So this next one is a poem called,
"Everyone's an Expert About Something."
Yeah.
Great.
[LAUGHTER]
The more I learn, the more I learn
I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.
To someone who doesn't care a fig for poetry,
they'd likely think I knew a lot.
Yet in most bookshops, I'm lost.
Shelves heavy with the bodies of forgotten writers.
It's relative.
A president can say audacity, or a president can say sad,
and both eat the same cured meat of empire.
When I say I carry my people inside me,
I don't mean a country.
The star that hangs from my neck is simply
a way of saying Israel is not a physical place,
but can be written down and carried anywhere-- says
my people are most beautiful when moving,
when movement, when our only state is
the liquid state of water is adapting to our container.
Homeland sometimes just means what books you've read,
what stories you've spread with your sneakers.
My people, any place you've lived
long enough to build bombs is a place you've lived too long.
It's relative.
My friends, the only thing I know for sure
is the missiles on television are only beautiful if you've
never known suffering.
My friends, the only country I will ever pledge my allegiance
to is your music, is under investigation for treason.
So that poem was in the JVP Haggadah,
which was very exciting to me.
It was like my ideal publication.
So I've arrived.
[LAUGHTER]
Because Jewish Voices for Peace is
an anti-Zionist Jewish leftist organization.