I'll read just one more poem here.
I want to say it's a real honor to be reading with Paul as
well.
We had to come all the way from San Diego
to meet each other finally.
We both live there, but I'm sure we're going to hang out more.
This next poem is called "Pyrrhic Symphony,"
and it's the tentative title for the new collection.
And it was inspired, one, by one of my earliest memories
of living in Tucson, which I won't spoil.
I hate it when poets do that.
They tell you the whole poem beforehand.
They give you the thing and then they read the poem,
and you're like, could've just read the poem, pal.
But it also deals with, during the pandemic--
I'm a teacher, and so during the pandemic
I was teaching remotely.
And my daughters were home with me.
And the only way we had of staying sane
was going on these drives.
And we would drive down to Coronado in San Diego.
And you would see these cruise ships anchored miles off
of the coast.
And if you looked really closely,
you could see the workers of these cruise ships still stuck
on there.
That was one of the interesting things about the cruise ships,
was that the passengers were rescued.
The employees were not, and they were basically
condemned to this life, not unlike if you've
seen George Romero's Dawn of the Dead
where the zombies are in the shopping mall.
It's kind of like that.
They would just be wandering the decks.
And admittedly-- I don't know if you're like me--
I view cruise ships as giant floating septic tanks.
But you may have different feelings, and that's OK.
But it struck me as such a terrible metaphor in many ways
for the kind of existence we had,
where you had these kind of prisoners
of a luxury they could never--
that they were employed to deliver.
And there was no one to deliver that to,
and so they just kind of wandered the ship like ghosts.
That's the theme.
"Pyrrhic Symphony."
Nine months now of news that is not news.
There has been weather and there has been food.
On the horizon, cruise ships still
crewed, their white dream of hospitality
gone silent as the sun.
Nothing to do.
I sit patient as a panther in its zoo,
my brain blinkered in a box of want.
Here on the wholesale Pacific, the wind wills ill against us.
The electronic doors of electronic stores
go untroubled while supermarkets are full of people
hoarding frozen pizza.
The freeways are quiet.
Birds are on the move.
The sky is a color the sky hasn't been in a century.
Still, we long to get back to business,
to buzz and branch out, to beat any price,
honor any coupon, all while the kids, jeremiad on gigs,
fetch us supper, swooping like bats from business
to home and back.
Nurse, will you think less of me if I tell you I hurt?
That fear pulls through me like a needle drawn by a magnet?
That my blood is haunted by the memory of rain?
That when I was a child, I watched
a house burn down without thought of the people inside?
That while they were being refugeed in a country where
car crashes promise not only neck brace but windfall,
I thought only of a cup of ice cold milk.
I will never know what happened to them,
and they will never know I write this 35 years later, still
warm with the memory of their home's immolation.
Fire bright against the blackening frame,
the desert reverent around it.
So quiet you could hear the sand crackle as it turned to glass.
I recall a light rain tapping on the temperance of my skull
as between the fire and my five-year-old self
a warm hand of wind ran its fingers
over the entire state of Arizona to ask, how are you doing?
And then, before anyone could answer, hey, have a nice day.
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
Appreciate it.