Listen. Can you hear it? We are the poem. It's in our voices, in our water streaming,
its rhythm in our temples beating. It is the dreaming, its meter beats through the soles
of our feet into the earth beneath us. Our eyes follow birds in the sun blushed skies
brushed by the flames of beach bonfires. It is holding hands; it is first kisses. 3am
conversations and shooting star wishes, it is music, it is here. As light as babies'
laughter and as dense as old men's cellared tears, it danced like prayer on Plato's
lips when he rested. The poem is in the way, she sways her hips when she walks. The way
the sun sheens while he lays bricks bare-chested. You are the poem, you are a symbol, you are
meaning. Each of us a line, together we make tight stanzas, can't you hear the way we
rhyme when our vowels arc electric across our lips. Can't you hear the way we rhyme?
You were born to know this. Your mother whispered the poem through the red curtain of her belly,
our lives are performed in the round to subliminal libretti. And when we die our funerals are
merely rehearsing, our pieces remembered, resonance resounding. I am the poem, I can
feel it like static crackling along my skin, my pen hand twitching, its voice in my throat
itching. And when I share my woeful hoarse echo of the poem it is a remembering like,
yes, this is home. Sometimes we forget to listen, sometimes we lose our place in the
chorus, and it takes the kindness of strangers. Coffee conversation pauses or the knowing
curiosity of a child to restore us. Come, let's rehearse the verse that trips on our
tongues. Come, let's lay down the lines that our fingertips know. Listen. You can
hear it. We are the poem. I'm a poet, but like you I have other labels.
I am a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a friend, I'm a runner, a reader, I'm
also a businessman, a suit. No, really. I wear some of these capes more comfortably
than others, but it is being a poet which is the most essential, the closest to the
essence of being human. It's the thing that whispers in the ear of all of my other labels.
Making art through poetry and performance is my highest expression of humanness of my
frailty and boundlessness. There is a story in all of us. I call my story a poem. Sure
it's made of language but it also has movement, music, it is visual, it is a hummingbird in
the chest, the wailing of mothers, it is a palm pressed against rain pelted glass, it
is a tattoo on the tongue. I want you to find your art, learn your heart
song, know yourself, share this with others. The message that reads, "Hi CJ, we spoke
at the festival. You asked me if I wrote and I told you no. I should have said, 'But
I want to.'" The father smiling through sorrow complete with son, he tells me he cried
during my poem of the remembered release of billy-cart rides. This is my poem. Mountaintop
conversations with storm clouds, the current that flows when we connect, the thrill of
lighting fireworks in your eyes, this is my poem. Each scene is a forest path, words are
crumb strewn from one frame edge to the other. I am trying to splice the strips together,
find the beginning and know that it's not the end, but there are so many pieces I've
yet to find. This is my poem. Instincts of fragments, sometimes I stumble
and trip, I break China, I have scalded your feet, but other times my hands are smooth
and cooling. I don't understand this but I'm trying. I have felt so often a mistake
is my safe place, and I'm yet to write my worst lines. This is my poem. They call me
an artist, I go to parties and my friends in nightlights, lighthouses, flashlights and
flares with pop rocks in their belly, sparks in their tongues, not yet taught to extinguish
their dreams. This is my poem. This house is much bigger than it looks, and
there are wardrobes I haven't opened yet. Each time I climb the stair at night, that
one step makes a different sound, I run between shadows, I stand frozen in corners, I am looking
for the one room I don't want to find. But one day soon I'm going to invite all of
you to a blue light disco in the attic. We will be all big hair, eyeliner, acid wash
and lace. Walking like an Egyptian, bratpacking, partying like it's 1999. We'll chase out
all the ghosts, but first there is some furniture I need to move, I have to do this alone. This
is my poem. Discovering girls in cubby houses, falling
from roofs billy-carts, [inaudible 00:05:54] my house and papier-mâché pigs, this is
my poem. He-Man and She-Ra, ten-speed bicycles, Doctor Who, buck teeth and braces, this is
my poem. The dead Kennedys, duffel coats and desert boots, two girls named Kylie, this
is my poem. Unfiltered cigarettes and southern comforting woolsheds, this is my poem. Tom
Waits, Makowski, my three sons, this is my poem. Your smile, your laugh, your eyes, oh
God yes, your eyes, this is my poem, and I can see you disappearing behind that dropped
curtain in the upstairs window. I am coming up, let's roll up the rugs, sweep the floor,
dressed in our wicked best and stretch our limbs. I am an excellent dancer, but you lead,
come create with me. This is my poem. This is my poem. Promise me you'll find
yours. There is a story living in all of us, and each overlaps with the person who is next
to us and the person in the next row, and the person on the other side of the globe.
Your story doesn't have to be a poem, it could be expressed through painting, singing
in a choir, gardening. Your story is your art. Be creative, uncage your intuition, allow
yourself to make unconscious decisions, learn more about yourself. share this with others,
listen to their responses. Know better what it is to be human.
Promise me, you will find your poem, find your corners, [inaudible 00:07:42] now is
the rough skin, your scars, your warts, the asymmetric limbs. Trace your wrinkles, your
frowns, the laugh lines, the edges of smiles, the lifted brow, the eyeball glint, rediscover
where you are ticklish, the warmth of hands, breath on skin, map the [memoir Braille 00:08:00]
of your body. Find yourself washed up on the beach, salty
and sun raw, dropped at the high tide mark of memories' foam, buried in the sand, borrowed
between the top warm layers and the sea seeping back in beneath between the burn of recollection
and cooling hand of reprieve. Find the bugs in your garden, the creepy crawlies and the
butterflies, the fragile stick insects, nervous twitch, the holiday cicadas white noise buzz,
make field notes. In case the bugs gently invented glass and take them to class for
show and tell. Think less and feel more, feel less and just do.
Spend more time with yourself as a child, [inaudible 00:08:50] outside the lines, use
the wrong colors, embrace your mistakes, turning them into plasticine. Make a collage of the
dumb things you have done. Do more dumb things, run naked between puddles in the rain, get
dirty, paint with your fingers, make mud pies, go around barefoot more often, leap from cliffs
into dirty water, dance with strangers dressed only in your soul, memorize your nightmares
and lullabies by heart, vibrate like a spider's web, vulnerable and exquisitely strong. Talk
to yourself much, much more often. Show me what you have learned. Your sharing makes
us both more whole. Promise me you will find your poem.
Thank you. Thank you very much.