I want to read a section from my long poem Greed.
I think I'll do it now while you still have the energy
to sit in your seat.
This is the eighth part of Greed.
And I seem to have appointed myself the moral legislator
of the poetry world.
I have seen all of its hideous politics
at work and the worst of all possible ways.
And constantly being stunned and appalled by the fact
that people call themselves poets,
and would seem to be involved in some way
in the purities of life and the beauties of real relationships.
And an attempt to understand the richness of the world
can get themselves involved in the most
banal and foolish and petty and terrible kinds of politics.
And basically the poets are human beings,
so they suffer from exactly the same diseases that all of us
suffer from.
The kind of greed that I'm trying to write about
in this poem is something that all of us
suffer from at some point in our lives.
And it's about the desire to be what you're not.
And at the same time, still cling to what you are.
And for me the definition of greed
is being unwilling to make a choice in a situation wanting
everything.
And I think that it's--
the human responsibility to have to make choices.
And it's the greedy and foolish, and sometimes evil
man who will not.
What made me write this poem was reading a book of poems
by another poet whom I'm not going
to mention from the platform.
Although, I'm going to quote some of his lines in this poem.
Beautiful lines as a matter of fact.
But a man who has had a charmed life in every way
and who has no appreciation for what that's about,
and he suddenly discovered that poets are supposed to suffer.
And so he's gone around trying to suffer
for the last few years wrecking as many things around him
as he can.
And kind of trump up this suffering into his poems and it
made me very, very angry because it seems to me that there's
so much suffering in the world that you don't
need to generate anymore of it.
And believe me, I don't care how charmed your life has been.
You better appreciate it while it's
charmed because it's not going to stay that way all the time.
And so this man not only seemed to be
rather villainous to me in masquerading
as what he was not, but extremely
foolish because he was asking for trouble
that he didn't need.
And he was ignoring his own beautiful gifts in a way
that I consider terrible.
It's called "The Darker Wishes--
To a Machine Who Wishes to Be a Man.
The Sad Beautiful Music of the Poetry Robot."
And there are quite a few of those people in the world,
actually.
I singled out this man because I know about his life.
"In the cover of his darkness, his owl,
a bird of purity and wisdom sits in a white wood
speckled with a deep soft feathers of perfection.
Who, who am I?
He asks in the voice of a singer.
In the voice of an ugly man who loves beauty,
in the voice of a man who has lost everything
on her money, his wife, his children, his mind even.
In some deep wood where only those
with the eyes of snakes who hold the broken wind
in their pockets can survive.
This owl with his cloak resembling
leaves twigs, his beak and claws read from the meek animals it
needs to live on, and his amazing voice
this owl pretends to speak in the language of men,
asking profound questions who?
But he is the bird of deception, the bird of that saddest
of all creations, the intelligent machine
so perfectly made he can long for only one thing--
imperfection.
The cliche of science fiction and modern life.
He was programmed to do everything but make mistakes,
and thus by definition he is no man, no poet, no sufferer
in this common rapacious world.
Whatever he is, is different apart beautiful,
perhaps in its very inhumanity metaphors
I kiss you goodbye for a while and we'll
talk about my own perceptions angers.
And even the admiration I feel for these beautiful scoundrels.
There's a waitress at the coffee shop of the Holiday
Inn in Corpus Christi, Texas who if she had not
been born Mexican in a southern near the border town
poor and without ambition would have quite a different life.
Her hands are valentines serving my coffee,
and her face resides the petals of oleander and azalea.
She walks like the wind in palm trees
or a beautiful woman's hair.
But she will always serve coffee to fat salesmen and dentists.
And when she is finished talk to the short, heavy Mexican
bellhop.
I ask myself often about that Christian proposition
to those who have much more shall be given.
And to those who have nothing even that shall be taken away.
I would like to marry my body of Christ waitress
to a singer of that dark sad music
who uses the owl to represent himself
and who has always walked to the world
whistling a golden Piccolo that disarms his listeners.
I would like to give her some of his luck and even things
out because I am always greedy to play God,
but that is not what life is about.
The poetry robot.
He says everything beautifully, he says and will sue me
for quoting, but they are such beautiful words I cannot
resist.
I give up my heart, which is a burning apple.
I give up my arms, which have wanted to leave me anyway
and speaks of the greenfield where cows burn like newsprint.
And the glass cloud in the shape of a heart
the owl arranging all of the night, the sleep of dresses
on the warm bodies of women.
The applauding wind.
His words have always been polished,
as if he pulled emeralds out of the mountains already cut
and in Tiffany settings.
The natural jewel, the naturally beautiful and perfect jewel
maker, how we all admire his glitter?
And if we are wise, we will admire
the perfectly made products of fine and sophisticated
machines.
But pick and choose robot or man?
Machine or handmade.
You cannot have both.
Greed I keep reminding you is the failure
to choose the unwillingness to pick one thing over another,
wealth or simplicity.
You cannot have both.
A core disagreement harmonious relations
with others or your honesty.
You cannot have both.
The telling of the truth is not beautiful, does not
make people feel good.
I do not think any alternative is absolutely right or wrong.
I do know that it is absolutely wrong, not to commit yourself
to one alternative or the other.
And today, I speak of this dark and handsome bird, the singer
of sad songs, the poetry robot, the mechanical golden
nightingale but he comes in many other disguises, my friends.
Because he is singing a new song this year.
Stolen from another bird.
The song of his frailty and his humanity.
He sings the song of a man bereft of fortune.
I know singers with one eye men with no livers
left in their bodies.
Men who will never have women in their lives.
Women whose children were given away to strangers.
Black men who will not ever know the dignity
of being taken for granted, and those
whose lives are spent in jail.
They are singers of sad, desperate, and beautiful songs,
not so perfectly made, but poignant in their human
sacrifice and misery.
Deep in their knowledge of life.
Their suffering sometimes carves out magnificent language,
but it is never the simple beautiful artful language
of the poetry robot.
The man who cannot speak and ungraceful line,
but he has cheated us, and so I am complaining.
Surely art can be made from all forms of humanity,
surely the golden song of the perfect man
is no less sweet than the sad human voice of suffering.
How can you not know that, you robot
programmed to know everything.
You fried, you golden boy who is good at everything, who's
handsome face has appeared in fashion ads, whose wife has
a sweet noble intelligent loving,
is a sweet noble intelligent loving lover and friend.
Whose children are gifted, whose ability to make money
will never be questioned, who's speaking
wins you friends in every place, whose
books will always be published.
Who can do what you decide to do at any given time, you fraud.
Singing now of having nothing of giving all away
and saying your world is nothing.
If your world is nothing man and there is no world
that is anything.
Be honest.
Don't tell us that life is sad, even for those who do not feel.
That's only talking.
And talk should not be cheap for the poet.
Talk to us of the owl who asks you questions in the night.
And tell us of the long perfect nights when there is no fear
or hurt to invade them.
Do not apologize for your perfection or lie about them.
They fade as you do.
Say you're sorry for what you do not possess.
A sense of your own good fortune and the willingness
to rejoice it, and understanding that if you sense misery
in the world that others must be dying of it.
Your unwillingness to use that beautiful music
to soothe the sick and the dying.
I met a woman this week who made me praise my own normalcies.
For her speaking was like running through the blades
of a windmill.
Her voice was like dragging a piece of metal under your car.
Her face contorted when she spoke
as if someone were electrocuting her for each syllable.
And when she ate the food hung out
over her mouth moving like garbage in a river.
She walked as a bird would try to fly with a broken wing,
yet she insisted on leading a real life,
going places talking to people, writing poetry, longing
for the language that falls cleanly out of view
like ripe plums off a tree.
Oh, you hypocrite, don't you see that there
is nothing noble in suffering?
That some suffering is every man's measure,
and his only nobility comes from seeing it through, living it
out and transcending it, coming above it.
Do you think a man is noble for being beaten,
for starving, for being unjustly persecuted,
for being physically tortured or losing everything he loves.
You who have never suffered any of these things,
surely you cannot be so foolish as to wish to.
But the humanity of knowing the struggle,
and any nobility that comes from surviving it,
that is what a mechanical bird cannot know.
My God, man, you are privileged and above us.
We work for what you have been born with.
There may be a time when the world strikes you down
too and delivers no mercy, do not cultivate that time
or long for it.
To do so is the opposite of what all life and religion, what
philosophy and art are about.
Sing, sing, sing your perfect and harmonious songs.
Once you're honest about it even I with my torn,
torn body and painful memories will listen.
It is the songs that we want to hear after all.
And beauty is different as each man finds it.
Give us your own tall handsome American and chrome.
Don't fall down or will kick you where you lie.
Remember the fate of machines when they break down
and we are always looking for new models.
Be yourself number 124966, and we will always preserve you
for your integrity.
What is a philosopher?
He is a man who gives no one the benefit of the doubt.
What is the artist?
He gives us something beautiful from the darkness.
What is the failure?
The man who cannot live with his own destiny.
These are the concerns of us all as we
struggle with our own failures and deceits.
[APPLAUSE]