Now, we're going to move on because we
don't have the 45 minutes.
I'm very aware of time.
Time is so important.
Can't do that.
So I'm looking at this.
I'll read this little poem.
It's only the poem I ever remembered, the only one.
I don't know why.
But it goes like, "The other brandy-sweet night,
I dreamed we was kissing so hard and good.
You sucked my tongue right on out my trembling mouth.
And I had to sew it back in, baby,
in order to tell you about it."
[LAUGHTER]
I don't know why I remembered that poem.
My wife tells me, you ran up through more women
than [INAUDIBLE] but talk to them [INAUDIBLE].
I say, it ain't what it is.
I don't know why I remember that poem.
I tried to do it a little bit different.
I tried to make it different, but I can never do it.
I'm going to read these Point Loma poems. --
I saw this earring, I don't know whose it is.
I've been trying not to step on it.
Is it yours?
I've got mine on.
Is this yours?
Yeah.
I've been trying the whole time I'm up here not to step on it.
Thank you.
I did do a dance [INAUDIBLE].
Terrible.
This Point Loma Poem--
I just say a few words about it.
I'm doing another one now in San Francisco
with another great artist, Her name is--
I like working with artists.
I like working with visual artists
because visual artists have other ways of looking at stuff.
I hang out with most of the time of visual artists too.
I hang out with visual artists and musicians
more than I hang out with writers because writers always
say, what are you working on?
[LAUGHTER]
You know, like what?
I don't want to talk about what I'm working on.
I don't want talk about it.
I want to go to that basketball game.
Let's go to the museum, you know?
Anyway, Mathieu Gregoire he was an interesting guy, a friend
of mine, and is a sculptor.
And he asked me to do this project with him.
And it's called the Wastewater Management Project
and on Point Loma.
And the problem with this whole thing
is right by the ocean at the end of Point Loma-- looks
out at the ocean but at the same time, is this very weird place.
And you have to write some poems that are underground
and some that are overground that look out of the ocean.
And one particularly really difficult
and challenging problem--
there is this wall.
And it caused me nightmares.
And you had-- there was a parking lot over here.
And there was a parking lot over there.
And people could come and park, and they
would walk past this wall.
So the poem had to read coming this way.
And then the people that came in over there and park.
And the poem had to read coming this way.
So it had to read two different ways.
So this line had to go this way like that.
And then this one have to come this way.
But it had to work as a poem.
And so this caused me all kind of problems.
But I'm going to read you a few of these,
and I'll read you the first three pages.
And then I'll read you the haikus.
And I'll end with--
I don't know what yet.
I never know what I'm going to read.
We got a lot of pieces.
You just don't know it.
Isn't that right?
But you know, you don't read, right?
You just don't know.
You get them to go like, what am I going to read?
I don't know all these people.
When I go to St Louis, I know I got
to read new stuff because I read old stuff.
They be like booing.
[LAUGHTER]
OK, so this is "The Point Loma Poems."
And this whole poem is around this whole place and just
kind of interesting.
"1.
Reader let your painterly imagination run true
as a brushstroke straight out to sea.
Let your eyes zoom along a single line,
curving away from this artificial walkway and barrier,
this cliff of sand, clumps of grass,
large and small boulders.
Look out toward the horizon where
blue meets blue on a clear day, where a bar of mist
separates the two, the view expansive everywhere from here.
The blue skies spreading soft lips of air
to kiss the many feverish miles of fish opening
and closing out in the Pacific, where desire is a need
to hold all this power in check, where that straight line
you pull yourself out by now holds true on course.
Your eyes drinking in everything your mind
can swallow there, where the mouth that
holds the tongue that speaks in breaking syllables with foaming
articulation, roaring in one curling wave after another,
suds at the point of apogee.
Like a madman stunned by a miracle when he looks out.
Sees a single color between green and violet.
Meet each other as lovers fuse at the point
where the sun touches their flesh at each place
along their line of connection.
We are fascinated by it all when light fades toward alchemy,
the power deeply magical here.
Mysterious as touch when it seduces
flesh, where true colors fade into gradual gradations.
The palette swelling with cool heat
of blues, where your vision leaps out now,
reader, to embrace the glow that holds
the line true from this point forward now.
Now, reach out your ears and senses toward titillation.
Stretch them out, listen to, feel the music
recreating itself out there, where the sun refracts
its lancing rays that multiplied into a billion slivers of light
that cut and sparkle like diamonds.
On the back of this blue ocean, a miracle
spread out like an endless azure veranda
table toward in which pelicans and seagulls dive,
swoop over, and feed on, squawking
and barking like hungry sea lions
everywhere on wet black rocks.
The language of a poem that suddenly grows wings takes off
in flight, reaches this place here
where sea, land, and sky meet light at the end of Point Loma
beneath the slope of scrub brush, bright magenta ice
plant and pickle.
Now, let your mind rest here, space traveler,
where weeds climb these hillsides
of green and rough brown rocks.
Now, a grave for where four dooky flames used to shoot,
orange lizard tongues rippling skyward,
barraging air with heat.
Waves that whales used to navigate themselves
in by after crossing the Pacific,
geysering up spray foam jets from holes
in their backs drenched with salt water, where waves curl,
form patterns way out in the humping mad waves,
locked like lovers.
Waves moving up and down like a chain of U's
curving question marks way up above Poseidon,
holding his three-pronged fork, who
can cause earthquakes to lift the towering water higher
until it breaks and dives down, smashing against the surface
skin.
It becomes a boiling cauldron there.
Imagine yourself in that boiling cauldron
of curling power, reader, a whale or surfer or eyes
from a boat looking back at this stunning land,
rising as if it were the outer walls of a bowl seen
from here as a backdrop.
The sea floor curving up to meet it form the highest rim.
Imagine, stunned reader.
It is the golden hour seven in the evening.
You're riding a wave in.
It's summer, and a bar of sunlight
wrinkles and ripples across the surface of waves
as they wash in before disintegrating as foam
on the shining black rocks.
Now, imagine this-- you're a surfer,
and the same ray of sunlight behind your head
casts a light that reflects off your surfboard onto the wave.
You think you're looking into a mirror,
then a halo circles around your body
as you ride the imploding power cruising toward extinction.
Look now and see the vortex, reader, swimming around rocks
before you like rings around Jupiter, where brown kelp swims
tangled as nests of snakes inside tide pools,
swirling inside the mouths of yawning caves
next to wet black rock islands, holding shimmering seals,
white washed bright as Black babies' shiny bottoms
wet with pee.
The air here smelling of salt, waves, and carry - crashing in,
carrying the power and language of tornadoes
howling like runaway trains.
Still, there is a feeling of calmness,
where you stand looking out through pelting mist, waves
slobbering.
Fringes of lace exhaust themselves
like madmen in any swirling shapes.
In this tide pool where you stand just now, reader,
you are following these words to the land's end
to watch them disappear, only to appear somewhere else, perhaps
right around the corner like waves and currents
at the end of another journey."
That's all I'm going to read.
[APPLAUSE]
What do we got?
Like five minutes?
As much time as you want.
What?
We got all night.
You got as much time as you want.
I don't want to do that.