And this is two sections from a long poem
called "Homage to Longshot O'Leary,"
which was written in memory of the poet
Thomas McGrath, the great poet Thomas McGrath.
"Complications and responsibilities
of the appropriate response in these days, when
cold gazes measure the range of projectiles, the grievance,
the building site of another fenced camp
when no single store or catalog offers better value.
When spectacles of thrilling outrage
swing back and forth before all eyes and injury
comes in solids stripes and checks.
A car is always on fire to one side of the highway.
A woman walks up her steep unpaved hill.
The weight of the morning marketing in her string
bag and passes a man coming down through the mud,
talking on his cellular phone as he
carries an empty plastic bucket to the one well.
At the steps of a closed church on a street
I think might be Avenida Salsipuede,
a blear-eyed, starving dog stands
motionless very slowly turning its head
to watch us in the hot sunlight as we walk past.
Offering us its own thought in its own language,
which for this once we can easily comprehend.
I would like to be as simple as a starling in the rain.
Sometimes I would like to eat only seeds like a sparrow."
I think I'll stop there.
[APPLAUSE]
You could hold it all for the end, it would be OK.
Yeah, don't clap.
You just encourage us.
Unless you feel so overcome to do that.
Now I am from a tradition that if you guys want to say,
hey, go ahead--
That's true.
--do that shit brother, right?
That's, all right.
It's OK to do that, right?
This is not your daddy's poetry reading,
unless you brought your daddy with you, OK?
And I come from a long line of people
that talk back to the movie screen, so you can't scare me.