June 22, 1993: In the mic I told the poet who read before me that I'd imagined she was whispering in my ear

Thirty years ago today

            On Tuesday Nancy brought my daughter down. I called Mike Copping at work to invite him to the poetry open stage at The Last Temptation. He said he might come but probably wouldn't. Nancy came to pick up the baby at around 22:00 and so I didn't get to The Last Temptation before 23:00. There was a street suit problematic suicidal white guy who had a lot more to say spontaneously than he did in his writing there with a gorgeous young woman of South Asian descent. She had a really sexy voice and when I got up to read after her I told her so with the microphone. I said, "I was pretending you were whispering in my ear". Later on I read a couple of pieces from my writing book that Mike picked out for me. One of them was a poem that women might have been offended by. I also sang "Me and Gravity": 

Well, I haven’t got a girl to bed 

just this three-ring circus in my head 

How can I reconcile the two 

and bring her to the show? 

Out on the battlefield of dreams 

amid countless unmarked graves of schemes 

I save the world and win the girl 

but walk away unknown 

I walked along the street today 

same route that I took yesterday 

and on and on and on and on 

from coffeeshop to barroom 

Sometimes I think I’m off the line 

one millisecond out of time 

Just enough to send my life 

careening into limbo 

Whenever I lay bare my heart

it looks like the Grand Canyon park 

and people gasp at a desert hole 

that’s too deep to believe 

They walk around, they stop and stare

they leave their garbage everywhere

but no one wants to stick around 

it’s the kind of place you leave 

Well, some have stayed a night or two 

some even stayed the whole month through 

but those few must have gotten lost 

or fallen in the well 

where some carved their names in its smooth sides

or used it for an alibi 

But one turned that hole inside out

and rang it like a bell 

Some days my feet hit the ground 

with my fate turned the right way around 

and everything slides into place 

the way it’s meant to be 

But whether in that state of grace 

or grafted to love’s glass embrace 

no surgery can split this waltz 

of me and gravity 

In the end it’s plain to see 

it’s all between me and gravity 

            I rode with Mike to Roncesvalles.