So that was a long poem about three things
that I couldn't do without.
The poem, the poetics, and the poetry.
I can give a lecture on that, but I won't.
I'm going to read this sequence here.
It's shorter than the other one, but basically, I
had to approach prisons that were on occupied, stolen,
Indigenous land, which all of them
are and thinking of how I even walk up to one,
and how to engage with the landscape and the environment
around which prisons are built.
How prisons are usually in remote places
because we don't want to see them.
We don't want to see them because we
don't want to face the inhumanity with which we
are complicit.
So they usually-- in California at least--
they put them way out in the middle of nowhere,
which also makes it more difficult for people
to visit their family, their loved ones.
And so in places where the prison is
in the center of town, there's these things
called prison chic which aestheticize and romanticize.
And particularly, the prison closest to me
where my brother-in-law is held, he's
serving life in Folsom Prison, is
made famous because of Johnny Cash and Johnny Cash's visit
to the prison.
Folsom Prison Blues, and so it's a very wealthy, affluent
community with a bike trail that goes around the prison,
and the prison itself is hidden in the architecture
of the landscape around it with the Folsom Dam there.
But nonetheless, the bridges take
on this prison chic of being built by the same stones
that the prison was built in like guard towers
and turrets, decorative guard towers and turrets.
And so you have these kinds of almost like Alcatraz
kind of tourism with widely-funded public art
and expensive road bikes.
So this is where that poem comes from
and documenting the plants that are
outside of the prison on that trail
and their curative properties as a way of thinking
how people heal.
Even, how do they heal when healing is just out of reach?
How to heal with language and weeds,
and the myths of these plants that are so close to us.
The redbud and the dogwood in specific.
It is called "Eclogue: A Field Guide and Cure".
Walking seven miles around Folsom Prison,
my job, for it is a job, is to document plants and log
their curative properties.
Sweet fennel, black locust, yerba santa,
dove weed, chaparral broom, Eastern redbud, sweet gum.
A schemata.
If maps minus borders equals debt then what could
they have healed for whom there is no healing.
There's a lot of curative properties
like carminative, galactagogue, properties of plants.
I am required to tell you I have a cousin serving life
without parole in Folsom Prison.
In your imagination of his crime,
for you have already imagined it, there must be a gold bell.
It behooves you to imagine it ring and the rain that follows.
It rained and we did nothing about it.
The court said there is no further explanation needed.
His time and his nails like blue division,
as in departing from a common source.
A house inside another house, and so we arrive.
Tragedy plus time equals comedy.
Six hummingbirds nailed to a wall.
The prison museum named The Big House in bold italics.
My brother remodeled this prison kitchen.
Pots as big as a bath bolted to the floor.
Biggest he'd ever seen.
Ungodly heavy.
I went to school where the football stadium--
not unlike this football stadium--
was also called The Big House and where
people screamed and screamed.
If comedy minus time equals tragedy then
there is shame here, but not how you imagine it.
Black sunflower seeds evenly placed on the table.
The sound of them opening and closing.
Now, unlike those I saw on the trail.
How ungodly large and heavy the redbud and dogwood
were in biblical times.
The dogwood used to crucify the son of God.
The redbud used by his traitor Judas to hang himself in shame.
Thenceforth, both trees in their unique guilt
never again grew large enough to hold a body.
Their branches thenceforth too thin to ever hang from,
and their petals no longer white but red in spring.
Thenceforth, named the Judas tree.
Ungodly beautiful.
Mile after mile.
Febrifuge, black locust for fever,
[? eaten ?] for the tumors that grow in whatever empty space is
left in your body.
Emetic, analgesic to move the pain in your mouth in circles
until it feels like stirring a large pot of warm broth
in winter.
If wealth plus comedy is greater than or equal to madness,
then you are lovely in the eyes of the state.
Gum bush, California yerba santa,
the lips of the hanged Judas unable again
to defile with a kiss the most holy.
You can make a tincture and tea from their bark
to stimulate the respiratory system.
It treats chronic asthma, not just for a poem person,
but a person person.
If breath minus time is less than or equal to tragedy,
then my job is to imagine a crime absolved
of these oils of the sweet gum.
Emmenagogue, carminative, anointed.
The court recommends an explanation.
So be it.
This manicured trail named after Johnny Cash's famous visit
has polite cyclists on expensive bikes and public art.
A cold infusion for the common flu and congestion.
Mile after ungodly mile.
White flowers, red flowers, some kind of peppermint.
Consumptive weed ingested to terminate pregnancy.
Its very same feathery seeds at one time
used to stuff baby toys.
Henceforth, each mile through the town center's prison
aesthetic.
Bridges designed with decorative guard towers, rusted grates,
and hedge walls lined with the same quarried stones
used to build a prison.
A rustic panopticon's charm.
If tragedy plus repetition is greater than permanence
over tragedy, then, of course, they were wildly capable.
Febrifuge, analgesic, the scent of almonds.
Dear cousin, this is the closest I can and have ever come.
Nearby, antique shops sell the collateral damage
of outdated restraints long after they've outlived
their usefulness and practice.
Use, as in use this for that.
The restorative power of your life set to a score.
Both a purge and hunger to know your best self in your best
starch shirt, in your best ironed pants.
Lemon-scented gum to keep the mosquitoes away.
More shiny bicycle thank yous.
Henceforth, cheers from the inmates.
Cheers from the guards holding Mary Magdalene.
Cheers and screaming and more cheers and more screaming.
Unknown variable, plus or minus beauty.
Standard deviation plus or minus two.
Even the Folsom Lake has dried up.
This is the last section.
Even though Folsom Lake has dried up,
the beachside homes have firmly maintained their value.
More cheers.
More lemon-scented gum.
The blood and blood you gave, which
made way for a bewildering path I could never follow.
The last adjacent mile to you, dear cousin.
The last bird thrumming like a nervous finger.
More cheers deranged by the absence of cardinal points,
useless instruments, stamens.
We lose and loosen direction on good, white, legal paper.
Dear cousin, dear son, idle brother,
your blue opera swimming down river.
Your greatest good of that bronze redemption of Christ.
I document the oldest tree in existence.
I run into a bellflower.
I run into a field and clamor of bells.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]