WEBVTT

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I'm going to read a few.

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The next two I'm going to read
is from "She Had Some Horses."

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And then most of the
rest of the poems

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will be from a new manuscript
called, "In Mad Love and War."

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I think that might be
what it comes down to.

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We'll see, I guess, eventually.

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This poem is called
"New Orleans."

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And I wrote it--

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it was, well, the first and
only time I went to New Orleans.

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And I'm Creek, from Oklahoma.

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I was born in Oklahoma, but
my Creek side of the family

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is originally from Alabama.

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And this was the
closest, at that point,

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that I had come
to that homeland.

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So you better bet I was out
there looking and walking

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around the streets, looking
to see what had happened.

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I'm still trying to
figure out what happened.

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And so I was walking
around New Orleans,

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and I walked to the
Mississippi River

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and sat there for a long time.

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Rivers talk.

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And I learned quite a bit.

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And I started thinking
and remembering

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the story about this
guy named DeSoto.

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And I heard this
story when I was

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in about third or fourth grade
during some kind of history.

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And what I remembered-- which
may not be what happened--

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is that DeSoto--

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of course DeSoto was looking
for gold, they still are.

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And he was either killed and his
body thrown in the Mississippi

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River or he was drowned there.

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And I think the Chickasaws
or the Choctaws did it.

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But I used my
poetic license and I

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said the Creeks did it
because I knew somehow

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they had a hand in it.

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And so this is "New Orleans."

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This is the South.

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I look for evidence of other
Creeks, for remnants of voices

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or for tobacco brown bones
to come wandering down Conti

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street, Royal, or Decatur.

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Near the French market,
I see a blue horse

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caught frozen in stone in
the middle of a square.

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Brought in by the Spanish
on an endless ocean voyage,

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he became mad and crazy.

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They caught him in blue
rock, said, don't talk.

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I know it wasn't just a
horse that went crazy.

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Nearby is a shop with
ivory and knives.

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There are red rocks.

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The man behind the
counter has no idea

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that he is inside magic stones.

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He should find out
before they destroy him.

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These things have
memory, you know?

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I have a memory.

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It swims deep in blood,
a delta in the skin.

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It swims out of Oklahoma,
deep the Mississippi River.

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It carries my feet to these
places, the French Quarter,

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stale rooms, the sun behind
thick and moist clouds.

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And I hear boats
hauling themselves up

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and down the river.

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My spirit comes here to drink.

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My spirit comes here to drink.

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Blood as the undercurrent.

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There are voices buried
in the Mississippi mud.

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There are ancestors
and future children

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buried beneath the
current stirred up

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by pleasure boats
going up and down.

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There are stories
here made of memory.

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I remember DeSoto.

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He is buried somewhere in
this river, his bones sunk

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like the golden
treasure he traveled

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half the Earth to find.

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Came looking for gold
cities, for shining streets

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of beaten gold to dance
on with silk ladies.

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He should have stayed home.

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Creeks knew of him for miles
before he came into town,

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dreamed of silver
blades and crosses,

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and knew he was
one of the ones who

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yearned for something his heart
wasn't big enough to handle.

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And DeSoto thought it was gold.

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The Creeks lived in Earth towns,
not gold, spun children, not

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gold.

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That's not what DeSoto
thought he wanted to see.

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The Creeks knew it, and drowned
him in the Mississippi River

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so he wouldn't have
to drown himself.

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Maybe his body is what I
am looking for as evidence

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to know in another way
that my memory is alive.

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But he must have
got away, somehow,

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because I have seen New Orleans,
the lace and silk buildings,

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trolley cars on
beaten silver paths,

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graves that rise up out
of soft Earth in the rain,

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shops that sell Black mammy
dolls holding white babies.

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And I know I have
seen DeSoto, having

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a drink on Bourbon
Street, mad and crazy,

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dancing with a woman as
gold as the river bottom.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

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And DeSoto is still around.

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