WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

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Yes, "A Palace of Pearls"
is actually one long poem.

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And the poems are written
without any punctuation.

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So I'll try to read some,
pause, and then resume.

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They were written during
a recent monsoon season

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right here in town, and many
of the settings reflect that.

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So it's just a pleasure
to be able to read this

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to the hometown crowd
in the old pueblo.

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Thank you for being here.

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The poems begin literally
in my own backyard,

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watching the lightning storm
commence in the distance,

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talking to my dead father,
and thinking about life.

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"A Palace of Pearls."

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"Lightning lights
the moon's shroud.

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The surface of my body is
excited, like sharp stabs

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of emotion in love for
whose art, the sun is God.

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Tonight, the senses spring from
the soul as once was thought.

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A brief release of something
unseen, then enlightenment,

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like a gas lamp struck.

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Embarking on a
long weekend alone,

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a long week, a season, a
year, another year father

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trying to pierce the dark.

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Thinking is only
ever provisional.

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This is what I think now
that we're both alone.

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I can't remember enough.

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I make shit up.

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Our time together
is now a feeling.

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And all my thinking about
you, the flicker of event.

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By all accounts, sketchy,
lest I make too much of it.

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Lost just in time,
nothing serious.

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On my own reconnaissance,
some admire me.

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Some feel sorry.

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I've spent most of
my life thinking art

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would make sense of it.

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A foot soldier seized in
sight of his own squadron.

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I'm going to see what I can
see whenever it flashes.

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In the night sky,
fighter jets practice.

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Won't their metals
attract lightning?

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They appear not to move.

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Jesus!

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The shadow leaks out of
the thing like a fluid

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but has no relation
to real shadow,

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perfect and perfectly
unreflective.

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Is it bloody?

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I'll call it an accident.

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That way, there
can be no relief,

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no foreboding, all event.

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No one will be
responsible, least of all.

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Do you know how long it's been
since a moral choice presented

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itself and the wrong
choice was made?

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Not two minutes.

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Why is it not quiet between
lightning and thunder?

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As if someone were asking,
'Do you have other articulable

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feelings?

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If so, express them now.'

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Tragedy ensues with a laser
blast from the cockpit.

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The dangled finger
of God makes contact.

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Please call for several
thousand physicians quickly.

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I've tried to write
when I haven't

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been emotionally crippled.

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It seems there's no
right world for it.

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I've been a coward.

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I said no when I
could have said yes.

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Perhaps it's as
simple as everyone

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learning to read and write.

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This is a sinister time for the
country, dark political plots.

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The poets have become the
asses of the aristocrats.

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We have our secrets."

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