There's only-- I think there are four main places that they fly
the drones from--
Creech, Davis-Monthan.
There's a place in Virginia.
The actual drones are, of course,
in Pakistan, based over there, but they--
the practice drones, if you're out there protesting them,
they will come in and take pictures of you protesting.
And they fly very close over your head,
and there's a poem in that.
Anybody who wants to write that poem.
I recommend getting your pencil and paper out.
But they come to check you out.
It's a whole other kind of business.
The young people go to work in their shorts
and end up with PTSD.
So I'm going to read another haibun that comes out
of the experience of--
it's from that period that Susan was talking about,
too, about the Senate.
And this poem-- well, I'll read it, "Experiments with Poetry
Are Taken Outdoors: An Essay on Choosing a New Camera."
Some friends and I visited a panel on war and money.
They were telling lies on the panel,
so we shouted then they threw us out.
Their publicist chased us, hitting D with her fists
and smashed my camera on my head.
We stood outside waiting to settle the matter.
A man in a good suit came out to the sidewalk.
He had watery blue eyes.
I said, I won't press charges if your foundation
regrets the assault and pays me for the camera.
He said, we won't turn you over to the attorney general
if you get off the premises.
I said, this is a public sidewalk,
and there is no attorney general.
Gonzales had resigned some weeks before.
The man said, you people are endangering the country
with your tactics.
I said, you people are endangering the world
with your corporate wars.
He said, I am a veteran of two wars.
I forget how Jesus came up.
I said, Jesus opposed killing human beings.
The man said, God knows some wars are necessary.
I said, I didn't say God.
I said Jesus.
The Capitol Hill cops argued with D
who wouldn't give her name.
D is calm and tall as the Statue of Liberty
whereas I am a short Irish hothead.
The man and I have reached our limit.
Now should be the moment when we recognize
each other's humanity, but we each
think the other will destroy the world.
This is where poetry can be helpful.
Poetry goes past the limit.
It makes extra helpful nerves between realities.
Threads float above the man's tweed coat
and weave a pink flag of no nation.
Ancestors circle Capitol Hill in a braid including
Ginsberg and Blake.
They build small fires around the city.
Reinforcements are not far away.
We can't see occupy yet, but we feel there must be a future.
Tomorrow we'll go back to our jobs.
Crows are writing poems no one can read.
[CAWING]
I think of the man as a child, full
of tiny expensive longings, pushing toy trucks
over the anthills at his home.
Boom, he says, harming no one.
He had joy once.
Now on the sidewalk, he wants to kill us.
The longer we can keep him busy, the more of his money
we can waste.
He hands me $279 in cash.
Use your imagination, my mother used to say,
meaning you don't have to use it.
You are in it.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
Yeah, that man I always wondered--
I said-- he said, how much does your camera cost,
and I said, $279.
I just pulled it out of the air.
And he said-- and he pulled out the money, this big wad of cash
that he had.
I looked later on the website to find out what his name was.
I never could find him on the Heritage Foundation website,
but the woman who smashed my camera on my head,
I found her and I put her picture
that I had taken with my camera in the water book.
It's in the water book.
So she's there.
I don't know what happened to her.