00:00 [ Background noise ] >> And thank you and hello to everyone who is online. And yeah, I think it's great. That would be the best we can do. And I will start with this poem, so the "Crimea of Syria." And I'll say one name, you know, that I think we can all hear his voice like, you know, Ana Pavlikova. And I remember him many readings occasion this point that is very nice, so. And the Crimea, Syria. I passed out tonight. I passed out in the bathroom of a club that closed while I was inside. I'm still inside. I'm alone inside. My phone is dead and the door is locked, but I know I will be saved.

00:56 A beautiful cleaning lady running from cleaning buckets in a faraway continent will come to save me. Her name is Anna Pavlikova and I love her. Her father is an officer of the Russian army and her mother is a president of the European Union. Anna, remember when we first met? You recited a Pushkin poem by heart and put forward a begging hand. I gave you 10 rubles, 30 kopecks, and 50 leaves because I had forgotten where I was. You always managed to make me forget--someone will have to go downstairs here are the keys. Thank you very much. And you always managed to make me forget.

01:43 Then I forgot myself. My passport and every penny I had in this world was gone and they now funded beers for the resistance movement of Transnistria, but I didn't have to beg, you had kept those twenty lees and bought me kebabs and beers for them at your uncle Hamad's place. It was Hamad who taught you all of Pushkin's poems while you made kebab the summer before. Then you realized there was more money in Pushkin than in making kebab. He asked me, "Do you see this poverty? What makes us more poor than the rest?"

02:15 I couldn't answer, just vaguely recalled some numbers that I didn't understand any better than anyone else back then, at the end of time, the spring before the crash. I will clean up the whole world for you, dear Anna Pavlikova. I will protect you from Putin. I will challenge a Russian bear. Only for you, Anna, only for you. I will die in his cold embrace if I can only stay at night in your arms, Anna. For you, I will challenge every bear in the world. I will drone them with drones. I will send submarines to destroy the polar bears while you melt the ice caps with your laser eyes.

02:51 I will save all the children in Syria so you can be a mother to them. I will explain to all the mothers of the world that I only care for you. I will ask your mother for your hand. I will ask the one-legged beggar for your hand. I will ask the nightingale for your hand. I will ask the third platoon for your hand. I will ask the sun and the moon and the stars for your hand. I will ask the king and queen for your hand. I will ask the workers for your hand. But your hand, Anna Pavlikova, is the only thing I found. Three grenades were thrown on Kabul's chicken street,

03:22 where Icelandic bankers were busy busing the world's most expensive carpet. They flew away on their private flying carpet. But by the side of the carpet, salesman, you can see the dress you wore when we first met. It's a sleeveless dress, and next to it lays your hand. But dear Anna, this is not over. This will never be over.

03:47 This is when the cleaning ladies take over. When the cleaning ladies take over, everybody will have to take off their shoes. When the cleaning ladies take over, those who take the chairs off the table before it's allowed will be first against the wall. When the cleaning ladies take over, the world will be spotless. No. When the cleaning ladies take over, no one will ever clean anything ever again, and the The world will be dirty and honest." This is actually up for debate. This could cause a collapse. We are not all the same, even if you think so. Some of us hate to scrub floors.

04:31 Others love it. Some of us hate those who make us scrub the floors so much they want them to do it. Some of us hate the scrubbing itself and don't want anybody else to scrub ever again. Some of us love to scrub and want others to scrub too, but when the cleaning ladies take over, the revolution will be televised. When the cleaning ladies take over, you'd better pray you remember to return your tray. When the cleaning ladies take over, all the world's bosses will have to work overtime to rub their backs, their shoulders, and their ankles.

05:08 When the cleaning ladies take over the world will be spotless. So I'm going to just read two pieces. One is I wrote for Askey and the second one will be by him and we're here in his apartment by the way. Mountains have been known to tumble just to hear themselves think. The head still screwed on in Prague, in Reykjavik. In Tarlin, you found the errant Odessa steps and a picture of a man caught in a fusillade, freeze-framed, as if on an Icelandic mountainside. Midnight, on this island neither delicate nor precise, with dowsing rods tipped at a stage-prop sum, fallen flat.

05:58 The word "liskira" for example, which means "life-song epic lament" and is all these simultaneously as long as the Earth performs its ungainly somersault. Or somewhere at the back of a mind caught drifting, a glacier sneaks by with light streaming off it. And before you can think, tomorrow's movable feast has moved on. And the silent film you'd been directing all this time without seeming to abruptly shouts, "It's a wrap." [APPLAUSE] This is Human Park, I ask you. Screeching monkeys dance on our rotten bones. Global warming makes tropical animals eat the grass over our white skulls,

06:49 while boxing kangaroos swim across the oceans on steamboats. But soon, nasty-looking giant rabbits arrive and scare the monkeys away. They want to study our fossils, learn how they can put the pieces of our skeletons back together, but they'll misunderstand us completely. Your fine skull will be put on my misbegotten body. In death will be a transgender dinosaur while our words will be twisted by lemurs and dolphins and birds of the sky. Those animals will spend thousands of years searching for the meteor that killed us all.

07:28 None of them will believe the smartest creatures on the planet had, in the end, been even more stupid than the dinosaurs who now seep into our DNA until a mad science buffalo makes a human a raptor on a distant island in the Atlantic Ocean. Where are the cats? I see dogs after dogs after dogs. They wag their tails, they are happy. They make me happy too. Those are nice dogs. I love the gentle giant that comforted me at the bar at three in the morning. I love the big old hippie dog that came to talk to me when his owner, when he had lost his owner.

08:23 So, yes, I love thy neighbor's dog, but where are the cats?" When I was ten, I got my first cat. The most surprising birthday present came walking down the stairs. And after my fate was sealed, I was a cat person forever and ever. I was 20 when I first came to Prague and my fate was sealed. I would run away, but Prague was always my first love. Prague and cats, Prague and cats, but not Prague and dogs.

09:11 Where are the cats?

09:17 This is perhaps the greatest mystery of my life. How could a cat person fall in love with a dog city? But then a voice whispers, "Prog is not a dog city." That's impossible. Prog doesn't sit. We need to tell it to sit. Prog isn't a good boy. You know, you don't throw prog a bone. Prague allows dogs inside the gates of the city but Prague will never be a dog city. Yet they are everywhere. And where are the cats? At home with your mother? Spying on us from the rooftops? Yes and no. Sure your mother has a cat. most importantly, your mother is a cat. A cat in human form, as old as the city. No,

10:26 I was wrong. My mother is not a cat in human form. She isn't any regular mother. She is a mother to us all. The only, the one and only. And then I see her. The real cat. The big cat. A cat that's bigger than any lion or any tiger looking at me from above. From the spires I see those yellow eyes. And this mother has claws. Because Prague is not a cat city. Prague is a cat. The cat. The city that will cuddle you one moment, purr at your leg, but also put its claws into you. not out of hate, but out of boredom to teach you a lesson.

11:35 To teach you that your human wisdom is no good here.

11:47 This is a city of real wisdom, half earned and difficult wisdom, Unflinching and cruel wisdom. The wisdom of cats. The wisdom of poetry that only cats understand. The wisdom of random moods. The wisdom of long-dead magicians who worship their cats. Who worship Prague, the alchemists. Kafka was turned into a cat. Just listen. Kafka. cat. Kafka. Cat. It's really the same word. You can hear it, the best son of the city was of course a cat. The locals get themselves a dog because they are exhausted. Exhausted by the whims of the city.

12:52 And its demands, to be loved when they are tired, even when they want somebody to fetch their slippers. Getting a dog is a small act of rebellion, but is futile. To become a great Prague poet, a great Prague leader,

13:15 You must first become a cat. Become the city. So the city is all those people. Your mother, and Kafka, and Vaclav, and Karol, and Kundera, and Susanna, and Zuzka, and Victoria, and Honza, and all the other cats. Prague is a cat. all cats, the human cats, the real cats, the big, beautiful cats we all love and fear because this mother, this mother has claws and it will never let you go. south all the way south. I remember the whiteness, the complete whiteness, when you disappeared into the snow, all 90 centimeters of you. I also remember when

14:22 you disappeared to a prison, somewhere between Athens and Prague. After that I invented the cell phone and the internet and inserted a microchip under your skin while you slept. The crosses like matchstick men as far as the eye can see. As far south as your imagination can dream bones in the ground, bones of long extinct sea mammals, Galapagos bones, bones of kangaroos, bones of velociraptors and sword tigers and mammoths, polar bears, bones that are still inside of bodies, vagabones. And then full circle across the globe, my bones

15:19 behind you, beneath you, crick crackle, crick crackle, crick crackle. And I tell you everything I never got around to say as you stare into the empty holes of my eye sockets not hearing what you've been waiting to hear. I tell you of the ancient treasures of the family on a faraway island that is still there hundreds of of years later, because none of us can listen properly while listening to a talking skeleton. To be or not to be is not a question you will think of when the skull speaks back. You simply look at all the mud and the dirt attached to my bones, the crack from the frozen ground,

16:18 icing on my fingers when I touch you one last time and I know you will only listen properly understand properly when you join us they always shoot you in the back of the neck they shoot you in the back of the neck if you don't show up for work. They shoot you in the back of the neck if you work too hard. They shoot you in the back of the neck if you're lazy. They shoot you in the back of the neck if you lie. They shoot you in the back of the neck if you tell the truth. They shoot you in the back of the neck if you vote for the wrong party. And they shoot you in the back of the

17:00 neck if you vote for the right party. But they don't shoot you in the back of the neck anymore. No, they stopped doing that when they discovered the metaphor. Now they kindly let you live. But you always get the worst rates in the bank, you always get the worst food in the supermarket, you never get the job you dream of, you never find the love you seek, you never get anything you dream of because they have already shot you in the back of the neck. You lie there by the side of the road and the blood flows from your neck and you simply

17:32 don't realize because you think they stopped shooting people. And that's why you just keep living like a zombie that nobody cares about because everybody knows you're really just laying there by the side of the road and rotting. You are a ghost who doesn't know he's a ghost. A ghost that thinks he's alive. A ghost that was shot in the back of the neck and didn't notice. But there are plenty of us lying here by the side of the road. We can make our own ghost city and dance the night away. react strangely to us. They don't really know what to do about us. That's why we don't

18:10 have any credit history. That's why we're not allowed into those fancy restaurants. That's why we don't get any decent jobs. But there are so many of us now that we can dance during the night while the living are asleep. We are so many now that our parties are better than yours. We are so many now that our arsenal is bigger than yours. We We are so many now that soon you won't stand a chance. And soon the ghosts of the night will eat your flesh and toss your bones away by the side of the road. In a cafe in Kiev, I wrote a poem in Cyrillic about the steps of Russia, the rainforests

18:54 of the Amazon and the volcanoes of Iceland. And forgot the poem with the tip. I never thought out what happened to it, but my friend Sergey later told me a true story of the Austin Stasis tourists who are the steppes, rainforests and volcanoes from the menu all in flawless Ukrainian. Heskivetsen to you too, sir. I heard you the first time, but I didn't know who it may have been. They don't normally wish that. They never say such things, but you tend to bring it out even now. The trams seem quiet, with one less poet spewing nonsensical words into the empty sound, and

19:43 I can hear them clap uncomfortably at this unusual greeting and goodbye. Crack another public pivot and hope to hear you again. Pesky Vetchard, and good night. (audience applauds) Sorry.

20:06 And then I'll read faces.

20:17 We walk up the main street. I'm accompanied by the workers marching band. They play pots and pans. The washboard player is the star of the show. I know this mighty mustache and this confident stride, a local hero armed with a washboard. But also a Serbian drunk from a forgotten dream. There's a middle-aged lady dressed in furs banging the drums. She was never in my dreams. The policeman peeks through the curtains. Soon we'll meet again. There's a knock and no answer, but we'll meet again. We knock harder. Soon we can smell the pepper spray. I don't know it, but my more experienced companions

21:14 recognized it from Paris. We meet again. They don't smile. they cry, cry the yolks from the eggs. When the picture is produced, they have become shiny Christmas decorations. It all ends on air, live. We'll be on air. Therefore, we are. [APPLAUSE] I can see the future. When Iceland collapsed, I lost my dad. He disappeared when the banks collapsed. He was still missing when we burned down the Christmas tree and toppled the government. He was last seen leaving the house to buy a kitchen installation, but five years later we started protesting again. That's when I went looking for my dad.

22:12 But in the future I won't understand. I won't understand you. I'll start to forget. The mind goes before the body, and will dwell in a tomb for decades. I'll keep moving my lips and ask for food and have opinions on the last five minutes of the news but me, myself, I'll be long gone. Perhaps I was never there. Perhaps I was always this vegetable that filled my head with football scores and useless knowledge instead of thinking and loving, and caring and changing.

22:48 It took me a while to get going. First I didn't know where to look. Then I had to dare to enter that world. I search for you in a sea of faces. Yet Dad still lives at the same place. Yet he's lost. Even he still sleeps in the same bed as Mom, I can't find him. Even if I meet him every Christmas, I can't find him. Sometimes I think I see you, then you change into somebody else. Sometimes I can't see you well enough, I'm never certain. I can count those videos, shaken and stirred. This is revolutionary dogma, and those morph into...

23:37 what if i had drunk beer and red wine with them well it's you that i search for you this loaded word the people you know the people that eliminate all the people you don't know

23:52 in the future you'll get enough of me you'll visit me only out of duty you'll curse me in your innermost thoughts while you eulogise me out of sheer shame. A human being is not just a body. A human being is thoughts, words, memories and action. Memories. In the future our thoughts will be digitised. They will be kept in a data bank in the highlands. We We won't have to worry about the machines taking over, we'll be the machines ourselves. And then we'll fight a bloody battle over the last gigabytes in a humanless world. Meanwhile, you microwave the leftovers for the leftovers of men.

24:43 Dad gave me pocket money when I was little, and sometimes a small loan when I was not little but still irresponsible. Dad was one I could always count on. was the one whose thumb I squeezed and thought that thumb was the coolest thing in the world. Dad is the one whose beard I pulled. Dad is the one who taught me math before a test. It's a sea of 50,000 people polluted by tear gas and outlawed internet and you are all fascist, every one last of you, according to the minister who claims that you are far and far between. More of a trickle. Let's see.

25:32 Ghost cord. My childhood basketball court is covered in snow as I'm quarantined in the childhood I tried to leave behind. Successfully until now. My childhood basketball court is covered in snow, and I don't have a pen on me. But I have a camera. I'll record this unique feeling through 12.3 million pixels, and I hope it will capture it long enough before I find the ink and pen on a laptop and electricity. My childhood basketball court is covered in snow, and the camera on my phone suddenly doesn't work. It shuts down. It can only take pictures of the present.

26:14 It can only take pictures of reality. It cannot capture a childhood long gone. It cannot capture a word. Without people, it cannot capture my memories. It can capture the snow. And the now has left us. The now will not return until spring, or the next year, or the year after that. Maybe we miss the now. Maybe we go with cell phones, who seem to work until we take a picture to prove that we exist. But since we don't, since the streets are empty, and you are not really walking down that street, you think you are walking down, then of course there is no way to take that picture

26:57 of your childhood basketball court.

27:02 You'll just have to remember those words and whisper them the next time. You see your fellow ghosts stuck in other childhoods, stuck in other memories, and now you whisper this to them in the hope that this is not permanent. And eventually, we'll return to our human form, at least for a while. [applause] January 21st, 2019. Hey buddy, how are things? You're nearby, my phone tells me. The cellar bar, I'm guessing. I guess the first question is, do we have enough poetry to fill the evening? This is exactly what I'm thinking. Hey buddy, how are things?

27:47 Schedules aren't playing in my favor, so this is good. You've simplified my plans. Might take a short pint break in an hour or so with you, if you want to. I'm wondering if we should start a writing group for poets here in Prague with the sole purpose of helping everybody. And the way we could do this is meet 40 hours a year. (Laughter) Hey, buddy. How are things? I have a vague recollection of seeing a socket in one of the stairways of that cellar bar. We can stay there and write there. And how long is it bright outside these days? The internet says, until nine, which sounds right.

28:28 I'm on my way outside to bring cash to that cellar bar. You're right, a credit card machine would totally ruin that cellar bar. Hey, buddy, how are things? Prague is getting more dangerous to take a planned, unplanned walk in. You end up drinking the whole evening, and that was five years ago. (Laughter) Maybe it means I've been here too long or long enough. Depends how you look at it. I met a girl tonight who has a broken thumb, so she can't dance too much. She must have been a poet. (Laughter) Hey buddy, how are things? Operation Walk Home from Smikov accomplished,

29:12 and happy birthday, my friend. and, after Iceland, we'll share some poetry in September, and maybe see you at Marco's, where I'll bring some mustard to read with my sausages. (Laughter) Hey, buddy, how are things? I'm wondering if I should go to Zizkov, where there is beer, and a logged-off Skype session. I figured I would check if the bars still exist. That's okay. I'll find beer elsewhere. Perhaps the ones in the fridge could be opened. (Laughter) But anyways, I have a question. What's the longest you've ever gone without sleeping? Because a professor of mine once said,

29:55 "Sleep deprivation is the best inspiration a poet can get." So I guess I've been inspired for 36 hours. And now my heart is racing and my eyes are wide, and I should sleep, but I want to write. Get out the pen, my friend, and become dangerous. It's the longest it's ever been since 20 years, and back then that was when I was trying to stay awake in a Serbian prison. And that was when during the Balkan Wars, my parents realized that their innocent little son had a spectacular talent for getting himself into trouble as soon as he left the country. "Hey buddy, how are things?

30:35 I'm always up for a good circus. Are you near that cellar bar? I need the Calvary because Agnar is giving up, yep. Hey buddy, how are things? Are the pubs already closed? Has the cellar shut its doors? I have a total of two beers to last me until Tuesday, my friend, when do you come back? Let me know when you get in so I can give you a proper welcome. I have been starved of poetry readings.

31:06 Hey buddy, how are things? I'm currently unpacking the Icelandic dysfunction, drinking in a place with shades because it's looking rainy. I'll have it ready this evening when I see you at Marco's. Hey, do you know any one word in English for sticking your tongue out? It's just "ula" in Icelandic, yet another example why Icelandic is more advanced than English. (Laughter) And "galva" in Faroese. You can choose which one you'll adapt into English, Galva or Ola, I'll let you choose Hey, buddy, how are things?

31:45 You don't happen to be near me. Would you I just finished being near there and just finished some beer there and Beer inspired writing and was hoping to find somebody for a beer here. I

31:59 Hope you had a good time at the pen and happy birthday I hope you will find some mustard for those sausages my dear friend my good friend "Hey buddy, how are things? I'm sicker than a cat in bed. You probably got catvid-19, probably. But happy new year and happy new year, my friend. How's life in Zhizhkov? Does the beer taste of freedom or worry? Let's see tomorrow what we have not yet figured out." "Hey buddy, how are things? And at what time are we meeting?" "Eleven a.m." you said? The poet's union will never recognize the existence of time before

32:41 noon. And how soon will you be back in Prague? The word on the street is that you may be on the street, perhaps drinking in Krimska or that cellar bar. I love that question. Maybe I can convince myself to come just for one poem. And Happy New Year, friend. Happy New Year, my friend. And this year we will raid the cellar bar with writing and drink entire notebooks and make poetry accidentally hey buddy how are things finally recovered just in time for morning the cellar is empty and tempting i'm with an

33:18 icelandic girl and of course i should introduce her to you a shady poet loves other shady poets three years of constant rejection takes a toll i'm also licking my wounds are you going to marcos tonight, I have a poem about teeth I will read. And hopefully we will manage to be productive enough to get together and then do nothing. Hey buddy, how are things? I'm in Iceland for a few hours and I wanted to see if you've ever been here. I'd like to try being here with you here. Gargle a gull, you know. A gull? No. Please no. Please any other beer

33:59 but gull. I thought there would be more ice here. We keep the ice hidden. You need to get cozy with the locals. But you're there and I'm not there. Hey skiter, how are things? That's Icelandic for I wish you were here. I learned it because I'm with Agnar and we are having a good time here. Mon Dieu, at what godforsaken drinking establishment are you picking up such foul language? Hey buddy, how are things? Mr. Downtown, I request your presence on the Charles Bridge. We are taking pictures of it under this new soft snow and

34:41 we will send photos of it to the Prague Post and then sell all the snow to the tourists who will pay in euros and we can open a weed kiosk under the bridge as trolls. Hey buddy, How are things? Take care of Praha until I get back. And whereabouts are you traveling? To a river spot outside the city to dunk this head in. There's a child at the bar playing an old typewriter. I'll just assume it's yours. Oh, and drink a poem for me there outside the city when you dunk that head of yours in. Hey buddy, how are things? I don't remember anything, and I can't read my own handwriting.

35:25 I don't know why I do this. Hey buddy, how are things? I'm on my way to the airport, and we'll be back for Marcos in a few hours. Hey buddy, how are things? Are you in Prague over the holidays? I'm thinking of having some hot chocolate and cookies at my place. Hey buddy, how are things? I hope to see you soon, but it might be a while, since I'll be going home.

35:56 Hey, buddy, how are things? So this is it. I'm not fit for chemo, and have only weeks or hopefully months. Hey, buddy, how are things? I'm leaving the hospital to enjoy whatever is left at home. Hey, buddy, how are things?

36:19 [APPLAUSE] Under the bridge, we salute you when you head off across the bridge, and we mourn for you when you return one day.

37:17 I'm not sure if that was finished or not That was under the bridge. We salute you when you head off across the bridge and we mourn for you when you return. Yet one day you will all meet under it and shake hands. But then another war has commenced above. That's Hobe Vadur, an Armenian poet.

38:36 OK, I have a poem I wrote to Asghar, and then a short thing, it's called P.S.

38:51 Did I tell you you remind me of John the Baptist? Or yours in poetry?

38:59 Touching the void with your pinky, curled round your phone like you're hiding it from teachers. shouting mumblecore fantasies of a penguin-laced acid trip funded by the Lynch Foundation for remarkable Icelanders clear. Our up-finning guru plowed at the bar, an insomniac's mattress-eyed, scritched into the burner taps and the bar woman's hard-earned wall of fame. She likes you, I say. Chasing pavements is on its way out, you say. Hoverboards are in. Hoverboards that will rise you to the heavens, gliding over the railway tracks of the future. We see you in the trees with God and the girl

39:50 you loved at the back of the tram. And the boy you resurrected as a he/him poet in a bikini, holding onto you tight like a YouTube playlist. "Waiting for Heaven Can Wait" by Charlotte Gainsburg, featuring Beck. Listening to "Young and Old" by Gregor Sampson. Why a bikini, you ask? Where's just the thought of you in a bikini, I say. You wear yourself well, you know, like John the Baptist.

40:24 You smuggle your culture into a world where everybody's about to make it big. leaping from your Trojan chicken, your mellow soundtrack blaring from its nostrils.

40:39 Nico, Nick Drake, Elliot Smith, Billy Holiday, the Tinder sticks. Of course you like the Tinder sticks. Until the morning comes by the Tinder sticks blaring from the Trojan chicken's nostrils, obfuscating the soldier ants rattling off your tongue like dark, beautiful feelings. You said the Beatles are overrated. I asked you who your heroes were. Never call them heroes, you said, but Cohen, Waits, Mitchell, Krill, and the girl you didn't talk to on the tram who maybe loved your back.

41:16 Scrolling effortlessly our cosmic consciousness till you come across a world superpower in the womb of a meaningless word put to rest. Monday, 25th of November, 2024, Café Nuschke Papier. On stage, you read a poem, "Tropic of Manor." You wrote on the spot about me and the poet Anna Spirokova. We'd just read poems in each other's style. This made you smile. Everything made you smile except war and Megalopolis. Iceland's number one cinema and literature critic, a true Menningar Smiglari. which roughly translated means a person who shows up, supports his friends always, puts the work in,

42:06 means what he says and knows what he means, knows what he does and why he does it, and gives his love in spades. Hugs like a bear, and laughs like a bear, and catches fish from rivers with his bare hands just like a bear, and drinks like a bear who's itching to work at Duolingo in the research department where they seek increasingly surreal sentences to use in their lessons in order for their clients who are failing to grasp tricky grammatical structures to at least have a giggle. Meninga smiglare. A stick,

42:42 a stone, it's the end of the road, Art Garfunkel sings. Of course you like Art Garfunkel, you big big softy. Now you've heard all the songs and seen all the films the ones you'll miss I'll watch for you and I'll make notes and address them to you because you're easy to talk to and you don't mince words and I'll strive forever to make things easy to understand and always speak our truth and I'll wake up next to you and guide you into prayer whether God is or isn't or is and isn't there. Yours in poetry, Michael. (audience applauds) And the poem we made up on the spot, "Tropic of Mana."

43:26 "Tropic of Mana," Michael is never more Michael than when he's trying to be Anna. (audience laughs) Anna is never more Anna than when she's trying to be Michael. Vienna is never more Vienna than in Prague. And Henry Miller is never more Henry Miller than when he's being misquoted in a bar in Vršovice. Ask it. [APPLAUSE] Hi, everyone. For a very brief time that I knew Asgeir, I loved his poetry. and every time we met I used to ask him to read the poem that he wrote on penises and every time we met I made him read this poem and I would at least if he's not very happy to read it

44:22 I would tell him please give me that poem let me read it I would laugh my heart out Asgir I know you're in a better world today and when we meet in that better world I'll again make you read that poem on the penises. We love you Asgir and I'm gonna read one of his poems "Revenge of the Marsipals" by Asgir. While the cola bears burn, I pour gasoline on my car. When the kangaroo fails to jump over the fire, I order lemur meat for my private jet. When a firefighter accidentally steps on a possum, I call my friend from the Russian Mafia, Mike Eure. He scores me some meat

45:15 from the last Tasmanian tiger for the wedding. Slowly cooked over forest fires. Yet I had a baby kangaroo when I was six. I didn't have any friends apart from this baby kangaroo. The baby kangaroo was my first friend. But then everybody else wanted me to wanted to be my friend too. The recipe for popularity when you are six is to really have is to have a really cute marsupial. But then he died. My lovely little kangaroo baby was drowned in the toilet by jealous school bullies and now finally it will avenge that.

46:04 Now the bullies buy electric cars and go vegan but it is too late. The ghost of the kangaroo baby that you drowned in the school toilets of the children's school of Akureyri on December 1st 1982 will whisper in my ear and the whole world to destroy us all for killing the only kangaroo baby that made it all the way to Akuhari. He will avenge the kangaroo babies that have been killed through the centuries, avenge all the koala bears, avenge all the Tasmanian tigers. He will avenge all the underage petty thieves who died on the first fleet to Australia. He

46:50 He will avenge the aboriginates, and he will avenge the Tasmanian tiger. But the doubts are true, global warming is not caused by men. It was the Tasmanian devil who melted the glaciers. It was the mother of my kangaroo baby that lit the forest fires. There's a koala bear waiting to push the button on nuclear launch in the Arctic. When that happens, the polar bears will avenge. And we, sinful humans, will just watch and regret the moment when we drowned an innocent kangaroo baby in the school toilet of Children's School of Acquiring on December 1, 1982. Thank you so much.

47:41 So I will read a poem that was in part inspired by Asger and other recent events.

47:55 And then I'll read one of his poems, of course.

48:02 This is just dated 26th January.

48:08 "Now the cowards are in charge, "and cancer's claimed yet another great soul too soon. "Chaos churns elsewhere. Lives upended and losses deeper than the distance to the earth's core. Yet here atop this hill with fairy tale rectangles of homes clustered below. I am calm. Birds chirp. Cars rush on the roads below. My heart beats. Life goes on. The ache is a desolate landscape of cold dark brown and waves of volcanoes rising above the mist. The voice lamenting reminds of Maria callous. Her skilled, tuneful voice lives on in compressed recordings that capture just enough of its beauty. Just

48:58 enough of its beauty to continue to enrapture those of us born well after her demise. May all the great souls leave behind a thing of beauty to enchant a single other or a whole community. For life is already so full of misfortune, no war, no famine, no demonization of our fellow beings, please let us manifest our energy to conjure and continue the warmth and depth and heart of ourselves. And all those we know, I have known and love.

49:43 And I was just flipping through this and landed on the happy chicken. It's your happiness that inspires me to write these words. I have no certificate, but I don't need it. I could taste the happiness eating you just now. Chicken that tastes like that can't be bred in some genocidal factory farm. it must have run, it must have run along happily on an idyllic farm all its life where a buxom farmer's wife fed it regularly in between loving embraces from her bearded farmer. Their happiness was your happiness. The birds also caught this happiness bug and they multiplied like never before.

50:29 You were bred with love, it simply has to be. But perhaps you were unhappy all of your short life. Perhaps my happiness is your misery. Perhaps I'm enjoying the taste of fear, the fear of dying. Perhaps it's your sad last thoughts that tastes so lovely with the mustard sauce.

50:51 Perhaps I feed off the unhappiness and misery of others, the fear of others. Perhaps all the food I complain about was produced with unlimited happiness and care. It's fearlessness doesn't feed the fear in my heart. The fear of death I enjoy devouring every day, the life I shorten with every breath. We are together in this war. You are part of me, and we'll meet the same end. I will be a feast for hungry worms and bacteria that might candidly tell each other, tastes just like chicken. In between eating, they'll lie to themselves that I died happy. (audience applauds)

51:32 This one's called "America," so that appealed to me. I met her-- and it's by Asgar, of course, from his book. I met her at the Red Lion, a bar in London's Soho district. Wild curly hair tried to escape a woolen cap. She was wearing Converse sneakers, and she was American. But she told me she never felt at home there, not even before Bush made them the nation that owns everything and respects nothing. She never felt at home there. She needed places filled with history, where every attic is filled with bishops, saints, and murderers, lines from hanging robes in every corner,

52:14 where the wolves are real, but not just questionable jocks coming on to cheerleaders. But then she came to Europe, London. Afraid of a new language, she took one step at a time, first a new culture, then a new language. And after a year over there, over here, she had started to understand the stories back home better. All the cities and all the states that had Indian names, no one understood. The America of Springsteen, Spider-Man, and Humphrey Bogart, the land that begat Hemingway and Steinbeck, and fostered Europeans like Billy Wilder. The land that embraces us, and we only

52:52 notice when it's squeezed too hard. America crushes us, but the world embraces us. But America is the world, globalization, man. We've stopped noticing America's embraces except when we see the bloodshed after the embrace, the bloodshed from the towers that fell, making the world shake. And New York, man, New York, there is the soul and also the wound, the wound that must heal so it stops bleeding so badly when America embraces us.

53:24 - Ciao, guys. So, "Ciao" as "Gair" I think I finally know how to pronounce the name and he always was laughing. I didn't really do it right. It's a beautiful name. I wrote just to, I don't know, it's a pleasure for me like that. So, there's no need to talk a lot or talk a bit. There's no way to act like that or act like this. there are only few souls who are so strong and soft at the same time and they will never disappear because other souls beautiful like us will keep them in our memories.

54:13 So this is a poem I wrote in early January when it was a weekend snowing here and I was Thinking about Asger. So it's it is called footprints in the snow midday windburn face bout Crossing tundra to reach the coast Eyes locked on a foreign path snowflakes flit around their head View reaches just a yard beyond the frozen side Hips rotate like a tower clock legs lift and drop like a pump jack Short breaks allow to catch a breath, to gather strength, to visualize the mission's goal, the journey's end, decisive feet plow through snow.

55:02 By now, the earth has turned halfway round as the day slides into a long night. Planets, stars, and moon illuminate the way. Gone are footprints in the snow, the sound of waves say hello. [APPLAUSE] My friend, I have no word. I see you smiling, cheering. I hear your mild voice. I feel your presence. I hope you feel mine and all the thoughts of all your friends. So many people you met and who love you, my dear friend. I hear you shouting an Icelandic poem. I hear you reading in English, I hear you joking, and reading and printing details of a book as if it would be the most fascinating poem.

55:52 My friend, no one knows the future, although you've wrote it. And I hope we meet again in Prague in this or another dimension. Prague is full of cracks towards other realms. Like Iceland, I guess, with all its lively volcanoes, bringing the blood of life to the face. I should come to Iceland. I love the volcanoes. I could then hug you on the way. Let's see if I can make it. No one knows tomorrow. Life is so short and so long. We are lucky when we catch it, once in a while, through our loves, our poems, our walks, our loves, our drunkness. I hope you make it, brother. You are a fighter.

56:34 You are alive and surrounded by love. Cheers to you, my friend. [APPLAUSE]

56:46 And I would suggest maybe before we end the broadcast, thank you, everyone. And maybe let's have a silence, like a minute or whatever, where we all just send all our love. In many traditions, when people are departed, you send your love to help them whatever is after, no clue. And you feel the love back, because he is here with us. and let's just have silence for this. Thank you, and let's leave it at that.

57:37 [PAUSE]

58:07 .

58:37 Thank you, thank you, you can continue if you want, but let's finish maybe the broadcast and thank you, thank you everyone and maybe finish even more like with more joyful notes about like maybe what about like it's not ten, it's not ten but we all say together we love Asgeir and please say it everywhere you are sitting and stuff like let's finish In one, two, three, we all shout, like, "We love Asgeir, yeah?" So, one, two, three, we love Asgeir! [laughter] What do you draw from the last three? It would have to be... Why would you be curious about what they're doing,

59:25 that they have to wash their hands? I'm just... I know the procedure. Oh, by the way, it's good you forgot your hand. You're back for the photo. Yeah, I'm sorry. Make a smile. Skull, skull, skull, skull, skull, skull, skull.

1:00:05 [ inaudible ] [ laughter ]