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Reading the poets has been the dullest of things.

Even reading the great novelists of the past

I said Tolstoy is supposed to be special.

I go to bed I read "War & Peace,"

I read it and say where's the specialness in War & Peace?

I really try to understand.

I mean many of the great poets

of the past I've read their stuff,

I've read it and all I get

is a god damned headache and boredom.

I really feel sickness in the pit of my stomach

and I say there's some trick going on here

this is not true this is not real it's not good.

You see poetry itself contains

as much energy as a Hollywood industry

as much energy as a stage play on Broadway.

All it needs is practitioners who are alive

to bring it alive.

Poetry's always been said to be a private hidden art

not appreciated.

The reason it's not appreciated because it hasn't shown

any guts it hasn't shown any dance

it hasn't shown any moxie.

I don't care for my life or anyone else's I'm my own man

and in 5 or 6 years I'll be falling apart

so I want $100 pledges and I want them

as fast as they can come.

Poetry, politics, pragmatism

and friends I'm 41 and I'm just turning a buck.

There's been a mutation in the possibilities of poetry

and the possibilities of what poetry may be.

There's been a definite mutation,

new doorways, portals new possibilities have been opened

and there's also been reconnections with traditions

that our standard formal academic poetry

lost it's connections with.

We've made many connections with the future

and we've made many connections with the past.

At sight of his opponent he turns a pale green

with fear and sometimes looses control of his bowels.

Well as an old adage in showbiz,

the worse the stage fright the better the performance.

I like performing because if you really take it seriously

one thing I've decided to do is if you take

every second of performing extremely seriously

and when you do that it all becomes, everything focuses

all your hassles, all your metaphysical everything boils

and turmoils down to this one 20, 30, 40 minute period

where you...bring your art everything you have to say

with all your intensity all it's fervor,

all it's meaning all it's desire and onwardness

everything focuses and funnels.

Dance the original dance the original aboriginal dance

of all time, challenge the contraction

of perfected the pirouette with the sly knowing

of hips that do right.

Stretch till all the stars and sands of all our lands

abandoned mingle in the wet heat sweat and grow warm.

The Gods demand of the system that a certain number

of people sing like the birds do, and it somehow

was given to me to be one of those people

and I did have a choice I could've decided not to be

a truck driver or make films but I liked doing that

and I feel that probably the major reason I write

is to because the Gods might destroy--

The whole thing would collapse.

The whole thing would fall apart I mean

I'd lose my voice and song.

When I was young the freshness of a single moment

came to me with all hope all tangent wonder

now I am one inexpertly in this body in this time.

All generality there is no one here but words.

What has to do with words and their meanings

their sounds the musicality of words how do you make

a kind of speech that is a high speech I call it you know,

and how do you relate that to the rhythms

that animate everything and that's I guess

to all poets it's such a close intimate thing

that you're barely able to really speak about that

but I know it has to do with word science.

Rothas Capital!

Authored the Bible!

Wrote Howl, wrote The Wealth of Nations!

Humanity just wants a dance!

If you don't wanna lead anyone in any subjective sense

like push anything onto them you know

I mean you could say you teach in a certain way

but it's like putting light in people's eyes, you know,

just opening the door but not showing them around

and telling them this is the chair, this is the table

you know, you just say here's a room

and turning on the light.

Amiri Baraka.

[cheers]

This is a poem for Larry Neal and Bob Marley,

two...black cultural workers that we lost in 1981.

♪

Wailers, are we.

We are wailers.

Don't get scared,

nothing happening but out and way out.

Nothing happening but the positive

unless you the negative.

Whalers, we whalers, yeah whalers!

We whale we whale!

We could dig Melville on his ship confronting

the huge white mad beast speeding death across the sea.

But we whalers we can kill whales,

we could get on top of a whale and whale.

Whalers undersea defense hot folk,

blues babies humming when we arrive.

Boogie ladies strumming our black violet souls.

Rag Daddies come from the land of never say die.

Reggae workers bringing the funk to the people of eye.

We whalers alright.

Hail to you Bob man

we will ask your question all our lives,

could you be loved?

I and I understand we see the world,

I's and I's say yes to transformation.

Whalers I whalers!

Subterranean night colour magize

working inside the soul of the world.

Whalers, eyes seeing the world's being.

Hey Bob, whale on rock on ya'll come into us

as real vision and action hey Larry, whale on with Lester

and your pork pie whaling us energy

for truth we whalers is all.

Lie on me if you want to.

Tell folks it's yours but for real whaling

not tale telling the sensitive know who the whalers be.

Be we, we we whalers blue blowers the real rhythm kings.

We sing philosophy, hand bone precise findings,

image master of the sincopater..

Whalers and drummers, whalers and trumpet stars,

whalers and rocks cookers, whalers and sax players,

whalers and bass thumpers.

Whalers, hey whale we we whalers!

Trombone benders, magic singers,

illingtonians the only trains faster than rocket ships,

shit put a rocket in our pocket and put a quart

on the wall of the wind, whalers!

Can you dig whaling?

Call me Bud Powell.

You wanna imitate this?

Listen.

[scatting]

My calling card the dialectic of silence, sound approach.

Life one day will be filled even further

with the numbers we sung, but primitive place

now we whaling be kept underground.

But keep it in mind, call me something dukey

something sassy call me by my real name.

When the world change will whaling be in it,

help make it for real time.

Call me, I'll call you, we call we say hey whalers ,

hey whalers, hey hey hey whalers!

Whale on!

♪

♪

Narrator: Anne Waldman.

Look what thoughts will do, look what words will do

from nothing to the face from nothing to the root

of the tounge from nothing to speaking of empty space

I bind the ash tree I bind the you I bind the willow

I bind uranium I bind the uneconomical

unrenewable energy of uranium

dash the uranium to empty space.

I bind the colour red I seduce the colour red

to empty space I put the sunset in empty space,

I take the blue of his eyes and make an offering

to empty space renewable blue.

I take the green of everything coming to life,

it grows and climbs into empty space,

I put the white of the snow at the foot of empty space.

I clasp the yellow of the cat's eyes

sitting in the black space, I clasp them to my heart

empty space.

I want the brown of this floor to rise up into empty space,

take the floor apart to find the brown

bind it up again under spell of empty space.

I wanna take this old wall apart I am rich in my mind

thinking of this I am thinking of putting makeup

on empty space everything crumbles around empty space

the thin dry we crumbles the milk we blown into empty space

I bind the stars reflected in your eye from nothing

to these typing fingers from nothing to the legs

of the elk from nothing to the neck of the deer

from nothing to porcelain teeth from nothing

to the fine stand of pine in the forrest.

I keep the going when I put the water on

when I let the water run sweeping together

in empty space there is a better way

to say empty space,

turn yourself inside out and you might disappear

you have a new definition in empty space.

What I like about impermanence is the clash

of my big body with empty space,

I am putting a floor back together again,

I am rebuilding the wall, I am slapping mortar

on the bricks, I am fastening the machine together

with delicate wire.

There is no eternal thread but there is thread of pure gold,

I am starting to sing inside about empty space

there is some new detail every time I am taping the picture

I love so well on the wall two parrots seated

on a lampshade on a jungle flower

everything illuminated out of empty space.

I hang the black linen dress on my body,

the hanging night, the drifting night the moaning night,

daughter of troubled sleep this occurs to me

I hang up a mirror to catch stars everything occurs to me

out in the night in my skull of empty space.

I go outside in starry ice, I build up the house again

in memory of empty space, this occurs to me

about empty space that it is never to be mentioned again.

[cheers]

I put my poems in a space between myself

and other people and when I'm reading them

I'm not the poet I'm the reader and my job

is to read them correct with accurate right

to do the justice to do them right.

This is called "Whitman in Black."

For my sins, I live in the city of New York.

Whitman's City lived in in Melville's census.

Urban inferno where love can stay for only a minute

then has to go to get some work done.

Here the detective and the small time criminal are one.

And though the cases get solved the machine continues to run.

Big town will weigh you down but it's only here

you can turn around 360 degrees and everything is clear

from here at the centre to every point

along this circle of horizon.

Here you can see for miles and miles and miles.

Be born again daily die nightly for a change of style.

Here, clearly here see with affection,

bleakly cultivate compassion.

Whitman's walk, unchanged after it's fashion.

My poems can be indentified, they have a touch that is mine,

several touches and you can't know anything more

about any single poem of mine by knowing me

than you can know from the poem

though you can know something more from hearing my voice.

If you've only ever seen the poems on the page

and then you hear me read one of them that will--

Open up some--

That will open up something,

I never thought Al Ginsburg was a very good poet

until I heard him read.

I mean his poems looked messy to me, sloppy,

I was coming up in a tradition when still things were tighter

and I wanted to change and be new as well

but of course I thought well this guy's so wordy

there's so many words and then I heard Alan Reid

and then I suddenly recognized this is the bar,

this was the great voice lifted.

Kenward Elmslie.

Used to be when it poured down cats and dogs,

I'd go prop up apple branches and talk pretty to the hogs.

Laughing at the thunder, watching lighting streak

naked as a jay bird I plunge into the creek

what I wanna know is when my high times way.

Who propped me up in the rain?

Used to be I'd find skulls with giant jaws.

I'd find porcupines of bone, and old turkey buzzard claws.

Prowling in the back woods through a dark ravine

naked as a jay bird back when I was green.

What I wanna know is when I'm dead and gone.

Who'll shake it's head in the dawn.

Some bumbling bird who picked me up

turned me around peck a bit.

Stare a while and start to smile at my remains.

What I wanna know is when my high times way.

Who propped me up in the rain?

All I wanna know is when the good times end.

Who'll say come on in my friend.

Who'll say come on in my friend.

[cheers]

Narrator: Ed Sanders.

The always redound triad you know there's phanopia,

melopia and logopia.

Phanopia's the way it looks on the page

and I bring argils to that in drawing and stuff

and melopia is how it sounds.

Melopia's where the muse comes in

I think there has to be another muse invented

for the electromagnetic era what I call retentia

for the retained image on tape or on film

or on microdisk or whatever and I just think

it's important to be able to perform your poetry well

as well as for it to look good on the page

which is phanopia and for it to appear

well in the mind which is logopia.

That's called a talking tie.

It just goes back to performing,

in ancient times they had a little 4 or 7 string

tortoise shell liar the tortoise shell

as the sounding board and little cow horn

or wooden arms and then a crossbar

for the strings and the poet would sit there

with a plectrum or something to strum his keys the strings

and would perform his poetry and it was this hypnotic,

revering type of verse that people would listen

to hours and hours these dactyls da da da da da da

and they'd listen to it over and over

and I was interested in building a modern instrument

an electronic instrument that was small

and wouldn't overwhelm the poetry,

so I got these little tune synthesizers

two of them one for each hand

with the keyboards on the fingers.

The genius was 81.

[synthesizer]

Fearful of blindness.

[synthesizer]

Caught in a wheelchair.

[synthesizer]

Staring at death.

[synthesizer]

But the angel of mercy,

[synthesizer]

had gave him a year

[synthesizer]

to scissor some shapes

[synthesizer]

to sooth the scythe.

[synthesizer]

One must study an object a long time the genious said

to know what its sign is.

[synthesizer]

The scissors were his septor and the cutting

was as the prow of a boat to sail him away.

[synthesizer]

To sail him away.

[synthesizer]

To sail him away.

[synthesizer]

There's a photographer which shows him.

[synthesizer]

Sitting in his wheelchair.

[synthesizer]

Bare foot touching the floor.

[synthesizer]

Drawing with crisscross steel.

[synthesizer]

A shape in the quash.

[synthesizer]

His helper sits near him.

[synthesizer]

Till he hands her the form.

[synthesizer]

To pin to the wall.

[synthesizer]

He points with a stick.

[synthesizer]

How he wants it adjusted.

[synthesizer]

This way and that.

[synthesizer]

My new todoness.

[synthesizer]

The last.

[synthesizer]

Blue.

[synthesizer]

Iris.

[synthesizer]

Blooms.

[synthesizer]

At the top of it's stock.

[synthesizer]

Scissor, septor, cutting, prow.

Scissor, septor, cutting, prow.

Scissor, septor, cutting, prow.

[synthesizer]

♪ Keep those scissors flashing in the world ♪

♪ of forms on remetice. ♪

♪ Ahhhhhhhh...

♪ The cutting of the scissor was the prow ♪

♪ of a boat to sail him away. ♪

♪ The last blue iris blooms at the top ♪

♪ on a warm spring day. ♪

♪ Keep those scissors flashing in the world ♪

♪ of forms on remetice. ♪

♪ Ahhhhhhhh,,,

♪ Sitting in a wheelchair bare foot touching the floor. ♪

♪ Angel of mercy pushed him over next to Plato's door. ♪

♪ Ahhhhhhhhh...

♪ Scissor, septor, cutting, prow. ♪

♪ Scissor, septor, cutting, prow. ♪

♪ Scissor, septor, cutting, prow on remetice. ♪

♪ On...

♪ On...

♪ Oooooooo...

♪ Ahhhhhh...

♪ Oooooooo...

♪ On remetice.

♪ Ahhhhhhhh. ♪

Narrator: Hellen Adam.

Cheerless Junkie's song Seeking love upon the day

a day of summer's pride, I left long island suburbs

for lower east side.

The train it roared and thundered

and I sat above it's scream,

there's a cockroach coming towards me

but it cannot spoil my dream.

Love love and LSD it shall not spoil my dream.

Blue moonlight over Tompkins Square drop out into dawn.

The village all around me and long island suburbs gone.

In a pad far down on 4th street soon I welcome the approach

of the rat that loves the twilight

and the nimble footed roach.

Love love at even tide the gray rat and the roach.

I'm always where the action is I blow my mind

all day while on long island's tennis courts

the bland suburban's play.

And I respond suburban who'd ever credit that.

No chick who saw me frogging with the cockroach and the rat.

It's ho for horse or methodrine to spark the swinging mood,

while rats run up my trouser legs

roaches share my food.

Rats and roaches nuzzle me when it's dark and hot

love love it's all the same mixing speed and pot

first a rat and then a roach are both as light as not

if I can't find a fix tonight my marrow bones will rot.

Goodbye transcendent Tompkins Square I haven't long to stay

a double jolt of heroin and I'll be on my way.

Let rats and roaches bury me they'll bury me in state,

as they march from their azono bridge down to the golden gate

clear across the continent yonder let me lie.

In the gutters of Hatashbury to freak the passers by

till all the tourists gape and say brother he died.

I...let rat tails write my epitaph brother he died high.

In the old days before there were books,

people would get together and sing ballads

and then they would add someone in the audience they would--

Add another verse--

It was more spontaneous--

It was spontaneously collected by the ballad singers

and this is think is wonderful in a way

and I think part of the terrific success of say Bob Dylan

--at his best, because he's really a poet at his best too--

was that it was the simple seeing words again

and not the over intellectual point which is so difficult

for so many people, including me,

to really understand at all you know.

And it's a spontaneous singing thing people have

always responded to it and I guess they always will.

Narrator: Tom Waits.

♪ Daggers moonlight murder the sheets. ♪

♪ The stink of $4 room.

♪ Daddy's gone hunting for a dime bag of schoolboy ♪

♪ tied up with a yellow balloon. ♪

♪ So hush little baby daddy was cool, ♪

♪ I'll cover you up with a blanket of snow. ♪

♪ By the time I make Jersey you'll be in heaven ♪

♪ in a pretty blue shoebox I know. ♪

♪ So sing a song a song of $10,000 ♪

♪ with a pocket full of dough. ♪

♪ I can't take you to Baltimore ♪

♪ wake God up in heaven ♪

♪ have him look down below ♪

♪ there's a little lost angel blooming in the snow. ♪♪

Poetry's generally very dull.

Very pretensive.

Those who say the poet is very private and precious

personally I don't agree with.

Generally he's just a dumb fiddling asshole

writing insecure lines that don't come through

believing he's immortal waiting for his immortality

which never arrives because the poor fucker

just can't write.

Most poets, coets, hoets, carrots can't even write

a simple line like "the dog walked down the street."

Narrator: William Burrows.

Kim is a morbid slimy youth of unwholesome proclivities

with a sensational appetite for the extreme and sensational.

He has a dark side to his character and he loves it.

His mother had been into table tapping

and Kim adores ectoplasm, crystal balls,

spirit guides and auras.

He wallows in abominations unspeakable rights,

diseased demon lovers, ancient ruin sissies

under a purple sky and the smell of unknown excrements.

In short Kim is everything a normal decent America boy

is taught to detest.

The boy is rotten clear through and he stinks

like a polecat judge Ferris pontificated.

Now this was true, when angered or aroused or excited

Kim flushed bright red and steamed off

a rank rottish animal smell.

"The child is not wholesome," said Mr. Kindheart

with his usual restraint.

Kim remembers his father's last words,

"stay out of churches son and don't ever

let a priest near you when you're dying."

All they got a key to is the shit house

and swear to me you will never wear a policeman's badge.

As soon as Kim walks through

the swinging door he knows this is it.

Two men at the bar by the door,

one is tall and thin with a dead sour wooden face

the other tall and fattish and loose lip with lead gray eyes.

They fan out blocking the door,

loose lips smiles showing his awful yellow teeth

now I don't like drinking in the same room with a fairy,

do you Clim?

Can't says I do, Cash.

They wanna bat it around for a while but Kim doesn't.

I don't want any trouble you gentlemen let my buy you

a drink, Kim is still talking as his hand sweeps down

to his belt and then up smooth and casual

as if he's handing Clim a visiting card

and shoots him in the stomach.

Clim doubles forward and his false teeth

fly out snapping in the air.

Clim is 45 and barely clear of the holster

plows a hole in the floor.

Kim pivots both hands on the gun and shoots Cash

in the hollow of the throat.

The heavy slug tears through and spatters the wall

with slivers of bloody bone.

Cash's gun jumps back into its holster.

Clim is weaving around trying to re-cock his 45

with numb fingers, taking his time Kim shoots him forehead.

Both assholes are dead before they hit the floor,

Kim's arduous training has paid off

in hard international currency.

As Kim looks down at the two bodies crumbled there

spilling blood and brains on the floor

he experiences a rush of pure joy.

Two enemies will never bother him again,

two lousy sons of bitches melted into air

and powder smoke.

Because of a summer evening in 1954,

it opened it's wings and I received its revelation

because of summer nights behind the mosque

because it signals the height of summer

because of its mathematical precision

at the infinite disposal of curiosity

because it's markings are the summation

of military helotry the olive green of the English military.

Because it is a tropical species here in southwestern Ontario

because they are nocturnal tropical thin points

of extreme beauty, sculptural perfection

in living and dense wood.

Because their chrysalis resembles a vase,

their humming flight and the unsalable intricacy

of their June camouflage.

Because of the size and geodic modeling

of their pincers their chestnut brown elytra.

Because it is so tiny it weighs as much as a dime

because it is pale underneath, tawny above.

Because it is the eyes of night.

Because it is even larger like a fox bath.

Because it is our largest and only cat.

Because they are capricious night gliders.

Because it is a predetor.

Because of it's inky fur, tunnels twisting around roots.

Because it is a southern species migrating northwards

evidence for an interglacial warming trend.

Because of their glowing eyes in the driveway

at night the rasping marcupial cries.

Because of the caves.

Because of its unearthly face.

Because it is all of night.

Because it is a falcon.

Because it is sub tropical.

Because it is a stilted and accurate blue mist.

Because it is the north unwarranted in an ox bow pond.

Because it is a tropical species migrating slowly northwards

starting at Point Pelee.

Because it is a subtropical iridescent metal.

Because it is the arctic migrating

at the centre of blizzards.

Because they are astonishing aerialists.

Because the vacuum of space is so near.

Because of a dream.

Because they draw out the soul,

anticipation, electric radiance,

the irresistible approach of the ark hammer,

excitation in the ion shadows.

Because they come after you and seem to float

in dreams the bend sinister.

Because of the storm.

Because of an erotic insularity in the moist

almost tropical wind.

Because they illuminate everything in a gray powdery

light and turn the outside into a surreal theatre

of marvelous intent the warmth allows spectators

to remove their clothes.

Lunacy and a Saturn alien trance of corporeal clarity.

Because they are tropical.

Because they are both out of place and welcome.

Because they witnessed extinct races of fabulous creatures.

Because it is carnivorous and wet.

Because it is a carnivorous morning jewel in the sphagnum.

Because they are full lips and vulvas and are all of summer.

Because they are a tropical species

here in southwestern Ontario.

Because it has huge leaves and is tropical

with cerised Jurassic fruit.

Because it is fragrant and tropical.

Because it's fruits are pungent.

Because it's flowers are huge night glowing and perfumed.

Because of the pools.

Because their smooth mahogany pebbles

are enclosed in vegetable geodes.

Because of full viesentrellas.

Because they flowered all of beneath into above

and translated it perfectly.

Because it is a living fossil.

Because of the colour and smoothness

of its bark the silence and live alone floor

of the beach forest.

Because of the fragrance of its gum.

Because of the wooden pedals of their flowers.

Because of the waterfalls and the morning glint.

Because it is the memory capitol of Canada.

Because I perceived an order there.

Because of midsummer night's memories steeped in fire flies.

Because it overlooks Lake Huron.

Because the cedar pools are nearby

for it was once submerged.

Because it is a huge invisible river.

Because of the collections and gray powdery light

or Toronto winter afternoons spent in the Devonian era.

Because it is a semi-tropical iridescent metal

on the same latitude as California.

Because it is a beautiful and glorious

natural shrine of limestone.

Because it is awesome.

Because chronology was commenced there.

Because of the black river formation

last hold out of the white elm.

Because of the beach forest and what came after.

Because I got to know Lake Erie and glacial clay there.

Because I grew up beside them

and they taught me everything I know.

Because it is a huge and silent underwater predator.

Because it is huge and primitive.

Because it cruises hovering long snouted crocodilian.

Because it is primitive.

Thank you.

[cheers]

Narrator: Michael McClure.

A poet is someone who is obsessed with language,

obsessed with liberating themselves

the two have joined together and he's acting it out.

Sure.

Let me burst again and see who I am in this blackness

seeking middle age, who I am by the star

on this whirling ball where I can sense a billion galaxies

and clusters and smell the lucid light around the cities tower

while the sky dies in rosy layers and I remember

all the soft soft feet and toes that crept

across my childish life that stands as size less

as the day dreams of a virus.

I am a pouring flowing crystal,

I'm the midnight voices of the mating swallows.

I'm the tow truck of the soul that I create around me

as I cross this blazing bridge.

I am the wolf, the hummingbird,

the boy child and the gray beard man.

My poetry's quite pictographic,

I've made very complex pictures that are put just

around the page in visual ways to compliment the music of it.

This allows me to feel like the poem

is like an extension of myself.

It's like an organism moving out into the world.

As a device it gives me multiple options

for breaking the line, I can break it at the breath line,

I can swing over on it so that it carries the energy

of the body, I can use it for the effect of impact or

the very slender poem that runs down the page in a very

narrow way almost like the poems are ideograms like

Chinese or Japanese poetry.

I read one at the cactus lounge that said:

How.

Sweet.

To.

Be.

In.

Rows.

By.

Candle.

Light.

Or a worm

by full moon.

See the hopping flight

a cricket makes.

Nature loves the absence of mistakes.

Often times when people hear me read they say:

"oh now I understand how to read your poetry,

I've looked at it on the page and

I didn't know what to make of it."

Well it is in the performing of the page in a sense

but it's not that different from other poetry

being written in the 50's or 60's that have

a very similar sets of poetics behind them.

It's just that for me sliding to the centre

making it symmetrical focused it for me it clicked in.

Milton.

THE WORKS!

My near brutal love will grow.

Taller than skyscrapers

and more slurred in when you...

RISE!

Up!

Above!

A high help!

Even if you have a small room

you could find that poem useful...to you.

Self portrait.

He wants to be a brutal old man,

an aggressive old man as dull,

as brutal as the emptiness around him.

He doesn't want compromise or to be ever nice to anyone

just mean and final in his brutal

his total rejection of it all.

He tried the sweet the gentle

the oh let's hold hands together

and it was awful, dull, brutally inconsequential.

Now he'll stand on his own two dwindling legs,

his arms, his skin shrink daily

and he loves but hates equally.

That ambivalent oblique laconic way of speaking

it's very self defensive but it thinks of itself

as very upfront.

A really charming guy last night one of the musicians said

hey man you've got a really interesting voice,

and I felt charmed he said yeah the way

you really push it out there it's--

You could hear every beat that's terrific

that's precisely the way I feel it.

Reissuance movies.

A movie of Robert Reissuance showed

a yaght at evening on descend.

All it's lights on watched by two young

seemingly poor people on a bridge adjacent.

The classic boy and girl of the story

anyone one wants to tell.

So years pass of course but I identified with the young

and bittered French man knew his almost complacent

anguish and the distance he felt from his girl.

Yet another film of Reissuance has the aging

Lancelot with his awkward armour standing

in the woods of small trees dazed, bleeding,

both he and his horse are trying to get back

to the castle, itself of no great size.

It moved me that life was after all like that

you are in love you stand in the woods

with a horse bleeding the story is true.

Winds colder and colder.

Grounds stiffening again.

The brightest trees I see this moment

are some aspens rising to the surface.

Flowers are fast disappearing but few crickets are heard.

This had one smirk and pleasure.

Black bird as seen against the sky.

Clintonia is abundant.

Cannot see distant hills nor use my glass to advantage.

Algonquin and Iroquois.

The water might have risen there,

whitens clothes with clean dirt.

With a sharp whistling war, heard a white throated sparrow.

Heaven had been washed beneath a white oak.

Has the strict leafits in the axels.

Anxious as ever, rushing with courage,

gives expression to the face of nature.

Reflections in still water.

Great phenomenon these days is the water

much sparkling light in the air,

a pond was now a glorious, sort of changeable blue.

See the first bird, weather beaten appearance.

Trunks of trees whitened now and a more southerly side.

Lighted upon the top looked around as before.

Could find no nest, what doth he asked.

To win on this ground to dwell.

Like most everybody else I read Baldin

probably when I was in school but it wasn't until

I was in Cincinnati I think it was 67-68 that I met--

Um-- Um--

Wendell Berry.

Kentucky poet near Cincinnati and I went to visit him

and his family at the farm that they owned

and that his great grandfather owned and after dinner

he brought out the journal of Thorough and began reading.

Just sort of opened it at random

and the moment I heard the words

I realized that I was hungry for Thorough.

Very early in his life say 22 years old

he was aware of silence and the fact that

silence doesn't really exist, silence is sounds.

If I stop talking for instance now

we hear the sounds of 6th avenue.

They continue night and day they never stop.

And he said that what is central to this whole

situation we live in is silence and that the sounds

that we notice are merely bubbles on the surface

of silence that burst.

Ahhhhhh!

Narrator: Four Horseman.

[unintelligible noise]

[unintelligible noise]

Ahhhhhh!

[unintelligible noise]

[unintelligible noise]

Ahhhhhh!

[unintelligible noise]

[unintelligible noise]

Ahhhhhh!

[unintelligible noise]

[unintelligible noise]

Ahhhhhh!

[unintelligible noise]

[unintelligible noise]

Ahhhhhh!

Narrator: Michael Ondaatje

This is a poem I wrote for my niece in Sri Lanka

who sang me some songs in a terrible voice

and I came across some lines by Paul Bowls

who said the singleties are beyond a doubt

one of the least musical people in the world.

It would be quite impossible to have less

than self-pitch, line or rhythm.

So this poem is called "Sweet Like A Crow."

For Hetti Corea, 8 years old.

Your voice sounds like a scorpion being pushed

Through a glass tube

Like someone has just trod on a peacock

Like wind howling in a coconut

Like a rusty bible, like someone pulling barbed wire

Across a stone courtyard, like a pig drowning,

A vattacka being fried A bone shaking hands

A frog singing at Carnegie Hall.

Like a crow swimming in milk,

Like a nose being hit by a mango

Like the crowd at the Royal-Thomian match,

A womb full of twins, a pariah dog

With a magpie in its mouth

Like the midnight jet from Casablanca

Like Air Pakistan curry,

A typewriter on fire, like a spirit

in the gas that cooks your dinner.

like a hundred Pappadans being crunched,

like someone uselessly trying to light matches

in a dark room,

The clicking sound of a reef

when you put your head into the sea,

A dolphin reciting epic poetry to a sleepy audience,

The sound of a fan when someone throws brinjals at it,

Like pineapples being sliced in the Pettah market

Like betel juice hitting a butterfly in mid-air

Like a whole village running naked onto the street

And tearing their sarongs, like an angry family

Pushing a jeep out of the mud,

like dirt on the record needle,

Like 8 sharks being carried on the back of a bicycle

Like 3 old ladies locked in the lavatory

Like the sound I heard when having an afternoon sleep

And someone walked through my room in ankle bracelets.

Nothing should ever be done that should be done

it has to come out like a good hot beer shit.

A good hot beer shit glorious, man.

You get up you turn around you look at it

and you're proud.

The fumes the stink of the turd you look at them,

you say God I did it I'm good.

Then you flush it away and then there's the sense of sadness

when just the water is there.

It's like writing a good poem you just do it.

It's a beer shit.

Nothing to analyze nothing to say it's just done.

Got it?

I'm playing with the visual and the verbal connections,

on paper and then when I'm reading then the verbal

and the music come in together.

It's sound, it's about sound.

The sound of the poetry against the sound of the music.

The way I work is improvised or invented off of the word

is like the calling response pattern which is an old

African pattern I am making statements where I'm asking

questions and the music is responding to me and I'm

responding back to them and we are listening to each other.

Making not only comments on what you're doing

but extending that, taking it out

and exploring the possibilities of poetry

and the music together.

A very fine koonga of sweat.

A very fine stomp of the right foot.

A very fine platform of sticks.

A very fine tube of frictional bronze.

A very fine can of belligerent growls.

A very fine hoop of baboonal yells.

Very fine, very fine, very fine.

Is their anyone finer?

Hey!

♪

[speaking African]

♪

[speaking African]

You're the one who made a tribal

into a tattooed motivator of revolutionary spirits.

You're the one.

You're the one who made a baby into

an aggravated slasher of life you're the one.

You're the one that made dohno into an armpit

of infamable explosives you're the one.

You're the one who made Bono into a circle

of signified snakes you're the one.

You're the one! You're the one!

You're the one who made a head strike against

the head of a bird, every night every day

in your crisscrossing chant

in your cross river mouth you're the one.

You're the one. You're the one!

[speaking African]

Okay, I say,

Is there anyone finer than John Abozo?

[speaking English and African]

[speaking English and African]

Did you hear it? Did you hear it?

Did you hear it?

Oh yeah!

♪

♪

Oh yeah! I say! I see!

[speaking African]

♪

Narrator: Diane Deprimo.

Light poem.

Light on dry hayfields, the cedars dark.

Nested in gullies.

Light blank on smog walls thrown glaring light

riding the midst, a spray at the end of the city.

Ocean.

Light on waves, on cement wall,

light like a passion at the back of the eyes.

Red and white lights, a radio tower

with the moon full between.

His light on ten thousand faces in the sun.

The way light glints off sweat.

Blue light in a plastic pool.

Inner lit spaces, dusty colors, transparent.

This pink... these greens.

Amber gels flash on saxophone.

Mics red and yellow, green drums.

The web of light in the sky like a net of wrinkles

falling across the faces of loved poets.

Jelly fish light.

Nitroglycerin brightness, lavender pink sunset extending

clear to the east filling the sky out of which

an eternal moon, is that citron?

How did you get those colors?

Light of the hand in action, light of the hair,

gleam on the point of this pen as I write.

Defused spaces of light and darkened rooms.

Swamp light.

light out of flanders, cigarettes in the dark,

a light that pours out of can vice and into the eye.

Sending the light of the eye out into the world.

Touch of the gays.

poured essence through the eye,

you catch in an upturned cup.

Your eyes on mine, light crackling around the body.

Field.

I really hate reading the Worth

because you're really getting up there.

You've written poems that you really meant alone,

you know, by your typewriter,

then there's this crowd out there drinking beer and all

that and you're reading it to them,

it just doesn't click.

You're a poet and there's an audience

and whatever happens in between is the poem.

It takes places on the page, it takes place in

performance and it takes place in any sort of fashion

that connects with an audience.

Comrades!

How long has it been since withdrawn our swords shining?

[unintelligible screaming]

I like to be really drunk and stoned when I work

and it's like a blade it's actually seeing if

that's exactly what I wanna say to somebody

whoever it is you know and that's the beginning

of that feeling I get, that later on if it performs well

when completely is inside of a totally mad situation.

But I think the audience is very important

because one is performing all of the time

that's one of the intentions of the poem.

We got here yesterday we're here now

and I can't wait to leave tomorrow.

And you had nothing else to do today

but wait around until it was time to see somebody

and I didn't particularly care who it is I'm home.

Nothing is more comfortable than watching TV

nothing is more comfortable than watching TV

nothing is more comfortable than watching TV

and I spent today sleeping in the bed sheets

changing the channels.

And when I meet somebody for the first time

I ask myself two questions:

What is your sexual preference?

And how much money do you have?

What is your sexual preference?

And how much money do you have?

And you wanna know the secret of this world?

Never trust anybody, never trust anybody

never tell anybody what you really think

never tell anybody what you really think,

particularily if it's true.

Never try to set anybody straight

never confide in anybody,

never confide in anybody.

Swallow it quietly and keep you mouth shut

while you're talking without interruption on the telephone.

Never tell your closest friend

cause they'll give you away sooner or later.

Friends always become enemies if you wait long enough.

Friends always become enemies

if you wait long enough.

Friends always

become enemies

if you wait long enough.

And you're back in room 703 with a red broad

and it's 2 in the morning you can't sleep,

there's nothing on TV, you're hungry

and there's no room service.

And getting laid is more trouble than it's worth

so you take the elevator down to the lobby

and work the machines peanut butter chocolate cups,

Three musketeers, Almond Joys and a Baby Ruth

and a couple of cans of Coke.

We bought it, we build it, we paid for it

it's our and we're gonna keep it.

We bought it, we built it, we paid for it

it's ours and we're gonna keep it.

We bought it, we built it, we paid for it

it's ours and we're gonna keep it.

But I'm on the long island railroad 420 express

and the first stop is great neck going out

to the suburbs for dinner where I grew up.

I'm sick I need it and I don't got it.

I'm sick, I need it and I don't got it.

I'm sick, I need it and I don't got it.

I'm sick I need it and I don't got it.

My father was the emperor of china

and my mother an Indian princess and I have

come here tonight to collect my inheritance.

[cheers]

Sitting here watching you being oblivious

to anything but yourselves.

Sitting here watching you being oblivious

to anything but yourselves.

And you're standing at the stove in the kitchen

and you're frying eggs for yourself to eat,

you're frying eggs and butter.

And when you crack an egg and the yellow breaks

it is a bad sign and you know it is really a bad sign.

I don't wanna get married

I don't wanna be lovers with anyone

I just wanna make it whenever I want

the way I want, the way I'm doing

and be left alone.

Almost feeling it, almost feeling it,

almost feeling it, almost feeling it,

almost feeling it.

Listen baby, you gotta do it every once in a while

every year or two they say and it looks like there's

no way outta of it this time the coast is clear

and nobody's looking so let it go.

I'm crying,

I'm crying and I wanna keep crying.

And I wanna keep crying,

and I wanna keep crying.

And your lungs are locked and the swell is pulling in

like when someone kicks you in the stomach.

Like when someone kicks you in the stomach,

One more time I wanna keep doing it for another minute

it's my privilege and my pleasure.

It's my privilege and my pleasure.

Cause I prefer jerking off better.

And the rememberence of that moment

always gives me confidence in the dumber glimmer

suggesting something mistaken for something else.

And I know my approach is incorrect.

And I know my approach is incorrect,

and I know my approach is incorrect.

None of us here got enlightened.

None of us here got enlightened,

none of us here got enlightened.

Not that we knew of, sorry to say.

And I'm going to say goodnight cause I know

you're not into doing what I want you to do.

And I don't wanna find myself in your bed poking you

wishing we hadn't come here.

And I don't wanna find myself in your bed poking you

wishing we hadn't come here.

And I got no problem with it and I suspect that

since we are all here we have a lot to learn.

We got here yesterday we're here now

and I can't wait to leave tomorrow.

We got here yesterday, we're here now,

and I can't wait to leave tomorrow.

We got here yesterday, we're here now

and I can't wait to leave tomorrow.

And I'm going nowhere.

[cheers]

You're performing in front of an audience

it's that connection you know like that live moment

that live direct moment and it's just an instant

and if you can--

And the thing that one works with

that I've been working with is that when one tries

to make those instants happen often

then you keep the connection going.

Narrator: Ntozake Shange.

What does it mean that Black folks could sing and dance?

Why do we say that so much?

We don't know what we mean?

I saw what that means.

Good God did I see it.

I could have walked on the water

fed the naked clothed the hungry

with what dance I saw today.

I don't mean dance I mean

like a "closer walk with thee"

a race through swamps that fall off in space

I mean I saw the Black people move the ground

and set the stars beneath they feet

So, What does it mean that Black folks could dance?

Well, How about a woman like Bernadine?

who can make her body the night-riders

and the runaways, the children hanging

on their mama's dresses

while their father's beat to death

The blood from the man's wounds,

his woman's tears the night-riders

going off in the darkness,

The silence of the night.

How about a woman whose body was all of that?

Whose very presence tumbled all but the drum,

Now that's a dance.

Like Fred careening 'cross the stage

on his stomach there fifty feet

Sounds like possums and rattle snakes

Mississippi undercurrent and steamin'

hog-malls tossing him from Decatur to south Texas

Tearing him from contractions to leaps

His body taking space now thirty Redwood trees,

And those sounds, those sounds kept pushing him.

Little racing motors like the cops was round the bend

Windows open and shut because there are

things others ought not hear

Feet on stairways of burned-out homes

The sounds just keep on pushing him,

the sounds just keep on pushing her.

And there was a dance that was a Black dance.

That's what it means that Black folks could dance.

It don't mean we got rhythm

It don't mean the slop or the hully-gully

Or this dance in Houston called the "white boy"

It don't' mean just what we do all the time

It's how we remember what cannot be said.

That's why the white folks say it ain't got no form.

What was the form of slavery?

What was the form of Jim Crow,

and how in the hell would they know?

Braided lady of subway Simpson

Magic rings and nose and wrists

music in the style of islands, laces and trains

dancing in tunnels of Haiti's Kajingle jingle,

kajingle jingle, kajingle juju kajingle jingle,

kajingle juju.

Narrator: Gary Snider.

One of the things that poets have always done

and at least some poets can and will continue to speak

for the great goddess mother earth,

planet gia and so forth.

And on even deeper and less mythological levels

speak for original mind, speak for Buddha nature,

speak for the clarity of mind without opinion

mind without concept mind without preconception.

Breasts.

That which makes milk can't help but concentrate

out of the food of the world right up to the point

where we suck it, poison, too but the breast

is a filter the poison stays there in the flesh.

Heavy metals in traces.

Deadly molecules hooked up in strings

that men dreamed of

never found in the world until today.

In your bosom petro chemical complex a stray.

So we celebrate breasts we all love to kiss them

they are like philosophers.

Who hold back the bitter in mind to let the more tasty wisdoms

slip through for the little ones who can't

take the poison so young.

The work that comes later after child raising

for the real self to be is to them burn the poison away.

Flat breasts tired buddies that will snap like old leather.

Tough enough for a few more good days

and the glittering eyes old mother, old father are gay.

The writer has no responsibility except

to jack off in bed alone and then type a good page.

Narrator: Alan Ginsberg.

♪

♪

If you want to learn how to meditate.

I'll tell you now 'cause it's never too late.

Never too late, never too late.

I can't te-- I can't, I can't wait.

Audience: Can you hear him?

Can you hear them?

Audience: Turn your guitar down.

Turn this mic up, turn the guitar down--

I have a Chilean nostic Buddhist notion

which is that the art is wild but the inside is wild

and the behavior may be wild but there's that thing

called crazy wisdom which is breaking up an old form

but as gently as possible and doing it in a way

that you leave space for a new form to rise.

Or giving space for people to come out

from behind their cover and speak more frankly.

So it would be radical thought I don't think

it would be violently revolutionary.

♪ I don't like Nationalist Supremacy White or Black ♪

♪ I don't like the Narcs & Mafia marketing Smack ♪

♪ The General bullying Congress in his tweed vest ♪

♪ The President building up his Armies in the East & West ♪

♪ I don't like Argentine Police assasinating jews ♪

♪ Government terrorist takeover Salvador news ♪

♪ I don't like Zionist acting Nazi Storm Troop ♪

♪ Palestine Liberation cooking Israel into Muslim soup ♪

♪ I don't like the Crown's Official Secrets Act ♪

♪ You can get away with murder in Government that's a fact ♪

♪ Security cops teargassing radical kids ♪

♪ In Switzerland and Czechoslovakia God forbids ♪

♪ In America it's Attica in Russia it's Lubianka Wall ♪

♪ in China if you disappear you wouldn't know yourself at all ♪

♪ Arise Arise you citizens of the world use your lungs ♪

♪ Talk back to the Tyrants

♪ all they're afraid of is your tongues ♪

♪ Two hundred Billion dollars inflates World War ♪

♪ In the United States every year They're asking for more ♪

♪ Russia's got as much in tanks and laser planes ♪

♪ Give or take Fifty Billion ♪

♪ we can blow out eveybody's brains. ♪

♪ School's broke down 'cause History changes every night ♪

♪ Half the Free World nations are Dictatorships of the Right ♪

♪ The only place socialism worked was in Gdansk, Bud ♪

♪ The Communist worlds stuck together with prisoner's blood ♪

♪

♪

♪ Bishop Romero wrote President Carter to stop ♪

♪ Sending guns to El Salvador's Junta so he got shot ♪

♪Ambassador White blew the whistle on the White House lies♪

♪ Reagan called him home

♪ cause he looked in the dead nun's eyes ♪

♪ Half the voters didn't vote they knew it was too late ♪

♪ Newspaper headlines called it a big Mandate ♪

♪ Some people voted for Reagan eyes wide open ♪

♪ 3 out of 4 didn't vote for him That's a Landslide ♪

♪ Truth may be hard to find but falsehood's easy ♪

♪ Read between the lines our Imperialism is sleazy ♪

♪ But if you think the People's State is your Heart's Desire ♪

♪ Jump right back in the frying pan from the fire ♪

♪ The System the System in Russia & China the same ♪

♪ Critisize the System in Budapest lost your name ♪

♪ Coca Cola Pepsi Cola in Russia & China come true ♪

♪ Krushchev yelled in Hollywood "We will bury You" ♪

♪ America and Russia want to bomb themselves Okay ♪

♪ Everybody dead on both sides Everybody pray ♪

♪ All except the Generals in caves where they can hide ♪

♪ And fuck each other in the ass waiting for the next free ride ♪

♪ No hope Communism no hope Capitalism Yeah ♪

♪ everybody's lying on both sides Nyeah nyeah nyeah ♪

♪ The bloody iron curtain of American Military power ♪

♪ Is a mirror image of Russia's red Babel-Tower ♪

♪ Aware Aware where ever you are No Fear No fear. ♪

♪ Trust in your heart Don't ride your paranoia dear ♪

♪ Breathe together with an ordinary mind ♪

♪ Armed with Humor Feed & Help Enlighten Woe Mankind ♪♪

♪

The whole point is that it's all poets

all writers all actors making up their own prose

their own scenario so the poet is in a position

to make up a scenario that's

a lot more vivid actually

because it's based on an accurate observation.

[coughing]

This is a piece

from "The Book of Nods" called "Just Visiting."

When the shooting broke I decided to vault

the teller's window and face the fire from the other side.

I saw my forearm tighten across the throat of the cashier

Ms. Ladermore and as my browning was raised

to her temples they took it back, it all fell dead.

With the silence I felt a distance between

my trigger and the man.

I heard the reverberation of the last stray bullet's

muffled ring, moved out through my brain in circles

of jagged light expanding like still water broken

by broken by the stone.

Some smart young lieutenant arrived to take things over,

he leaned his eyes a moment through the doors

in front and then went around back.

Went inside a small light room and threw the switch.

All the lights rolled out of thin vapour tubes

from right to left the darkness absorbed more silence

I could here the details being assigned.

The tone of the head man's voice was clear,

they were hot to blow me away.

I didn't expect my hostage would go down as a deal

I knew she signed that paper when she took the job.

But I just wanted some last contact,

I would've rather some sweet clever music.

I slit the strap to her bra, I reached under I felt my

palm rinse her breast it could've been a radio.

I moved my lips close so that only she could hear me,

it should've been a radio.

I whispered in my codine voice I told her

you see all my life the women I've been with

and that's more than you can imagine really,

I always bypassed their breasts I went down you know?

I went to the sauce, I honestly don't think

you're gonna die so don't be afraid listen,

I wanted the thunder on my fingers on my lips.

What are a woman's breasts its just so much adornment

they're like chalices on an alter waiting for adoration.

Like the writing on the scroll the handles on the erne,

the gold that lines a vessel.

I wanted the mystery inside the thunder

and the darkest light, I mean I feel the sharpness

of your nipple it's flawless

there's no doubt about that.

Just let me move it over, oh it came out it's so red.

You must be younger than you appear.

I know about that kind of thing really.

Once I told this girl that she had breasts

like bleeding lemons she thought that was

a beautiful thing to say.

But what are they, it's just architecture

where's the wetness and why are they

so white so terribly white,

whiteness frightens me horribly.

When I was 14 years old I went to my friends house

at the beach in Long Island, the sun there

and the sand I remember it was terrible

too much whiteness I couldn't stand it

I stayed in my friend's room for days listening to music.

His mother and his fat sister they thought me quite insane.

I wanted to teach myself to play the drums.

The sister was 36 years old and so fat that

the mother had to tie the laces on her shoes,

I hated her and she hated me but I was just visiting

so it wasn't fair.

So really why I continued writing even though

it came back and I got drunk for 10 years

I felt there was nothing out there so I had continue

because they were so bad

not because I was so good.

And I'm still not so good but they're still very bad.

There's still room for somebody to step in here you see.

And I hope he arrives or she.

That should be enough right there but that bottle

of 55 poets that should cure them.

With their malady but it won't.

Goodnight...

Goodbye...

And happy reading.