I want to read you some stuff from the Tijuana
Book of the Dead.
This poem I usually like to open with because--
I don't know how many poets are here,
but sometimes, you write lines that
are difficult to say to the public,
and you'll hear the ending of this.
I'm going to keep my clock, so I can watch the time.
And this actually came out of doing
a lecture for the Tin House writing conference.
I don't know if you know Tin House.
Very hipster, you know.
And we got there one year, and the director said--
the weirdest thing is happening.
I said what.
And they said people here are asking
for more soulful content.
Those darn people.
And I said, wow, that's what?
And they said, we need you to do a closing speech for us
and bring the thunder.
I'll never forget that.
I was like, bring the thunder?
What?
So I didn't keep any of that speech.
It went over, OK, I liked it.
But I kept the ending.
And you'll know when the ending comes.
This is directly toward you--
the ending.
It's called "You Who Seek Grace from a Distracted God."
"You, who seek grace from a distracted God,
you, who parse the rhetoric of empire,
who know in your guts what it is but don't know
what to call it, you, good son of a race of shadows--
your great fortune is to have a job, never ate government
cheese, federal peanut butter--
you, jerked to light from secret dreams under your sheets,
forgotten by 5:15 false dawn--
you, who fall asleep where you fall, sleep beside women
not yours who keep you warm, sleep
in spare rooms of your brothers, sleep
in the old bed in the back of your mother's house,
sleep where you are closest to a bus line--
you, who can't believe your mom rose at 4:45
to fry one huevo, one slice of bologna
laid on a corn tortilla--
border benedict-- here's your chance
to drag home eighty dollars a week, for her electric.
Food.
What's left you spend on used paperbacks, a matinee, amigos,
bus fare--
pay the ticket back to work.
You kneel in mom's broken tub now, no shower--
no heat-- plastic tarp over crumbled wall--
going to fix that for real one day--
soon-- no shampoo?
Scrub your scalp with dish soap.
Shiver.
5:35.
Hop-to-- got a mile to hustle to the express stop.
You, who have no car, rush past houses windows bright behind
driveway Cadillacs-- neighbors you never speak to stir
their money in golden pots for all you know, heat turned high,
showers running-- and up boyhood's hill you biked down
all those gone years ago, head alight with high school hopes--
the poetry of Becky's eyes, Colette's laughter,
Li'l Mousie's big black avalanche of hair, letters
in your back pocket from someone else's sweetheart--
walk on blood stains brown now where the duplex bully
crashed his stolen dirt bike into a trailer hitch
last month.
You, who have Echo and the Bunnymen hair, go.
Go.
Hike fast, man.
It's 5:45.
You long to sleep beside a woman you cannot possibly love.
You reach the bench by 6:00.
Still dark, but far mountains flame.
In orange light coming on-- around you,
coughing angels smoke, Guadalupes whisper--
maids in sweaters, men in work boots and Levi's watching
for the 50 to come, watching the clock,
working for kids, for families, for parents,
and already the radio pharisee vomits
rerun clots of fetid blood upon their heads,
these calloused children, these mothers,
these illegals, these greasers, these wetbacks, these narcos,
these gang-related Hispanics, these beaners,
these pepper-bellies, these spics, these taco-benders,
these Aztecs, these social-security savages,
these gitanos, these papists, these aliens--
someone laughs, so do you, all together now.
Bus comes, gasp, doors unfold like aluminum scorpion jaws--
Oh Christ everybody there just dug
panicked between couch pillows for enough coins
to pay the fare--
one more late day and you're all fired and some of you
wept while digging.
Praying the invisible man's prayer; ay,,,
por favor, por favor, por favor--
doors chew closed.
You're in.
You drop downhill toward black water
and veer south to the sleeping city--
bays and harbors full of oil don't invite any one of you
to swim.
Bus transfers in grim fists worried and twisted--
busmen catching more buses, riders catching red trolleys
to get the jobs nobody wanted but everyone needed,
catching hell from foremen who have never read a single poem
and never will--
gardeners nails soiled black, they're
sleeping now, harrowing small hedgerows of last dreams,
mouths open, men and women borrowing more seconds of life,
of home, of Spanish, of grandparents, of mangos,
of bailes de primavera, of days before heavy work boots or maid
shoes, days of never ending nothing,
o Elohim, old days they swayed like alamos in breezes, days
before headless men were left in the topaz dawn on the pueblo's
plaza, before the desert women were left
dismantled for buzzards.
And you, who cannot sleep, you bless these great unseen,
you stare at the world made of Alka-Seltzer,
fizzing away in the light.
Still.
You pull the cord.
7:00.
Same old downtown street.
Same day every day, you blink on Avenue C-- fog disembarks
at the docks, follows sailors drunk and whoring
before breakfast down Broadway.
Strange days.
Echoes flee the county jail cold beside you-- voices--
hymns of rage-- inmate and trustee, some of them
your cousins, sing night's vigils.
They're over now.
Offer-- hosannas of longing--
Patri et Filio-- in tedium you walk silent,
counting your manifold sins, to the plaza,
stand in the crush of your family--
these children heading for trade school,
the wheelchair man, the woman and her shopping cart,
the nodding hooker with blue tears on her cheek,
paisanos, y borrachos, Ticos, Boricuas, Xicanos, Apaches,
Tainos, Habaneras, cariocas, Mayas, tattooed
cholo samurai'd and inscrutable leaning back,
hushed as he watches you.
And you to, you want to, you're burning
with it, you who have no words, you
want a cup their cheeks in your hands.
You want to hold their faces between your palms.
You want to say it-- say it, you have nothing to lose--
say it-- say I love you.
I love you.
I love you."
Amen.
[APPLAUSE]