All right, I did this reading with the kids
today in the high school.
And we got into these poems.
And they really--
I think they never really heard poems like that.
And I think that's amazing that people can grow up and not
know what poetry is or what poetry can do.
Most of the time, they think poetry
is very boring and tiresome.
And mostly it is.
[LAUGHTER]
But it could be alive, if it's about real things
and real issues.
I want to read a poem that is very serious.
And it has to do with a near-death experience I had,
when I was about, I guess, 15 years old.
And it's called, "The Concrete River",
which is the name of the book.
How many know what the concrete river is?
That's right, the LA River.
And there's concrete rivers here,
and there's concrete rivers all over the place.
But it's funny because I always thought
that a river was nothing but concrete,
whenever they said river.
When I went to Chicago again, there
is a river with water over there.
And I was amazed that there was actually
a river with water going on.
But as you know, for a lot of people,
especially like in LA, the LA River and all
these different canals, people hang out there.
There's graffiti, they would get drunk, make love, fight,
do whatever-- it was just like a little hangout.
And we used to do--
I did a lot of different drugs.
And one of those things, of course,
was sniffing, which a lot of our kids do.
One of the things that happened is,
I've been covering the story of Salvadorenos and LA immigrants,
who have come there from--
recently joined barrios there, joined gangs there.
And then they get deported.
And they go back to El Salvador.
And there, they don't know the country anymore.
They came when they're children.
So now, in El Salvador, there's alley gangs.
And there's drive-bys.
And there's graffiti.
And there's low riders.
And there's cholos.
And all these things are happening down there.
And I went down there to talk to people.
And I even went to the prisons.
And all these alley homeboys are in the prisons.
"Orales", said, they come up to me and talk to me.
I was like, could have been in LA.
There's a Hollywood set in San Salvador
now, of the Mara Salvatrucha.
So they have transported the gang culture
to Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
It's the whole idea that if you get rid of them,
the problem is over with, right?
It doesn't work that way.
Because the problem has to do with something else.
And anyway, when I was walking through the capital,
I saw these little kids.
And all over Latin America, there's
all these homeless children, thousands of them,
with no shoes, literally walking the inner cities.
And a lot of them are called "wilipegas".
They're the sniffers.
And I saw two little kids, 6 and 7 years
old, crossing the street, holding each other,
with the bag.
And it brought tears to my eyes because that's exactly what we
did in East LA area.
That's exactly what I went through.
And it's amazing how that's one of the links to our children.
It goes all the way down the Americas.
It's this damn glue or whatever it is, spray.
Look, it's there.
I want to read this poem because it was a near-death experience,
in which I had actually stopped breathing,
actually went through the tunnel, saw the light.
And the people talk about this now.
Because I didn't know this, that you're dying
and you're going through a tunnel.
And you see, I went through all this stuff.
But one of my homeboys saved me.
And I was really pissed off when it happened.
Because I didn't want him to bring me back.
I was really pissed off at this guy.
So let me read you the poem.
It's called, "The Concrete River".
"We sink into the dust, Baba and me,
beneath brush of prickly leaves, Ivy strangling trees,
singing our last rites of locura.
Homeboys worshipping God fumes out of spray cans.
Our backs press up against a corrugated steel fence,
along the dried banks of a concrete river.
Spray-painted outpourings on walls
offer a chaos of color for the eyes.
Home for now, hidden in weeds, furnished
with stained mattresses and plastic milk crates.
Wood planks thrust in the thick branches serves as roof.
The door is a torn cloth curtain, knock before entering.
Home for now, sandwiched in between the maddening days.
We aim spray into paper bags, suckle them, take deep breaths.
An echo of steel sounds grate the sky.
Home for now, along an urban spawned stream of muck,
we gargle in the technicolor synthesized madness.
This river, this concrete river becomes a steaming,
bubbling snake of water, pouring over nightmares of wakefulness,
pouring out a rush of birds, a flow of clear liquid
on a cloudless day, not like the black oil stains we lie in,
not like the factory air engulfing us,
not this plastic death in a can.
Sunrays dance on the surface, gray fish
fidget below the sheen.
And us looking like Huckleberry Finns, Tom Sawyers with stick
fishing poles, as dew drips off low branches,
as if it were Earth's breast milk.
Oh, we should be novas of our born days.
We should be scraping wet dirt with calloused toes.
We should be flowering petals playing ball.
Soon water, fish, dew wane into a pulsating whiteness.
I enter a tunnel of circles, swimming to a glare of lights.
Family and friends beckon me.
I want to be there, in perpetual dreaming,
in the den of exquisite screams.
I want to know this mother comfort surging through me.
I am a sliver of blazing ember entering
the womb of brightness.
I am a hovering specter shedding scarred flesh.
I am a clown sneaking out of a painted mouth in the sky.
I am your son, ama, seeking the security of shadows,
fleeing weary eyes bursting brown behind a sewing machine.
I am your brother, the one you threw off rooftops,
tore into with rage, the one you visited, a rag of a boy,
lying in a hospital bed, ruptured.
I am friend of books, prey cops, lover
of the barrio women selling hamburgers and tacos at the P&G
burger stand.
I welcome this heavy shroud.
I want to be buried in it, to be sculptured
marble in craftier hands.
Soon an electrifying hum sinks teeth into brain,
then claws surround me, pull at me, back to the dust,
to the concrete river.
Let me go, to stay entangled in this mesh of barbed serenity.
But over me is a face, mouth breathing back life.
I feel the gush of air, the pebbles and debris beneath me.
Give me the bag, man, I slur.
No way, you died, man, Baba said.
You stopped breathing and died.
I have to go back, you don't understand.
I try to get up to reach the sky.
Oh, for the lights, for this whore of a sun
to blind me, to entice me to burn.
Come back, let me swing in delight to the haunting knell,
to pierce colors of virgin skies,
not here along a concrete river, but there,
licked by tongues of flame.
[APPLAUSE]