I'd like to turn to the first part of the book, which carries
with it a quote by James Baldwin that goes, though we do not
believe it yet, the interior life is the real life.
And the intangible dreams of people
have a tangible effect on the world.
And I always kind of liked that statement.
And I'd just like to read some poems that
essentially deal with some kind of an American context.
I'll do that by talking about something,
well, a progression of poems.
I wrote a poem.
And for some strange reason, this is the nature of the poem.
The poem goes Our Lady of Congress.
The title of it is Our Lady of Congress.
The opposition likes dry poems.
No storms that are holding hands the same way
it begins to rain when we suspect our lives.
The answer to everything is a just peace.
So we elected him president or better umbrellas.
So we elected him president or better umbrellas
that are not afraid.
It is an aesthetic form history has
taken to adjust time to a seashell
when strong water comes.
So we go back on our lives reliving all our curves
when we were worms.
Caution inside never learns.
No poem is listening to our lives this way,
not even the Earth.
Justice is in stones with thirst.
Large storms live on weight and look our way
when the seals are broken.
Water is success whispered in stone like slime.
What we are behind our faces is a crack that's leaking,
a yell that's lost its body in a shell.
There are no more words for old Yankee faces like ours.
But the luck, we have left.
Now this is the first time I ever wrote a poem like that.
And the nature of the poem really confused me.
And I thought it was an accident.