Here's the story.

You know what man, let's kick this off.

[crowd cheering] This is the New Jersey Poetry Renaissance!

Welcome to Voices in the Garden.

We're back.

We are witness to democracy's demise.

And we the oppressed, our energy will not be suppressed.

Like the words of Maya Angelou's song, we rise.

You could have been anywhere in the world, but you are here with us, and we appreciate that.

So give yourselves one more round of applause, please.

We're gonna get a little sexy and then we're gonna get a little sad.

On brand.

When women speak in my family, we are fluent in sarcasm.

She is our mother tongue.

We flick and flunk and favor the taste of I told you so's and really's and that was harsh but you know I'm right.

Let me tell you something you already know.

The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows.

It's a very mean and nasty place and it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently, no matter how tough you fall.

I loved you before you learned you could drive all the bad blood from your body, before you ever even knew what a leech was, and look at you now.

I plant my feet and grow my own garden instead.

I am not less of a woman.

I am just more of myself.

But it ain't about how hard you hit.

It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.

I now hold the certification of isolation, a declaration from you that you are through with trying to push this through and you know what, I can't blame you.

But I'm bright of love.

I still brandish thee, though tarnished by my ghost and ghastly gestures.

These feelings are real.

I still feel you deeply.

The sins of our fathers are scarred on our souls.

We built ourselves up from the ruins of other men's dreams.

You can clean up your acts, but your eyes will carry the burden.

Where I'm from, there's no television sitcom.

Hunger, pains, and quest for change will make a man do anything but sit calm.

The rolling line cross can have your jaw rearranged.

A natural attraction to flames, we are always just around the corner from a riot or rebellion.

Now if you know what you're worth, go out and get what you're worth.

But you can't put your fingers at him or her or at anybody because you ain't where you want to be.

And that's that.

Three years ago, we began documenting a growing and robust poetry and storytelling movement in New Jersey.

This is poetry.

This is poetry.

On a nearly nightly basis across the state, poetry readings and storytelling events are happening.

Shows are non-judgmental spaces for the writers and their audience to amplify and appreciate diverse voices and perspectives that always lead to emotional breakthroughs, inspiring messages, and more than just a few laughs along the way.

The day passes through the bug net of my open window until dusk's melody plays anew.

I miss you.

I want more than short-lived memories that will only cause me pain in the long run.

I imagine myself someplace better.

I imagine you and I in love.

I imagine the world different.

I imagine.

From Here's the Story, this is Voices in the Garden.

I'm your host, Alexandra Newman.

Tonight, we're in Ocean Grove, New Jersey at the Jersey Shore Art Center, a beautifully restored public school from 1898 that now serves as a creative hub for artists of all disciplines.

But tonight, the art form is spoken word.

This is Voices in the Garden, the Midsummer Night's Dream.

[Music] [Applause] I'd rather have that awkward wave with no wave back than to not wave at all.

I am strong enough to withstand the embarrassment I've fallen many times before I will get back up.

Let my wave be a symbol that my heart is open with no shame.

How dare I put up walls because society's framed a standard picture of what is normal.

But I'm here to tell you that my love cannot be contained if I lose all else.

My love is all that remains.

I am unbounded by misery's chains.

My intention is to wave.

Why should I refrain in fear that yours aren't the same?

My love does not change if your love is not the same.

I will wave with no expectation of a wave back because I have learned that unconditional love doesn't always love back.

Unconditional love is all that we lack.

If our love is unconditioned, then we will always wave back.

My wave is a reflection of me.

So when I wave to you, I only see me.

It's the absence of unity that we see division between you and me.

So for all to see, open and honestly, I wave.

No shame.

No blame.

I love.

No attachment.

No frame.

I will wave again.

I will love again.

Peace and love, family.

I cannot see your face, so I don't know who's here, but I'm excited that you're here.

I hear your applause.

My name is Michael Mills and it gives me an honor to introduce this next brother up to the stage.

This brother is infamous.

He is bigger than big.

His voice is just as big.

And his brother has been running around the state, the country, bringing the poetry renaissance everywhere he goes.

Let's give a big round of applause for Damian Rucci, y'all.

What is up, everybody?

I want to start it off with a poem.

This is called "Last of the Hardcore."

Baby, you know honesty is a gift, and I've run out of reasons to lie.

I'm a boxcar and a jug of wine.

I run away from my problems.

I say it's all about the culture and art.

Life is a party and I'm all burned out, drunk, throwing rocks at the bourgeois, singing my sermons of self-destruction, of all those pastimes with good company.

Jersey Shore Arts Center, you got a better chance of meeting Jesus at a Waffle House than to see me dropping the ball.

And I'll show you how the devil buys souls.

He left the crossroads.

Now he's the only dude with a lighter at the end of the bar.

And we tossed on the road out the window, somewhere past Toledo, along the I-70 corridor, our guides now toxic women who could mouth the "Hallelujah," who kiss our haunted mornings.

She said, "What if all along the problem was you?"

I know I couldn't keep my word when we were in Missouri, but it's all betrayal and the gospels of men, trailer park alchemy and the elixir of youth.

But that was nine whole cities ago, as you can find my answers between the lines of this poem.

I've lived through my summers in squalor.

I've sung yeets to supermarket angels, manifested half-smoked packs of cigarettes from the beach all the way up to Norwood Avenue.

In the bathroom, I tell her, "We could run away from this too."

But she's grown roots.

In the morning, I'll be all vagabond and ash, all bounding down the highway again, all bohemian and looking to score.

Why are you even talking about tomorrow?

What do you expect to bring home with you?

You know if it's not cutthroat, then it's not American.

So we look to every show as if we're at war, and the liquor and the party are the bounty.

You guys remember when Moses smashed that golden calf?

Everybody was losing their minds, except for the guys who had to clean it up.

And who will clean up in the wake of our mess?

There are no poems there, I promise.

Milo and I have already surfed the carpets.

All we found is bits of soul and old cheese.

My drug dealer went on vacation and took the good times with him, so he'll be grabbing a fistful of America anytime now.

The bad grass never dies.

Every crack in the pavement is room for more life to grow.

Time to hog, root, or die.

Time to carve our grooves into the American highways.

Time to quit our jobs again.

In all this wandering, I've really only learned three universal truths.

Can I share them with you guys?

Good.

One, there's no body positivity when you break a chair at a Cracker Barrel in South Carolina.

I learned that the hard way.

And two, one day the world just collectively forgot about the banned creed.

And three, true love is when you let somebody else lick the bed.

[CHEERS] Jersey Shore Arts Center, how we doing tonight?

[CHEERS] Started at Nip and Tuck, and now we're here, baby!

Can we make some noise for the Jersey Shore Arts Center for letting us do this here?

[CHEERS] The poetry renaissance is grassroots, man.

We all came from nothing.

Nobody believed that we could do these things, but we did them anyway.

And now the poetry renaissance isn't some thing on the Jersey Shore.

It's in Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire, and St. Louis, and it's getting all over this country, and I think that's really cool.

[CHEERS] Because guess what?

When you want your voice heard, sometimes you've got to make it heard.

And that's what we did.

Tonight, we have incredible featured poets.

They're going to blow your socks off.

It's going to be great.

I want to thank you all for being here.

Nobody said we could do this, dawg.

We just did it.

The first poet I'd like to bring out is fantastic.

I saw her kill two times at Court Bresky's show, Coffee at Words.

Please put your hands together for Mannikka Rosa!

[CHEERS] My name is Mannikka Rosa, and if Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders and the USA Track and Field team had a baby, it would be me.

That is who I am to my core.

And so that just led me down this path of self-discovery where I landed on wanting to just dance, I think.

And when I was a junior in high school, I decided to give up all my sports and just completely focus on dance.

And so I went off to school, and I was on the dance team.

And then my senior year, I actually got to fulfill my dream and become a professional dancer for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

It was amazing until it wasn't.

And I was like over, or I finished my season with the Cavs, and it was like, well, what am I going to do now?

And because there was no industry for people like me, I felt really lost.

It was like a really lonely place to be.

So I went back home.

I went to college, and I was dancing out in Ohio.

And I came back home to Maryland, and I found an ad in Craigslist to be a teacher.

And from that point on, I have been in education, and that has been my passion.

It's like, you know what?

This feels like my calling.

This feels like my mission, my purpose.

And that's really the heart of the work that I do is being able to reach students and give them opportunities that I never had to be the teacher that I wanted when I was in the classroom.

And so far, it's been wild and fun, and I love it.

[cheers and applause] The first time I met my bodyguard, I was climbing up my beloved maple tree.

Unaware of the protection, I just felt the affection of a force.

Eye dangled, limbs tangled, sensing that to hang and not be hung was revolutionary.

My bodyguard took me by the feet and pushed on my back simultaneously.

I swung aimlessly, tilting my way through time, getting tangled in the vines and branches of amendments that made voting a crime when done on the dime of a countess.

Countless screams of suppressed souls suffocating my skin, ground-up bones of subjection rejecting my immunity.

I couldn't see that my crown was embellished with sound systems that relished and reigned righteously from above because I was drunk in love with the upside down.

No stranger thing to be drifting to an alternate dimension.

The tension, the anxiety, piercing my DNA, carving up my remains, sculpting me into another shtick like Stacey Dash when she cashed in her black card for silver stones and turned clueless.

But I suppose we are all susceptible to surprise attacks sometimes, like fraudulent hacks that imitate the sublime mind of the divine through the sweetest tongue of a traveling missionary, or folks dressed in white cloaks with bad jokes placing a hoax on primetime TV like that roofian with roofied ring pudding pops who made us all question our reality.

Confidentiality, morality, placed in the hands of surgeons, rewriting the chronicles of my existence, dissecting my body like a game of operation.

That's when I learned to change the station and tune into my body, guard it with giants built in stature, caught up in the rapture of love, replace these golden gloves with hands that will pull you in to a hug or slug you with knuckles the size of brass instruments, a symphony in the ring, a fling of a flickering jab.

My body will grab you into a clench, pinch, penetrate you with a velocity so strong you circulate back to that long, outdated time when man's ribs became prime or you waited in line at mom and pop shops instead of getting daily delivery stops on your doorstep.

Footwork so smooth my bodyguard can groove, move you into the corner, box and weave you into the former piece of yarn you began as, blow you with weighted insults by the twisting of the tongue, turning your titillating timbers of iTunes into apple slices.

My body reminds me that I am not just a shape, a skeleton, a framework without constitution, a figure or a relic that needs to be protected or controlled.

I am bold, bright, big, bad, bustin' out my Bentley Ben, a Jaeger man, burkin', twerkin', workin' 9 to 5 to revive the pieces of me that's had dormant for generations.

My body is the station I tune into when I need to hear love songs of rage because performing on this stage of life is almost impossible without a sanctuary to retreat to.

My body is a mansion and if his eye is on the expansion of the sparrow, then I will narrow in and trust that this body is the essence, the core, the whole, the substance, the staple, the matter, a dissertation, the vessel that voices the verbs of my versification.

And my body cannot be the emancipation for which you proclaim to be free because the proximity of my dignity extends beyond the scope of any man-made dwelling in which you feast.

My body is the belly that birthed the beast, the abode that fed Jonah when God sent him to jail, and that wail, the voice that stood behind Frank when he made the choice to let that bullet hit his chest, the dormitory that refrigerates the milk in my breast that becomes the nectar and lullabies of songs that I will sing to my children.

And if you are so emboldened to trespass on my property, then you will meet my body guarded like a castle, shielding my expansive, expensive senses, defenses.

I put up fences all around my aura, my chakra, my astral plane.

My body is hard-armored for my protection, a screen cover for my aluminosulated face so that I don't shatter from the disgrace of these accommodations that keep me trapped, mapped, twisted, and bleeding while I lie on the ground screaming in this tenement we call home.

My body is the container that catches the fertile drops of tears cascading down the circumference of my face, placing them into riverbanks in the cusp of my throat where they will sit and linger so that I do not choke waiting for you to realize that my body is mine.

[cheers and applause] - Can you tell me about your film Bodyguard?

- So Bodyguard was written, I had a performance for my community.

Again, a very affluent, high socioeconomic community, and they asked me to be a spoken word artist, and I was like, "Oh, okay."

But the performance was going to be at this historically Black church in our community, which is one of the last remaining structures from the Black community that first arrived at our area in our community.

And simultaneously, I was also working with another woman who I was mentoring, and we were having a conversation, and in that conversation, I just saw her body, just like she just went cold on me, you know?

And she didn't want me to come in any closer.

And that just kind of sparked the concept in me of what we as women particularly go through with signaling and messages from society, and how that-- I had nothing to do with any of that pain that she was experiencing, but how we shut down, and the first thing we shut down is our body.

You know, we start to get like this, and that's when I was like, "This is the concept.

We're guarded."

And then I tried to turn that around and flip it on its head and turn it into something that muscular that you were talking-- something like, "Yeah."

I can tell you what it's like to be a nobody, to barely have friends, to get invited to parties, to be bullied in school and considered lame, to sit in your room all day and watch loneliness convert to pain.

I can tell you what it's like to think you'll be single forever, to never be hit up by anyone at any time ever.

But let me tell you a story of glory.

See, I was going through hard times.

I was a miner in search of a gold in a dark mine, and this dark mine was trying to see some light.

Not too many reached out during my most cold and lonely nights, and that's not fair.

That's not right.

Well, too bad, homie.

That's called life.

At times, where feeling fine is the same as upset, it's best you pursue every chance you get.

And for me, that came in the form of one of the most skilled and elegant teachers.

He taught me how to move people with my mind like telekinesis.

I became M.I., the artist, and that was the fire.

And science says flames rise, so I only went higher.

See, the fire brought me a community of like-minded people who show that not all this world is filled with ignorance and evil.

And let me tell you after the fact, I'd rather take part in a dead poet society than be a dead poet in society.

These lyrics are too hard to be kept inside of me.

I mean, come on, man, that would be a mission failed.

I'm deeper than Batman voiced by Christian Bale.

And as you can see, when I speak the fire, I'm confident and all cool, spitting out bars like printers at law school.

Don't stare into these pyro eye holes.

I met one well-sighted sunglasser.

I'm so ill, I gave cigarettes lung cancer.

And look, I said it once, and I'll say it again.

When I'm up to speak, I don't hesitate.

I don't just move the crowd.

I make them levitate.

I blow the room away and walk off, pick up the crowd's ashes, do a LeBron James chalk toss.

See, I socked Father Time in the face and ganked the pen out of his hand.

I rewrote the narrative.

Now I am the man.

I was engulfed in shadow, but I was overcome by a bold force.

I found my way out of the darkness by becoming my own torch.

I hope you all take the same route.

That's how I found my way out.

The fire.

New York City subway.

The air is soaked with energy that dissipates into the heat of the day.

Down the stairs and up the stairs, we all flow together, yet stay apart in our own quest for freedom.

Ambition floats through every crack in this tunnel.

The atmosphere moves me.

Fortunes found underground are just the dreams that we carry with us as we lug our baggage to the next stop.

The atmosphere moves me.

On our way, as we map out our day that will surely never come true, for mystery is along for the ride.

The atmosphere moves me.

I hope this email finds you well.

I hope this email finds you well.

I hope this email finds you a broken man, hunted to the ends of creation, to the end of eternity.

I hope this email finds you unable to cope with a dying world, a burning planet, a closing horizon.

I hope this email finds you as a believer in hell, as an atheist in heaven.

I hope this email finds you at the end of days and reminds you, you are not alone.

I am Kay Cashew.

Thank you very much.

Coming up next, we have a poet I got to see join the poetry renaissance at the beginning of his poetry writing career.

I got to watch him become a fantastic poet, artist, and friend.

Please put your hands together for my brother, Michael Deman.

Jersey Shore Arts Center, let's bring up this energy a little.

Give me a hell yeah.

One more time.

Hell yeah.

That's what I like to hear.

Thank you so much for coming tonight.

Let's get this set started.

I go back again and again.

These moments like monuments are habitual, like my stops to the fountain that serves liquor much past 2 a.m. in New Jersey.

These phases are failing.

We are barely floating on a life raft thrown into the ocean by other normal people just like us.

Paycheck to paycheck.

Can you say that with me, Jersey Shore Arts Center?

Paycheck to paycheck.

Our collection of pennies gets siphoned away for our claustrophobic closets, our so-called studio apartments.

Baked and ready, I will never be the bread served before the entree.

Because I'm too busy being the full course meal.

Thank you.

My name is Michael Deman.

I'm a painter, poet, and prose writer from Jersey City, New Jersey.

It is an absolute honor to be on stage with everybody in front of me tonight.

This next one is called The Heights Still Own.

My soul is for the pazan who started it all for me, my father, Michael Sr.

Your car sits fenced in, rusting at the dump by the waterfront after mahogany paid for as gold was buried deeper than our own very souls.

The yardsticks we whittled away at never knew what they were carved for until they measured every single inch six feet deep.

I'll always keep a parking spot for you at the end of the block where we can laugh and smoke cigarettes until the sun comes up.

And we can bask over the night until the dawn spreads our legs and sends us back to work.

I'll never forget the times on Hancock Avenue.

I'll never forget the times on Austin Avenue.

I'll never forget the times you said I love you on the avenue I still look for you on.

Jersey Shore Arts Center, I still look for you.

Keep it going for Mike Goldman.

That's what I'm talking about.

Next up, we have a fantastic poet.

He's the author of Honey I Met the Strength.

He's been killing it over here at the New Jersey Poetry Renaissance.

Please make some noise for Muntzif Husami.

People often ask me, where are you from?

And I say, Jersey!

But then they ask, where are you really from?

Because of the strangeness of my name, the color of my skin, so who am I?

The child of parents born between a partition and a Cold War, my name is Munsif, which means a judge of what is right or wrong.

But it's hard to tell what's right or wrong about being bundled under the words South Asian.

When two words can't capture the furious energy of our families and the fabric of my people.

The color and the chaos of our hometown carriages, the reunions for our multi-day marriages, those encounters with constant relatives, and how the worst of them feel like a sedative.

The songbird that was my mother when I was sick, my father watching a 90s hit, or my prayers for an easy fast, waiting for that sun to set at last.

So it is a comedy of errors living with my name, but the tragedy of my life was being asked to carry misplaced shame.

You see, I'm a minority, not everyone's favorite beverage.

Too flavorful for folks who only saw in my face those who committed crimes that they can never forget.

Well, I'll never forget either.

Being called illegal, a bomber, the son of a criminal, too weak to defend myself, too strong to let it out, because boys don't cry.

And they didn't teach me a class called coping with acts of war on my country and my identity.

So what was my solace at one point became these chains I cut myself trying to flee because I would do anything to not be labeled a traitor to my own country.

It took me years of loathing myself to realize that owning every inch of this brown heritage is a far better price.

So today, who do I cherish the most?

Those who understand me over chai and toast.

To anyone else, I wear a mask, something immigrants have done long before a pandemic even asked.

So if you're curious whether we carry shrapnel from the old country, come ask us how we're doing, please.

Because we're here chasing dreams too big to fit between the word South Asian.

Yet we cling to what we came from in songs and quotes and lore because we are just so much more.

We are just so much more.

Jersey Shore Arts Center, how we doing tonight?

Just two years ago, I was at my first ever open mic, and I would not be up here today without the love and the support of this beautiful movement which we call the New Jersey Poetry Renaissance.

From the northern end of this state down to well beyond the shore, believe me when I say we've got so much in store.

This next piece is about the process of creativity.

It goes out to all my fellow artists, and it's called Sacrament.

Four teaspoons of failure, half an ounce desperation, one pint of sweat, two of tears, and six cups of shredded fear.

Creation is a sacred act.

Say it with me.

Creation is a sacred act.

So don't flee your craft like it's the exorcist because you'll need to be possessed to undo a spell that tells you, "I am not good enough."

That baby you carry around, you can abort for the price of regret or lose your hair, raising it to life.

Just make sure your work suffers no miscarriage of justice.

Each time you write a page or hit the stage, should be the post-credit scene to just one movie.

You on top of Mount What Is, not that puny hill called What Could Have Been.

And pray for the strength to be more than just pray.

Wipe the blood off your face.

Just embrace the hunter's thrill.

Because that self-doubt, it deserves to get eaten.

And baby, you are just a predator that hasn't had their fill.

Thank you.

This one is for my mother, and it's called Jailbreak.

As a child, I couldn't wait for my mother to stop mothering me all the time.

I had no clue what a mother's love was.

You see, science says that if a mother's body is in danger, the child in her womb sends out stem cells to save her.

Now that reminded me of a memory.

When I was only nine but ran a fever so high, it made the breeze feel chilly.

My mother quietly replaced a wet rag on my forehead, trying to slow things down.

But what stopped the sickness was when she started to sing.

The hum of her voice made those dim yellow lights shimmering in the night sit up and notice, like a packed coliseum, watching her go into battle.

Because when it comes to their children, mothers will fight to the death.

Of course, my fever would not hurt her, but it would take all of her love.

Everything she could give, would give, and had to give, because that's just what her love was.

No terms, no conditions, just good through eternity.

So running on all adrenaline and no sleep, her voice entered the ring, landing hook after hook, until my fever was on the ropes, begging for the bell when her haymaker knocked it down.

As the night watched, learning what she was made of, there was no one to run the count.

I don't know how the song ended or when I even passed out, but I do remember this.

Her words broke me out of the solitary confinement of being sick at an age when I wouldn't even understand what being sick meant.

That nine-year-old fell into a deep sleep.

Blissfully unaware of the prison break, she pulled off with nothing but her words, scaring that sickness into submission, wrenching open the bars that held her son captive, until all the sickness could do was watch.

As I've grown older, I saw far more punishing terms, but even today, when my mind feels cornered and the walls are closing in, I know I can count on her voice, flying through to break me out of whatever cell I find myself in.

[Applause] Give it up one more time for Munsif Husami!

Fantastic!

We have one more feature for tonight.

This next poet has been organizing poetry shows since the 1980s.

He has been super supportive of everything we've done, and is a constant inspiration to me.

He's literally one of the best poets the state of New Jersey has ever produced.

I can honestly say this, there might not be a poetry renaissance without this next guy.

Make some noise for Tom O!

[Applause] So my name is Tom Obrzut, but I go by Tom O. usually, because my last name is impossible for most people to spell or pronounce.

Where I'm from, I'm from, I was born in Montclair, St. Vincent's Hospital, no longer existent.

Lived in Nutley, and then moved to East Brunswick.

Then I was in Florida for a few years, and back to New Brunswick area.

Oregon for a while.

Then I moved to New York City, and met my, not exactly meet my future wife, but I got closer to my future wife.

And we had been friends for like 10 years.

Before that, she was living in the city.

And after that, it was happiness ever after.

I mean, there were a few rough spots, but... Was that the question?

[Tapping] Alright.

This poem is called "Chicken."

I was struck by her eyelids.

She barely looked at me, but I was hypnotized.

She didn't really talk to me.

I built up the courage, approached, and asked how she was.

She didn't seem surprised, and told me, "Good."

I wondered what she was gonna do.

She said, "Go home and drink some wine.

Maybe clean her place."

Tomorrow, she was off, and would bring her boyfriend to the VA.

I didn't ask for what.

She wanted to know what I would do.

I said, "Poetry.

I'm going to a poetry reading."

She looked at me blankly, and replied, "Poultry?

Like chicken?"

I looked away and walked there.

[Applause] Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Thank you.

I noticed that you deflect applause in a very funny and dry way.

Do you not feel that poems should be applauded for, or does it make you uncomfortable when people praise or applaud you in that way?

Oh, that's an interesting thought.

Yeah, probably.

I have seen--right now, there's a lot of interest in poetry.

There's a whole group of young folks that I consider myself associated with who are really enthusiastic about poetic arts and creativity, which I'm so happy for.

And a reading should be like a big party where your Aunt Edith and your, you know, wacky cousin Joey are hanging out together and relating to each other.

And I've always thought of the community that way.

I think that translates into how I think about art and creative work.

I don't like to think of it as-- it's something that's like, in a funny way, almost useless, but the most important thing you could do.

So, like, in the eyes of our society, I think it's not as important as a lot of other things, you know, in some weird kind of abstract sense.

But with that, we're nowhere.

[cheers and applause] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, thank you.

This is called Happy New Year 2024.

It's about some unfortunate events.

I feel like I have a certain kind of talent for being with very distressed, sometimes very violent people and helping them, and people who've gone through trauma and had great difficulties, and being able to pick up on where they're at and be condescending and really be able to connect on a heart level, and I've always felt that so passionately, and it kind of allows me to be in places like the hospital I work in right now, where sometimes bad things happen, and to help people that are in those kind of situations.

And I've always been able to do it without any real fear because I always felt like I could sense where other people were at, even if they were, like, psychotic or not in good control, and I had the experience in December of last year that somebody who I wasn't entirely picking up on the way their distress was manifesting, they assaulted me while I was on the job, and I was out for three or four months after that recovering.

So it just kind of came out of that, and also it was a kind of a way of saying that you could go through anything and still keep your sense of empathy and your compassion for others and not be afraid, because I think what happens to people sometimes when they're traumatized, which I was, you get afraid, and I was afraid.

So it was almost like a way to help myself with the trauma that I had.

Russian poets jailed.

What would Myakovsky say?

What would Myakovsky do?

The sun setting, draining dreams on the couch.

Can't lay down for the broken pieces.

Hear the Irish band, Christmas Eve in the drunk tank.

Sleeping when twelve chimed a broken arm, two hematomas, blessed solitude.

Can't get a plan without a passport.

Beautiful curls in a picture, not even caring, not one bit.

Say that prayer, the one with God in it.

It's not new.

It's the fuse that through the flower burns.

No elites.

Keep trying to read an old book.

The cats, the cats are near.

Monk, Stevie in Paris, young one with a glint in the eye.

Make trouble.

For heaven's sake, make trouble.

They're killing people.

Mothers do not approve.

Somewhere babies are born.

They hold the secret to everlasting laughs.

Here is what was said.

Say it.

Okay, this time it's for real.

No more con games, wrestling matches with propaganda, advertisements.

This time a real year where the homeless find a place and the hungry a meal.

Gonna make it happen.

Even if the words in the spell are hard to pronounce, the pain is right on time.

The arrow shot through its center, bleeding all over the ER with bloody blows.

Embrace a cloud.

That's what he'd say.

And Emily and Bernadette, remember these times were always dark.

Bring a candle to the funeral.

And like he said, the free ones will come.

You shall be among them.

Believe me.

Thank you.

Hurt is what I am when you say you'll check in the next day and don't.

Like today, that came and went faster than I spent my week's pay on believing and hoping for a love worthy enough to stay.

Hurt's how I feel because the deal you sold of you and I together simply sounds better than the actuality of our reality.

Hurt, hidden deep.

Lips in between the sheets, mind beats, heart weak from words you can never unspeak, no matter how much I wish you would.

Hurt so much I should simply walk.

I hear you talk about Trump and I swear I'm gonna throw the f--- up.

Hurt when you insisted he's a very nice guy.

Funny, 'cause all he do is lie.

I have an ounce of guilt in either eye, looking only to divide this country, and I must confide the divide of us.

Leaving nothing but hurt, my heart buried in the dirt of you and me and all I thought we could be.

I appreciate every single one of you.

I appreciate all of humanity that embraces art and culture and performative nature.

And to see people who are terrified, you can see them come up here and their paper is shaking their hand, but they still had the gusto to get up and do it.

That's beautiful.

A little round of applause for everybody who performs.

It's a beautiful thing.

It brings us all together, unites us all, and it's a beautiful thing.

All right, all right.

I'll stop eating up time.

This is called "Crusader," and it's about the human condition, basically.

It's been a while since I'd done this.

Call it a breakthrough.

Matter of fact, let me start over.

Call it take two.

Damn this thirst I have.

I just can't slake you.

I guess I'll make you a new grouping of lines that I can fake through, man.

Every wall I break through has another one behind it.

These old problems feel new when I'm the one to find it.

This paycheck was gone before I ever got to sign it.

These blind hits I take are more than I can fight with.

I got a tight grip on the night and life when I write sh*t. In spite of this, I might miss the sight of all the nice sh*t. I'm twice kissed and twice incised to incite sh*t. Invite this?

Maybe I do.

Like a blade invites wrists.

Tonight I write like my life depends on it.

And in a beautiful way, maybe it does.

Between my ears, all I can hear is transmitter fuzz.

Tonight I clear away the tears and years and everything that was.

And write my tombstone's epitaph that simply says, "Because."

I'm briskly buzzed with whiskey love, and so I'll have another.

Kiss me rough, my skin is tough, but I can be a lover.

And I believe that I can be the seed to feed my brother.

And we don't need to bleed for vision.

We don't need to suffer.

And someday, we will see that we don't need religion to love each other.

We don't need religion to love each other.

We don't need religion to love each other.

We don't need religion to love each other.

Thank you.

[cheers and applause] ♪ ♪ Oh we are exactly what you see ♪ ♪ Bruised and scraped our knees Still we find our way ♪ ♪ Some come as quickly as they go ♪ ♪ Some choose their own roads Still they find their way ♪