relationship builder, social justice activists. And she is love. She utilizes her love of writing and storytelling and sharing healthy living foods to create powerful on the ground shifts of consciousness and to build community globally. She's focused on moving nutrition through her community by engaging committed, creative, sustainable systems of change around food access in East and West Oakland. She does this with her, the electric smoothie lab apothecary, AKA Tesla, which she founded and wrote a book about. She's also a brilliant poet. So I turn you over to the heart and hands of Kelly Curry. Hello, everyone. So good to see you all. And feeling so blessed in the midst of the heartache and the pain and the trauma of what I'm just talking about with Ukraine, being the children of Yemen, the children of Palestine, the children in Flint, Michigan, opening up the tap to muddy water. This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine. This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine. I've been doing a lot of research around Fannie Lou Hamer, who was an amazing activist and also had, was a food justice activist too. It had something called the Freedom Garden. And I just heard the story about how she was sailing into that tumultuous weather of the white cops who had assembled to get her off that bus when they were trying to register to vote and how she looked around the crowd on the bus and the spirits where people were scared or fearful. And she's saying that song and she gathered power and she was arrested and she was taken, not the others and beaten, but she lifted the spirit of the people on that bus. And I feel so blessed to be among you all tonight because this is such an occasion when we've all decided to let our light shine. And so as Jody mentioned, my project is a food justice project in Oakland, California. And I started out eight years ago to make sure that every child who didn't have access had access to at least one green smoothie a day to fill all their nutrient buckets. They could participate. And what's happened is, it's become a youth led project. And I've got, I get a chance to work with young people from all over the city, from all different backgrounds who all have been touched deeply by war economy. They live in food deserts. They are living through a war that they do not know the name of, but it's just life is hard. And so I wrote this poem for them or a channel through me because the rage of working with brilliant people and the unknowingness of their futures, just like we are right now with the children of Ukraine, children all over the world. And it's so unnecessary. And so when I look at these beautiful children, the only thing I can give them. So it's all of my heart and my best well wishes and the metaphysics I got from my great grandmother. Only I can give them is this, is the earth. Hush, hush, hush, the noise of the world, put away the rage, the numbness, the discontent, the heartbreak, put away their talk of you as a thing marginalized, a thing in minority, put away the hollywood they have used to glamor you into unconsciousness. Gather in, this is our time, children, shine your attention to the wisdom of the earth, the one who holds you, the only one asking nothing from you, while she yields, while she gives, while she nourishes, while she loves you. For now, never mind their prisons, hideous ornaments of their pathological need to control, never mind they have penned nations of life into sacrifice zones, locked out living foods, green grass, trees and hired armed militia to patrol streets to wall you in so you won't even try to make it out. Never mind their anti-life crusade that separates labels, organizes away from fun, spontaneity, wildness and gushy warm life to choke off everything moving. Never realizing the prisons they erect for you is where their souls reside too. Never mind these, for now, right now, bronze yourself in the earth. She is the only one telling the truth. Be like a babe, newborn, suckle the colostrum she yields. Strengthen your sense of yourself with new fresh eyes, heart reborn, healed by the ash of your ancestors, crust dreams, their hurt and their pain, watching you and loving you, whispering your name as you walk. For us, they say. For freedom, they say. For light, they call you into your cosmic destiny. It is always for love. The earth is only love. She is your DNA. Her seasons are the design of your body, which house your soul. We hold her gifts and listen to what she is saying to you as you walk the streets of the town and see the fruit that peeks at you from up in the trees, firm and ripe and delicious that grow wildly busting through concrete and the greens that follow the underground pathway and volunteer themselves between the cracks and the pavement, which you have mostly only ignored. Look now. Listen now to the earth. Her message is clear. You are in the presence of the miraculous every day. You are witness to an abundant design. Scarcity is an illusion. You belong to the earth and she belongs to you. Pay no mind to the programming that shrouds you in the nothingness. Shows that you have nothing, that you are nothing. Hush this voice oppressive and cool. It lies to you. It wants to trick you. Hear her. See her with fresh eyes. The bounty of our beloved love Gaia. Her alignment organized in a steady rotation that places you squarely roundly in the midst of an ocean of wonder, possibility and opportunity. Behold our moon and its mightiness, the lunar vibrations that call to your soul and the sun as it shines. It is you and you are her. Lighting up the world with your heart express. Shine like the giant dial in the sky which illuminates powers and brings lush life. One of the many gifts of this dimension. Use the balm of this knowing to mend the places where your heart has been broken, cracked wide open and crushed over. Crusted over like the dried molten lava of tropical volcanoes. The ash fertility ready to organize new life, new possibilities. Nourish your mind, your energy with the fruit and greens and herbs growing all around you. Walk and power your body, your thoughts, your prayers with the electricity coursing into you from the ground under your feet. Love yourself and your community. The way she is loving you. Every message, every note, every hint is one of hope, empowerment, fun and life. Listen, watch, sense anew and behold the miraculousness of where you have landed this time in this body, in this marvelous world that asks nothing of you except to witness her and be nursed by her while you are here. Start to stand with a prayer for peace and health of all that comes your way. Drink your smoothie and let it heal you. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. See you again. Love again. Live again. Smile again and breathe, breathe. Children of the world, breathe again. Namaste. Thank you. Thank you for this convening. Thank you for all of you. Kelly, sweetheart. Deepest hearted Kelly. Thank you for all you do for the children and for the world and for nourishing hearts and souls. Thank you for sharing your poetry. Thank you, Jodi. I love you all so much. Thank you all for representing. Thank you and keep doing this. Thank you. So we move into the deep, the depths of poetry to a little bit of action again. This time it's the love for the people of Afghanistan. Last Friday, February 11th, Biden issued an infuriating and heartless executive order. He authorized that 7 billion of Afghan funds invested in the US Federal Reserve Bank be divided into with half going to compensate 911 families who've been suing the Taliban for sheltering al-Qaeda and the other half going to humanitarian aid. But the Afghan people are not responsible for 911. They need their money. More than half of them weren't even born at the time. And they need humanitarian aid. They need their money. And so right now with loving your hearts for the people in Afghanistan, I'll share the link where you can ask Biden to unfreeze the money and let you know that tomorrow, we're going to have to talk more about this, but we made a call out on Friday to lawyers to help fight this. And I just want to tell you, there's been an outpouring across the country of support of lawyers who just see the insanity of this, that people, millions of people in Afghanistan are at the verge of freezing to death and starving to death. And, and it's just, yeah. Anyway, please act. And then I'm very, very excited to introduce you to my dear friend, brilliant poet Susan Griffin, who for over 50 years through 20 books, one a Pulitzer Prize finalist has been making unconventional connections between seemingly disparate subjects, whether pairing ecology and gender, gender, like in her foundational work, like the nature or the private life with the targeting of civilians in a course of stones. She sheds a new light on many contemporary issues, including climate change, war, colonialism, the body, democracy and terrorism. And a Emmy award-winning playwright and a poet celebrated for her innovative style. And she's got a new treat because she's got a book coming out next year out of silence, sound out of nothing, something, a writer's guide, which is going to be available from Counterpoint Press. So next, the amazing Susan Griffin. Oh, thank you, dear heart. Thank you so much. So how much. I love you so much. And I love Code Pink. And I was there at the birth. Yes, you were. So I'm going to start by talking about a poem that I wrote about Lorca. And I don't know why I, I didn't write this when I discovered the story. I had discovered the sort of the story maybe 20 years earlier, but I never, I didn't in the beginning when I loved Lorca's poems know this story. Well, the poem will say, well, we'll enlighten you about that. But if I realized there must be some younger people, I hope in this audience and maybe some who don't know who Lorca was. So I'm just going to give the background that Lorca was a great, great Spanish poet who was beloved by the people of Spain, even common people who didn't, who didn't know how to read, memorized his poems and repeated them to each other. And he was, he was part of the Republican cause in Spain fighting Franco Franco. The Second World War really began in Spain. And, and the the, the, the, the autocratic fascist powers Franco won partly because the Germans already Nazis came into support. The, the, the Franco's troops. So Lorca was killed by the, by the fascists. And I'm going to read you a poem about that. And then I'll follow with one of his poems. Lorca, he was the one who wrote that line. I learned by heart green. I want you green. The music becoming part of me so quickly that day, though I did not know his story. Green, I want you green. My home rose up like a storm, electric and sweet, shaking my ears, green, the wind, green, the branches, that book now yellow with time, the pages crumbling in my hands, unbound as what was printed on them. Cool face, black hair on the screen balcony. I was young then born in the midst of war so soon after learning to walk, crawling with my sister and her friends and helping Lawn, we called Normandy breach. Drunken Guardes Seville's pounding on the door. When I read his words, leaving a trail of blood, a trail of tears. I did not know Lorca was a man who loved men. Or how they killed him, shoving their weapons in the place where he shared pleasure with his lovers. My goal, no doubt, along with torture was to humiliate, but now, since I've known the story for so many years, it's clear to me that the portrait they painted was of themselves, not him. Green, I want you green, green, the wind, green, the branches, those who inflict suffering never escape. The shame is theirs. Though in time, they will be nothing. Their names replaced by what they did. Well, the music of those who suffer becomes our music, a treasure we leave to our children. Green, I want you green. The poem that I took Lorca's lines from, which is called Green, I Want You Green, is really one of his most famous poems. It's very beautiful and I recommend it to you. I'm sure you can find it online. I'm going to read you now a translation of another's poems because it's so relevant to what has been going on, what's been going on really continually and terrible when you think of the, you know, when I think of all the suffering that civilians have gone through in warfare, one of the worst would be to feel that there's something flying overhead that's going to attack you at any moment. It may just obliterate you or kill people you love or destroy your home. This is a poem that was written during the war and about the war by Federico Garcia Lorca, Casita of crying. I have shut the balcony, so I will not hear those cries. But behind these gray walls, there is nothing but crying. So few angels are singing. So few dogs even bark. A thousand violins fit in the palm of my hand. But the crying is an immense dog. The crying is an immense dog. The crying is an immense angel. The crying is an immense violin. And as tears quiet the mind. There is nothing to hear but crying. Now I'm going to read you and with on it. With a love poem in a way. It's a love poem to the dark. The darkness that's inside of all of us. From which all of our creativity arises by the way. And in the racist tradition of western culture, we've associated darkness with evil and with badness. But actually the dark, all life comes from the dark. All beauty comes from the dark. So I'm reading you this. It's a prose poem that I wrote. And in response at his request and response to Jim Hodges. Beautiful work in which. A tree. Had already died and pulled it up out of the ground and had it bronzed. And it's displayed upside down with the root system, which is magnificent. Much larger than you would think. And it's extraordinary. The beautiful dark. The beautiful dark. Just underneath the mystery is there. The beat beneath the beautiful dark. Asking what do you need the root of all being the seed. Under our feet there in the dark. A silent choir. Call in response. Need and plenty. All in the weave. The great weave. What we call earth. What we call home. Underneath. And the darkness within our city. The beautiful dark. The beautiful dark. The beautiful dark. Just underneath the mysteries there. And the darkness within our secrets. What we do not reveal what we are not ready to say. The seed of ourselves, the root of being. Full of beginnings and endings. Injuries untold. Wounds unhealed. Wrongs unforgiven. A great tangled mess of troubled thought. Love and bills unpaid. Desire and grief. Fear and all the rough edges of anger. Daydreams. While the leaves under our feet. Molder and the leaves above grow green. Are you listening? Voices of sorrow breaking down. Breaking open. Voices of love breaking through. All together in the beautiful dark. What do you have to give? Beautiful darkness. What do you want to say? Do you dream? What do you see in your dream? With your inward eye. Who do you love? And can you hear the call and response? The silent choir. In the great weave. Who are you really in this darkness? Can you feel it? Are you listening? In this singing silence. The resonant darkness. Do you know who you are now? To give and be given. The silent choir. Beneath. In the beautiful dark. Underneath. Thank you so much, Susan. Wow. Beautiful. Thank you for reminding us the dark, the power and beauty of the dark. Love you. Love you. All right. So moving from poetry to action, flowing from the creative, from the cultural to the engage. Our next. Country we want to care for is China. China is not our enemy. We need them to be our friends and we need to be in a place where we can share the information. For people on planet. And we have many actions that you can engage with. But this week. We are standing with. Aileen goo who. All the media have decided to attack. It's quite shameful. They're all white males. I have to also note. And they decided that. She shouldn't have a right to choose. So particularly relevant to you in the Bay Area, she's coming to Stanford to go to school, but the New York Times was really gross and did two pieces. So we have a campaign focused at the New York Times saying that, you know, Eileen Gu's reason to ski for China was about cooperation and kindness and connectivity and friendship. And what they've responded with is really ugly and demeaning and violent and shameful. And therefore they're driving Symphobia and the aggression and we're on China. And so we need to teach the New York Times to learn from Eileen to be kind and not mean. And I'll share that link here in the in the chat. And I'm going to turn you all back over to our, my co partner here Cynthia, who will take you further into the program. I want to thank Susan for the beautiful poetry. Thank you so much. And introduce Jennifer Hasegawa, who's our next poet to read. She is a Pushkart Prize nominated poet, the manuscript for her book of poetry, La Chica's Field Guide to Banzai Living. Can't wait to read that. This is Henry Jackson Literary Award. And the book was long listed for the Believer Book Award in poetry. She was born and raised in Hilo, Hawaii, Hawaii, and lives in San Francisco. Jennifer, you're up. Please join us. Thank you. Hi everyone. Thank you for joining this beautiful reading is moving reading and celebration of love and peace. I'm going to start with a poem called Rockets with the rear view mirrors. They found a lack of life on one of my planets, despite the presence of blood and water in the soil. The face, as in most things, go slow to go fast. They want to colonize Mars, because it is the closest thing they have to home. It takes more than an extra 39 minutes. Venusian nights last 100 days. Give me this century to comb through the sweet oil of its atmosphere. Survey its darkened lava fields. It's hot, but not hot enough. Melt our resolve to really fix it this time. Propulsion units burn out disengage and drop to lower orbits. Molten language pollinates the voiceless to birth the supernatural astounding alien, clean progenitor of the new tongue of the ages. You are here. And that's dedicated to all the people who came out to hear poetry this evening. The next poem is called When forgiveness looks like a forest. The flower said to its lover, are you really a tree? Or you do you just playing one on TV. Matiesa painted its likeness. The thing became human. And so ancestral tree matter flows through our sympathetic systems. Methuselah pine, Cyprus of Abarcu, and Langernau you. Non-clonal agents from whom we learn to fight or fly. Trees churn deep soil, proceed along underground rivers. Slow grazing cellulose buffalo. They have soft voices sound like paper bags flicked open gently. Their rings, their mouths. Trees telescope through millennia. Then they show up like old friends branches signing secrets that even you forgot you hid deep inside the heart bark of the body. The next poem is called flaws. He glowed wonder. When he saw the ground giving them up. Waxy skins peeled back, revealing brown gleaming in borderland sun. Out the globes for answers. Heard rustling and low hanging mesquite and in the stillness in between leaves load the heart's acknowledgement. At this he thanked grasped and plucked in a good way. So happy, he would have floated off if the antler palm hadn't snared his shoelace, and escorted him back to his truck. Suddenly uniforms smashed every one with hammers looking for kilos of cocaine growing in gourds. Flaws in the mind are replicated on the land. Skins cracked, seeds shivering. Flaws in the mind are replicated on the body. Gord said, stop your crying. It's just gore. He said, these are the hearts of the deer. Bodies poised and muscular. Listen for the income for you in the night. Metal totem whirring with the flawed focusing of glass eyes upon you so accustomed to the sound of surveillance. You suspect it is the tune of existence. Thump. Trump. Thump. This is the sound of velvet grazing against fresh concrete 2000 miles bleeding. And I'll close with this poem. It's a relatively new and fresh one. I appreciate your your attention. It's called O placenta hovering overhead purple river car flying saucer so thick in the middle with blood, the kind that sucks in all light. Me just a two headed thousand eyed trillion fingered by P so vulnerable to blunt force trauma to the feeling center. How many mistakes were made zero heads loose limbs before I reached this singular perfection. Warm blooded for bearing live young suckling and too smart for their own good bat penguin whale elk opossum human I'm so self centered. It never dawned on me that whales breastfeed their milk thick like toothpaste floats in water. Baby curls its tongue like a straw to draw it in. I'm so self centered. It never dawned on me that when marsupials mate his bifurcated penis enters her two vaginas connected to two uteruses and by what glory when a baby is born it emerges from a third transient canal. I'm so self centered. It never dawned on me that I was a foreign body. If I even touched her beautiful insides before being born, her cells would have devoured me little being dreaming of what. Oh placenta before you to be born meant breaking down walls. Is a love song to an ancient retro virus who laid the good grounds for each placental place of immune privilege. We grow beneath the tree of life, temporary organ, our first friend already part virus in the dark matter of my DNA. I am domesticated mutating and I've never felt more alive. Happenstance is the origin of beasts. Dawn mother came forth with hips so wide as to birth, the sun and the moon. Even then, the instinct to hide the traces of childbirth after birth eaten under neon signs flashing food gas and clean restrooms. Stir into three cups of milk and drink, drink the elixir of our connected destinies you self centered fuck. Don't you know viruses don't lie. Thank you. Beautiful. Thank you. I'm going to turn it back over to Cynthia Jennifer what a beautiful voice and heart powerful. Thank you. Yes, thank you Jennifer I wow. And, you know, my compliments on your background to with the hearts floating around. That was so incredible thank you. I just want to say a few words of love for the people of Yemen are going to back to action just for a moment here. I'm putting in the chat. That you can go to the code pink website to see some suggested actions. The Saudi led coalition is currently raining bombs down on Yemen, killing civilians and causing an internet blackout. And I think I read today that there were bombs dropped on Yemen yesterday. We need Congress to pass a new war powers resolution to stop us support for the war. Those bombs are made and made in the United States supplied by Lockheed Raytheon and other companies that are merchants of death, we have to stop it and we have to get Congress to pass a war powers resolution. So please go to the link that I put in the chat. Thank you very much. I would like to introduce our second to last poet. Raymond Nat Turner. He is the town crier. He's a nationally acclaimed poet and accomplished performing artist and black agenda reports. Poet in residence. He is the artistic director of upsurge the jazz poetry ensemble. He is also a frequent contributor to dissident voice struggle and other online and print publications, and a frequent guest on KPF as talkies hosted by Chris Welch is just where I've heard him frequently and enjoyed very much his poetry there. The city of Berkeley proclaimed February 25 2020 Raymond Nat Turner day Raymond welcome very much to our event tonight and I'm going to turn it over to you. Thanks. Thank you so much Cynthia and much love to you, media and the rest of the code pink crew for all that you do. And much love to Dennis Bernstein for I think envisioning and conceiving this event. And I'm going to share two poems. One on love of a most perverse lethal type, and the other on a type of love that moves me motivates me to stay in the game so to speak. So the first poem is called Pentagon pimps, keep pimp slapping and kicking us to the curb. Money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money is the answer. What was the question. Don't I protect you from the Pacific. Don't I protect you from the Atlantic. Don't I protect you from crazy canucks coming down and stealing our drugs. Don't I protect you from Mexican rapist and murderers on their way to work. Every day. Don't I protect you from Al yeah Al Qaeda. Don't I protect you from a q amp Al Qaeda Arabian Peninsula and associated forces. Don't I protect you from ISIS. Don't I protect you from Boca Boca Boca Haram. Don't I protect you from the bear panda red sun the fellow with the funny mustache the black shirted ball headed fella. Don't I protect you from the Haitians, Hondurans and Guatemalans. Don't I protect you from black lives matter and Antifa, the Palestinians Taliban and packies. And didn't I blow your mind the time I whacked been for you, baby. That's why you got to keep my patriotic pockets looking like they got the mumps. And that's why you got to get out there and get my money by the 15th of April. Maybe what you kind of sweet on the drone Ranger when he blew in from the windy city with regime change you can believe in. And I caught you recklessly eyeballing McCain, when he's saying bomb bomb bomb, bomb, bomb Iran, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran. And the boss tweet. Look presidential smoking an Iranian general didn't you baby. But for you baby, I'd liberate Kuwait. And I'd build black sites and bases around the world. I'll build NATO for my whole. And daddy don't care about your pronoun. Money make it makes it all a whole now. But baby I'll do disinformation for you misinformation for you. Tell big lies for you, even deploy spies for you. Baby you work so hard. And you're so sweet. I'll give you the seventh fleet. You know I'll do anything for you baby. Just don't talk that single payer guaranteed income shirt. I'll slap the taste out your mouth. Baby them other players are all full of jives. I've proven my love with an f 35. I'm your king and you're my queen. I'll sky write your name with an f 16. Now go get my money. Love can wait. Daddy got to take care of his apartheid state. Oh baby please don't you listen to that hater. My henchmen ain't no dictator. I pivot without a leg to stand on for you. I'd mobilize malicious and the joint command on for you. Both day and night to bitter end for you. I'll expend every cent of the peace dividend for you. I'll build a wall on the border for you. Spill blood for a new world order for you. I'll buy the warhouse and capital is hill for you. I'll make every new war a bloody thrill for you. I'll kill and kill and kill for you. I'll dig more mass grains for you. And I'll oversee more slaves for you. I'll overthrow sit down who's saying smuggle Colombian cocaine and even start shit in Ukraine for you. Oh, baby. Darling, I'll break all rules for you. Extricating fossil fuels for you. I'll sing like at a at last for you. Even set off a nuclear blast for you. I'll protect our way of life for you. Even create world strife for you. I'll drop cluster bombs for you. Oh, baby. I'll apply sanctions worldwide for you. Forever pick the white side for you. I'll shout us a chance for you. Bomb water plans for you. Oh, baby. I'll destroy wildlife and coral reefs for you. I'll even inflame ethnic beefs for you. Oh, baby. For you, baby, I export death and violence. Don't go changing your lamb like silence. I'll do massacres bombings and assassinations. Just keep sending me those big subsidization. We can't wait for the smoking gun or mushroom cloud. Baby, just close your eyes and follow the crowd. Baby, I'll spend more than the next 10 combined. Spend. And I'll each and every day I'll pray to God to spending never in. And another note. And since this is Valentine's Day, I'm going to ask my Valentine to join me in doing a piece that often do with our ensemble called upsurge and upsurge NYC. And this piece I wrote in 2010 for a Martin Luther King celebration in Oakland at the East Bay Y, YMCA. It's called Army of Artists and it's for my friend Horace Silver, the late great Horace Silver. The rhythm of a rose. Melody in merchants of life. Beauty's our bomb. It's shrapnel. We are an army of artists. Infantry on feet of celebration. Toes polishing hardwood floors with perspiration. Toes are an army of artists. Brandishing sticks and brushes. Softening up enemies with strokes and notes. Partisans wielding pastels, oils and acrylics, connecting dots, hitting spots on canvas and paper. We are an army of artists. Foreign fighters, formerly known as doofs, counts, birds, pops, militant magi, weaving dreams in azure skies, etching prayers in mirrors with our acid tears. We are an army of artists. Asymmetrical warriors mopping up murals, gracing broken down buildings. Enemy combatants crying clear lacquer on contra bases. Snipers shooting sunlight into hearts held hostage by the one percent. Ellingtonia is our tonic for subdominant dreams. We are an army of artists. Dangerously unselfish enemies of ignorance. Drumming to different dancers. Staging attacks in theaters. Exploding in applause. Thank you for your kind attention. Thank you for putting it together. Thank you both. Whoops, I'm muted. Can you hear me? We can hear you. Oh, okay. Thank you both. That was incredible. Yeah, we want to go to a little action now one more time. And this is love for the people of Cuba. I'm going to put in the chat. I see that Jodi just put something in the chat. We did raise money to send a few tons of powdered milk to Cuba because they are suffering under the long-term sanctions that the United States has put on them. Economic sanctions which are causing suffering for the people of Cuba who don't deserve it. Obama lifted a good deal of the sanctions and Biden needs to do the same thing. So what I put in the chat was a link for you to go to codepink.org to end the blockade. We have to make that happen. We also raised money for syringes so they can administer the COVID vaccine that they developed there in Cuba. And of course Cuban doctors went around the world to try to help with the COVID pandemic. So we should treasure our relationship with Cuba instead of punishing them. I'm going to introduce our last poet of the evening. Whose idea this evening was and we want to express our gratitude to Dennis Bernstein for the idea of reading poetry. I have a short introduction. He's the host and executive producer of flash points on KPFA and KPFA in Berkeley, KPFK in Southern California. He's an award-winning poet, most recently the author of five oceans in a teaspoon with visualizations by war and lair. He won the 2020 gold medal for poetry and the 2020 best book award for poetry by the American Book Fest. He also received the 2015 Pilar award in broadcast journalism for his work as a frontline journalist whistleblower. And welcome to the event, Dennis. I listen to your show regularly flash points and I recommend that everybody do because it's a truth telling show. We appreciate you being here and for your invitation. Thank you so much for your invitation to have this evening. All yours. Thank you. Can you hear me okay? Yeah. Great. That's terrific. Well, this is wonderful. Many acts too hard to follow. But. Wow. I'm glad we're doing some poetry today. I want to. Start with a poem. It's about my dad. On his last day. But he was an amazingly brave human being, but the, the story I want to tell you. Is that. In 1918. When my paternal grandmother. Gave birth to my dad. They didn't know that she already had the virus, the 1918. And so. His mother, essentially the last thing. She did was to give birth to him and she died about a half hour later. And I. I can't tell you how many different stories I heard about. What happened in 1918 with the, with the flu. And then in 1929, how his father went bankrupt and he came home and he found the furniture out in the street. And, you know, then he went into the war and was shot four times. And with all of it, he stayed focused and brave. And soft and loving. And I used to think to myself, God, I'm glad that didn't happen to me. That plague. And here I am. I've been. Having a recurring dream. My father shows up and he's trying to do something to protect us from the plague. You know, he's like a century outside our door. Guarding us from the plague. Anyway, this is a poem about the last time. I saw him, which is, which was in the. The emergency room. And not the emergency room, the intensive care unit. They had called me to come from California to New York because they didn't think he had much time. And so I arrived there. And came into the, the emergency room and I didn't realize he was that close to death that I realized when I got there. And I was, you know, is that I was at that place where, you know, if you just move the wrong way, you will start to cry. You know, and I was just trying to contain myself to be there for my father. And he sees me there at the edge of death. He sees me have this reaction and be afraid and be frightened. And he says, come over here. He singles with this hand, come over here. Come a little closer. So I'm right up in the middle of the tubes and the bed and the whole thing. And he reaches out and he picks my sweater and he says, nice material. Where'd you get it? And he was a furrier, so he was interested in material. You know, so. He also was anxious that we have some ice cream together. And he said he, there was an ice cream truck outside. It was a, it was in the middle of a snowstorm. There was no ice cream truck outside. But here's the poem. It's called strong medicine. Strong medicine. And I never write poems like this. The night before he died, he craved for ice cream on a stick. In the middle of a snowstorm, he heard the bells outside the truck across the street. Could I sneak out and buy around for all of us? His treat. There was no truck across the street. No crisp bells crackling. But the canteen in the basement did have two dusty old machines, dispensing pops and cones and cups. I filled the slots with coins. I took out those two machines on leash, more vinyl pain relief that night than the steady drip of morphine clouding father's final scene. Ah, the looty beam and Jewish shallow breath. And then another. I toast to the bitter and the sweet. He tore the wrapper off his treat before he lost his breath completely. I watched him eat. I watched him eat like a kid on the sneak before dinner that night as death took a brief backseat to a chocolate covered ice cream bar on a stick. And this is from my mother and my father. My mother was a working woman. Who spent a lot of lifetime smashing through glass dealings. She often used the word to do it. I remember I always felt very lucky if she'd let me help her put on her makeup in the morning before she went to work, I could roll on the makeup and she would refer to it as her war, her warping. And my mother was known to often leave a like a little piece of verse over the water cooler as a message to one man or another about what needs to happen in the company. And people didn't like to get those messages on the water cooler. The word was a weapon for her and all her seven sisters. They all wrote poetry beautifully. This is actually from my mom and my dad. It's called Dancing Across the Great River. At 90, they rose up out of their wheelchairs and danced. They rose up the way herons rise over a smoky mountain lake. The way angels rise in the late afternoon daydreams of visionaries. And they danced right at the boiling point. Sure footed into the beginning of forever. And one more from my mom. This is sort of a series of short pieces that I wrote when I was taking care of her. Last load. Mother says she's had enough. She wants to throw in the towel. But not until it's washed and folded with the rest of her dirty laundry. Methuselah. She called the cops today when I tried to drop off the meds. She described me to a desk clerk named a rock as a short piece of paper. And she drew her with a shiny head and a beard as long as Methuselah. Do not resuscitate. Mama is ready. She's got her cocktail chilled. The forms all filled in and stuck up on the fridge. Next to the extra house key. Last hours. Her skin crumbles underneath my fingertips. I anchor her down with a feather. To keep her from floating away. And I thank you for letting me read and. For the incredible work you do, Susan. It's been about 40 years since I came to see if I was going to live in that room in your house. And I've been thinking a lot. I think I carry. You know, I've been thinking a lot. I've been thinking a lot. I've been thinking a lot. I was introduced to you by Paul Berman. The late and great Paul Berman and Andy Pritzman. And it was Paul. The beautiful. Beautiful Paul. Who. Taught me. To believe in myself. I'm a profound dyslexic and I had a real struggle in life. When I was a little boy. I was a little boy. Who first sat with me. I wanted him to rewrite my big political juices. But he made me, he said, no. Dennis, this is pretty good. Okay. So what do you think the next sentence should be? I wanted him to just use the rose. Come on, Paul. You know, it's good. You can make it better. And here's the final story. And this is. Really the poem. And I really wanted to bring Paul back into my life and seeing you, Susan gives me this chance to tell this story. So I'm visiting Paul and he's dying. Terrible kidney stuff. And we're in the, all the bates, I think we were. And. He looks up to me and he says, What are a pepperoni pizza? He's telling you kidney failure, right? So I ordered the pizza. And Paul passed. He didn't have a chance to share that pizza with me. But the amazing thing is after I left that hospital room. I got in the elevator. And when the door opened. There was a young couple. Each of them holding a twin. New borns. So that's life. That's death. And thanks for a beautiful evening. Lovely. Dennis, beautiful memory. Beautiful. Thank you, Dennis. And that brings us back to. You know, the fear of the darkness and love and death. And they, and how they all go together. So thank you for bringing us full circle around. And for dreaming up this night together where we dive into our hearts and share deeply and humanly, something that's so missing in our world right now. So thank you to Raphael and Raymond and Jennifer and Joanna and Amanda and Kelly and Susan and Dennis. And Cynthia. You're right. It is, as you have all said each in your own way, it is love that we are here to share and to cultivate. And with that is how we get to peace. And, you know, our last action of the night is that for loving the peace in the world, we need to cut the Pentagon, follow the money. Without the money, there would not be more. There would not be death and destruction. There would not be their weapons. Can you believe that they think that you should be able to have war with profit and the richer getting richer, making a killing on killing. So. Deepest gratitude to all. Happy Valentine's Day. Thank you for sharing it. Thank you for all you do. And yes, we dedicate this night to Renee and Jackie, our coup pinkers. Love, love, love, let us spread it. As Jennifer's amazing backdrop does nonstop. Thank you so much, Jody. Thank you, Dennis. Thank you. Joanna, Nita. Thank you. Thank you. Ellie. Yeah. Raymond, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Have a wonderful evening. You all beautiful gathering of spirits and. Poetry and. Lot of heart. Lot of heart. Yeah. Beautiful, beautiful work. Beautiful everybody. Love warriors. Dennis, I love your coat pink sticker up there on your bookcase. I noticed. Oh my goodness. Army of artists, Army of artists, good night. My love.