I'll read a few poems from my new book.
This book was extremely difficult to write.
I don't usually do this.
But for two years, I decided not to write any poetry.
It was an experiment.
I thought, well, what if I don't write poetry for two years,
will it all come gushing out?
At once or did I just lose those two years.
And so the thing was that I found my inspiration somehow.
And it was in the year.
You see trying to remember that.
I always get this date from something to look it up.
It was a year of Ferguson.
It was a year of the Ayotzinapa.
What year is it--
and it was 2014.
2014 was the year.
Ferguson was a year of Ayotzinapa
with the 31 students died in Southern Mexico.
And it was also the 100th anniversary
of the Ludlow Massacre.
And the Ludlow massacres that leave you,
I mean, familiar with that and in Ludlow Colorado.
It was 1914, where this community of copper miners.
They were Greek, Italian, Mexican primarily
went on strike.
And the-- I believe it was a Rockefeller mine.
And they sent in the troops and--
to intimidate them to get back to work
and to give up these aspirations to unionize.
They lit the company on fire.
And a number of people died in that fire.
Unfortunately, mostly women and children.
And I went out.
And so I thought 2014, this year, this the world around me,
the world around us is giving us this message
if we don't listen to it.
That's it.
I think we deserve what's coming to us.
And so that became the impetus to work on this book, which
is about the end of the world.
This is the end of our world.
But I look at the end of the world in very Amerindian
indigenous terms.
The end of the world does not mean that then there's nothing.
It just means that there's an opportunity
for rebirth, opportunity to reawaken, to reimagine.
Those of us who are not part in that process
will only encounter darkness.
And that's it.
So we all have to make a decision.
Are we going to be part of the reimagining of this new world?
Or are we just going to close our eyes?
And I mean, that very metaphorically
and very literally.
You close your eyes, that's it.
Nothing else.
So I explore that.
So in this book, it's actually mostly persona poems.
And most of my poetry I write about people.
And this one, the elements, which are very, very new,
very different for me began to speak the ocean, the land,
the air, the smoke.
And so it's again is not me.
So this poem is called Tsunami.
There's a man who sits on the shore
every morning staring at the sea.
He doesn't have any sons left.
They dispersed like a pool of fish
when the sinker strikes the surface of the water.
The eldest took the family boat.
The middle son, the net.
The youngest claimed the rods, the lines, and hooks.
Stripping their father of his fishermen's estate
though he wasn't dead yet.
His burden was a stroke that left him trapped inside a body.
A tackle box that lost its key.
A mermaid chewed on the tips of her hair
like seaweed before crawling up the sand just
to fling a mussel shell against his skull.
He didn't move.
But inside, he felt elated that for once an object came
towards him instead of floating away like everything
his wife had brought him.
Kisses, kitchen, signs, the scent
of jasmine on her hands and feet.
She dragged into the tide their home.
No.
The entire street, the village, uprooting lampposts
and eucalyptus trees now obscene with earthworms.
Their moistness desperate at the separation from the soil.
His fingers had twitched just so as he reached for his beloved
who sank into the sea.
The landscape, the train of a gown
that swirled down after her.
Everybody drowned.
Oh figurehead of tragedy.
Oh ravenous water that snatches the air out of every long.
After centuries of villagers taking from your belly,
you had to claim it all back.
Each hard won catch.
Each gasp from a child whose first fish
changes color in the bucket.
Each bone stuck in the throat, and every story that followed.
But your wrath hungered for more than that.
Each blessing over the soup.
Each time a man touched his bride beneath the table
during prayer.
Each time a man caressed another man in the dark.
Every blush born of such affection, and every encounter
with pleasure that ended with the mouth
savoring its secret into daylight.
Give it to me, said the sea.
Every glimpse of your woman's nipple
as she fed each of your sons.
Every bristle of your lover's beard found on the pillow
and which you fondled while the dawn peeked through the blinds.
Every ray of light.
Every time you heard the coffee boiling on the stove
and thought what a lucky man.
And I have everything.
I have it all.
No you arrogant fool I have it all.
Your yesterday, the days before, the days ahead.
I swallow every minute you sit there
begging to get something back.
I pick my teeth with your disappointment.
Some might think it cruel that I let you live.
You're the one without a voice.
But what use is a voice for no one heeds the warnings.
Your kind gave me such taste for waste that it became addiction.
And like any dog or snake, I gave in to my rage
when you weren't praying or paying attention,
when you stood above me like a master and gazed at the horizon
as if you owned as far as your eyes could reach.
And I barked, and I hissed, and told you that I too
could play that game.
But you wouldn't listen.
What is that a tear I see?
Is it plump with shame or regret?
I'll savor it just the same.
You sunk into the ruins is the story.
You unheard is your fate.
And mine.
Now you know what it's like to be me.
You can whisper, scream, it's pointless.
Nobody gives a fucking shit.