WEBVTT

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So I wanted to start
with that, and to also

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say that I'm reading here
from the Tataviam, Tongva

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lands of the San Fernando
Valley section of Los Angeles--

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again, to honor the Indigenous.

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And the next poem--

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these are poems I've read a lot,
but I wanted to share them here

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because they're some
of my favorite poems

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that I've written.

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This poem is kind of important
because it's the first time

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I ever came across poetry.

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And I never got
poetry in high school.

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I never got poetry in school.

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I know you people
say, you never got it?

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But we were living
in barrio schools.

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All the books were discards.

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We had no supplies.

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Kids were dropping
out in middle school--

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at least where I was coming
from, in the East LA area.

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But anyway, what happened is--

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as some of you know
from "Always Running,"

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I was a heroin user, along
with every kind of drug

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you could use.

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And I ended up
writing, as a teenager,

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in jail and juvenile hall.

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And some of my writing got
sent to a contest in Berkeley--

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The Quinto Sol literary contest.

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And I actually won
honorable mention.

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I was 18 years old.

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They gave me $250, which
in 1973, when I was 18,

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was a lot of money--

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especially good clean
money; not drugs or nothing.

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And they actually paid my
trip from LA to Berkeley.

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It was an amazing thing.

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I never could imagine
anybody would care.

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But I was still on heroin.

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And I was still hurting.

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But I went.

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I went on this trip.

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And at one point,
I was thinking--

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they gave the awards and
everything, and I was thinking.

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I went to the hotel,
and I go, I'm just

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going to go down the
street and score,

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because everywhere you can
find anybody selling heroin.

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I'll find somebody
and I'll score.

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And I'll be fine, because I was
starting to feel the withdrawal

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and stuff.

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Anyway, I was getting
ready to leave the room,

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and all of a sudden, all of
the people from the contest

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came to the lobby.

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And they saw me,
and said, oh, we

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want to invite you
to a poetry reading.

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And I go, oh my God, I don't
want to go to no poetry.

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I didn't even know what poetry
is, what they're talking about.

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Oh no, come with us.

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It's a cafe.

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You'll love it.

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Oh man.

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But I didn't have
the heart to say no,

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and I thought, why don't we just
go, and then I'll sneak out,

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and I'll score.

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But I never did that--
not in that night, anyway.

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I ended up finding poetry.

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And it was in the form
of three great poets--

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one, José Montoya, the great
Chicano godfather of poetry

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for us; David Henderson, who
was the leading African-American

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performance poet at the time;
and the great Puerto Rican poet

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Pedro Pietri.

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They were there on
one stage together.

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Wow.

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So, I mean, this was
the most amazing thing.

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So this is the poem about
how I got pulled into poetry

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by these great poets.

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It's called "Fevered Shapes."

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"I wallowed in a
needle-spawned world,

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addicted to dope and the crazy
life, and yet there I was--

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in Berkeley for my
first poetry reading.

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I was 18-- with a
bullet, as they say.

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Earlier I had flown on a
plane for the first time.

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Sure I've survived half a dozen
gun assaults, cops knocking me

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around, ODs, blades to
my neck in jail cells,

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homelessness in dank
streets, and beat downs

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in barrio brawls--

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But flying?

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That scared me to death.

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"I sat there in a crowded cafe,
not knowing what to expect.

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Poetry?

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I'd never heard this before.

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Oh, I had written lines,
vignettes, images, fears,

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thoughts.

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I didn't know they were poems.

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I had no idea what a poem was.

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"First up on the mic
was José Montoya,

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with Chicano prayers
of old pachucos,

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and strained loves
and guitar solos,

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and Indian hands in corn flour.

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Then David Henderson
took the stage,

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gleaning urban Black streets,
racist stares, Black Panther

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fury, and Southern cooking.

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Finally, Pedro Pietri came up--

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Nuyorican word meister,
flashing El Barrio's experiences

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with poems located in phone
booths and real-life wisdoms

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that made us laugh
and shake our heads.

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"I had never heard
words spoken this way--

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more music than
talk, more fevered

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shapes than sentences, more Che
and Malcolm than Shakespeare.

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"These poems came for
me, lassoed my throat,

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demanded my life savings,
taking me for a sunset ride.

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These poems were graffiti
scrawls along the alleys

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and trash-strewn tunnels of my
body, the metaphoric methadone

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for the heroin hurling through
my bloodstream, the lifeline I

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already had inside
and didn't know.

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These poems were pool
sticks, darkened gangways,

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a swirl of sunrise
after the graveyard

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shift, a blood-black yelling
behind torn curtains,

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a child shrieking and
nobody coming to help.

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These poems were shadowed
intents, startled doubts,

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sorrows without grief, the moon
without sky, unknown melodies.

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The falling inside that happens
when you push razor onto wrist.

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"They came for me as I
sank into my suicide,

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while fidgeting in a chair,
inching under the skin,

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as I wondered why I even came.

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"José, David and Pedro--

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I was never the same after this.

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They came for me, and
I've never let go.

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They came for me, and I've
perspired poems ever since.

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They came for me-- and all my
addictions, my sorry-ass lies,

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my falling masks,
my pissed-off wives,

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neglected children,
angry friends,

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and back-to-back failures could
never, ever, take them away."

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