I'd like to end now with this last poem, which
is the title poem of the manuscript Bird Avenue.
Bird Avenue is-- the book is Bird Ave. When I was a kid,
they didn't have the period.
And I didn't know.
So I would look at Bird Ave. And I knew Ave Maria
and all those-- the hymns.
I knew of Ave. And I knew from science
that bird meant ave or ave meant bird.
So I thought, well, that's awfully redundant.
But I didn't know the word avenue.
So I was always fascinated by Bird Ave. There
must be some secret meaning.
I was so disappointed when I found out
there wasn't an avenue.
But anyway, this was a main thoroughfare
in San Jose where I grew up, especially now
that the freeways is built. Anyway,
there's a little bit of Spanish you could probably
catch it from the context.
"Bird Avenue."
"Bird Ave."
Life on Bird.
It's tough.
Cat-eyes, me, and Mousey.
Estrolándonos y marchando con mission.
Man, (SINGING) I can't get no satisfaction.
In and out.
Lost baby, baby, oh, baby, baby.
Hits all summer.
We wore tees, tights, skirts, tough teased hair.
Talk tough run.
Developed una reputación for the toughest burns on horseshoe
tough.
From Memorial Day to our Labor Day weekend,
we have the key to the drug locker of our own developing
temples.
Highest kites in the district.
Favors all over town.
And we owe nobody shit.
For Cat- eyes was beautiful.
Mouse made of wizard holes.
Nobody over 4' 11" could contain her except me.
The connection we always had.
We scored when we wanted.
Plus we were ethical.
Esa, Mouse goes that first initiation.
You gotta understand about ethics.
She had it then.
All total control.
Banging my head on the blacktop for effect.
You flaca fea face got ethics.
[LAUGHING]
And she gave me one of those mouse grins
and made lemon crap out of my cheeks before letting me up all
righteous rage.
Seen class.
Need pomp and circumstance.
Man, we were better than military.
Beauty, brains, and brass.
Man, we were the trinity that invented it.
The model Rambos.
I could have killed her easy.
And she knew it.
We'd kill it in ourselves eventually.
We knew it all.
The code in the symbology.
The poetics and the order of place and gesture.
We were homed for the killing.
Prize for the time our ganga de carnelias y rosarías would
burst.
We tended that bust, cultivated it,
blistered it, hitched ourselves up to its hearse,
and made up bird on the reigns of some wild ride.
From the tracks to Willow Glen and back.
Man, we were running our own private miracle mile.
Man, it was tough.
With cat eyes on the corner buttering
a moth ball stupid and blind.
Me and mouse always ready to take advantage
of a relevant situation.
Don't fuck with us was our motto.
We're here to serve.
What's the ruse?
Listen, watch, be silent, with the conquest hidden code.
Man, it was tough to know it all.
And we haven't learned anything since.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]