So I wanted to start with that, and to also
say that I'm reading here from the Tataviam, Tongva
lands of the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles--
again, to honor the Indigenous.
And the next poem--
these are poems I've read a lot, but I wanted to share them here
because they're some of my favorite poems
that I've written.
This poem is kind of important because it's the first time
I ever came across poetry.
And I never got poetry in high school.
I never got poetry in school.
I know you people say, you never got it?
But we were living in barrio schools.
All the books were discards.
We had no supplies.
Kids were dropping out in middle school--
at least where I was coming from, in the East LA area.
But anyway, what happened is--
as some of you know from "Always Running,"
I was a heroin user, along with every kind of drug
you could use.
And I ended up writing, as a teenager,
in jail and juvenile hall.
And some of my writing got sent to a contest in Berkeley--
The Quinto Sol literary contest.
And I actually won honorable mention.
I was 18 years old.
They gave me $250, which in 1973, when I was 18,
was a lot of money--
especially good clean money; not drugs or nothing.
And they actually paid my trip from LA to Berkeley.
It was an amazing thing.
I never could imagine anybody would care.
But I was still on heroin.
And I was still hurting.
But I went.
I went on this trip.
And at one point, I was thinking--
they gave the awards and everything, and I was thinking.
I went to the hotel, and I go, I'm just
going to go down the street and score,
because everywhere you can find anybody selling heroin.
I'll find somebody and I'll score.
And I'll be fine, because I was starting to feel the withdrawal
and stuff.
Anyway, I was getting ready to leave the room,
and all of a sudden, all of the people from the contest
came to the lobby.
And they saw me, and said, oh, we
want to invite you to a poetry reading.
And I go, oh my God, I don't want to go to no poetry.
I didn't even know what poetry is, what they're talking about.
Oh no, come with us.
It's a cafe.
You'll love it.
Oh man.
But I didn't have the heart to say no,
and I thought, why don't we just go, and then I'll sneak out,
and I'll score.
But I never did that-- not in that night, anyway.
I ended up finding poetry.
And it was in the form of three great poets--
one, José Montoya, the great Chicano godfather of poetry
for us; David Henderson, who was the leading African-American
performance poet at the time; and the great Puerto Rican poet
Pedro Pietri.
They were there on one stage together.
Wow.
So, I mean, this was the most amazing thing.
So this is the poem about how I got pulled into poetry
by these great poets.
It's called "Fevered Shapes."
"I wallowed in a needle-spawned world,
addicted to dope and the crazy life, and yet there I was--
in Berkeley for my first poetry reading.
I was 18-- with a bullet, as they say.
Earlier I had flown on a plane for the first time.
Sure I've survived half a dozen gun assaults, cops knocking me
around, ODs, blades to my neck in jail cells,
homelessness in dank streets, and beat downs
in barrio brawls--
But flying?
That scared me to death.
"I sat there in a crowded cafe, not knowing what to expect.
Poetry?
I'd never heard this before.
Oh, I had written lines, vignettes, images, fears,
thoughts.
I didn't know they were poems.
I had no idea what a poem was.
"First up on the mic was José Montoya,
with Chicano prayers of old pachucos,
and strained loves and guitar solos,
and Indian hands in corn flour.
Then David Henderson took the stage,
gleaning urban Black streets, racist stares, Black Panther
fury, and Southern cooking.
Finally, Pedro Pietri came up--
Nuyorican word meister, flashing El Barrio's experiences
with poems located in phone booths and real-life wisdoms
that made us laugh and shake our heads.
"I had never heard words spoken this way--
more music than talk, more fevered
shapes than sentences, more Che and Malcolm than Shakespeare.
"These poems came for me, lassoed my throat,
demanded my life savings, taking me for a sunset ride.
These poems were graffiti scrawls along the alleys
and trash-strewn tunnels of my body, the metaphoric methadone
for the heroin hurling through my bloodstream, the lifeline I
already had inside and didn't know.
These poems were pool sticks, darkened gangways,
a swirl of sunrise after the graveyard
shift, a blood-black yelling behind torn curtains,
a child shrieking and nobody coming to help.
These poems were shadowed intents, startled doubts,
sorrows without grief, the moon without sky, unknown melodies.
The falling inside that happens when you push razor onto wrist.
"They came for me as I sank into my suicide,
while fidgeting in a chair, inching under the skin,
as I wondered why I even came.
"José, David and Pedro--
I was never the same after this.
They came for me, and I've never let go.
They came for me, and I've perspired poems ever since.
They came for me-- and all my addictions, my sorry-ass lies,
my falling masks, my pissed-off wives,
neglected children, angry friends,
and back-to-back failures could never, ever, take them away."