if you're doing, sumo you need a judge. [noises]ow! h iiiha chi. samurai is calling me. what's wrong now. did you call me? yes. oh, no, next door being noisy again. so, sorry, i'll go and tell them to be quiet. sorry, sorry.

excuse me. [ noises] hey! come and join us. sorry but can you be quiet please, samurai. samurai? samurai? sorry we forgot. sorry. samurai. okay. we'll be quiet. unbelievable. that was your fault. you were the one that started talking about, sum. that was you making all the noise. shhhhhhh be quiet. let's change the subject. what shall we talk about now. we talked about sports. the weather. no. i know.

let's talk about [whistles] women, love, romance, passion. look at us. we're not popular with the ladies. we haven't got any stories. actually we've got no experience. wait! i've got a story. i had an experience. you? yeah. actually i've never told you this before but in my younger days i used to work in a kimono shop. you did? yes. and 8 years ago i went to the house of the samurai to sell kimonos and the samurais name

was,uto,gotomosh. but when i arrived only the samurais wife was home. sam ris wife? i bet she was gorgeous! oh, yes, she was very sexy, beautiful lady and she invited me into the back room and served me sak . go on! go on! well i stayed there all afternoon. talking and drinking saki and suddenly she looked at me and said, mr. kimono man, come closer. closer. and she looked me right in the eyes and said, i think i'm falling in love with you.

i am! i love you. i want you. i need you. then she started taking off her kimono. she started to take off her - what happened next! calm down. i can't. i'm just so jealous. wow you must have had a wonderful night together. you think so? yeah. actually, no. no. just because right as i was kissing her. samurais brother suddenly came home. diver suddenly came home. what happened? well, when he saw us he was so angry and he puld out his sword

and was going to kill me. oh! how exciting. it was not exciting. what happens. as he ran towards me, he slipped on the shiney floor and dropped his sword. so, i picked it up and i cut him down! you killed? that's right. at that point the wife took out 100 yellow gold coins and said, come on, let's run away together. now is our chance, let's go, let's go. and did you? no. i cut her down from behind. you killed the samurais wife? my god! why did you do such a terrible

thing. because then there's no proof. no proof. ah, right. so, you killed two people and got all the gold and nobody knows about it and your still a free man. your really smart. your a real lady killer! get it? lady killer. your a playboy! [singing]hia chi! hia chi! [yawns] oh, samurai is calling again. i wonder what is wrong. oh, i'll never get any sleep

tonight. samurai did you call me? yes,iha chi, come in. listen? oh, no. next door being noisy again. i'll go tell them to be quiet. not this time. hia chi let me introduce myself. my name is goto motimoshi and 8 years ago my wife and brother will were killed and i've been searching since for the man who did it. fortunately, i found him. congratulations! where? here. here? the man next door and i'm going

to kill him. tell him to come here now. go tell him to come here now. [crying] excuse me. [singing] come on in and listen to this story! is it the story about gatomoshi. how do you know. because the samurai next door is him. he's going to kill you. kill me? no. listen, it wasn't me. it was somebody else. i just hear that story. i'm sorry. last month and i thought that's good story but actually it wasn't me.

it was another man. it wasn't you? oh, no. someone else. go tell samurai, please! okay. i'll try but, i don't know if he'll listen. he's very, very angry. please! please! samurai - where is he? bring him to me! wait. let me explain. he said actually it wasn't him. it was somebody else and he just told the story. i'm sorry. it wasn't him. it was another man. another man? i don't think so. he did it and i'm going to kill him! bring him here now. please! please! don't kill him here in this

hotel if you kill him here, everybody will think it's a dangerous place and no one will stay here and it will be the end of my business. please don't kill him here. okay. i understand your situation. all right. then i will fight him tomorrow morning at the temple. is that okay? thank you so much. thank you! but if he tries to escape tonight i will kill all of them and you too! me too? why me too? excuse me.

iha chi is everything okay. no. i told him what you said but he didn't believe me. he's going to kill you. kill me? here? now? no. he said he will fight you tomorrow morning at the temple. if you try to escape tonight he'll kill you and your friends and me too! friends? we're not his friends! we just met him. we hardly no each other. the man was so panic stricken and afraid that they couldn't sleep all night. they just sat in total silence. it was a very quiet night. the next morning,hia chi, hia

chi! oh, this is a voice i will never ever forget. samurai, good morning. oh, good morningiha chi come on. i had a very good sleep last night. very good. wonderful. yes, so i'd like to pay my bill. keep the change. thank you. thank you. and now, i'm leaving. leaving? what about the fight at the temple? huh? oh, that! no,iha chi that was just a lie. what? a lie? why would you tell such a lie.

because,iha chi i just wanted a quiet night! [applause] [music]

>> hi and welcome back to authors who make you think. i appreciate you wanting to think on a beautiful saturday afternoon. 8 years ago in the ban shell at golden gate park. jonathan, one of our readers was there. 20 readers and 8 afternoons and now there are venues around the city. i will read a few poems.

the first one is, after the bleeding. it was inspired by 2 photos that were in the san francisco chronicle in june 2005. the first, i will read the captions. photo captions. and follow with the poem. children watch as police collect pieces of bodies from a suicide bombing. front page photo caption san francisco chronicle june 14, 2005. >> the not guilty verdicts in the michael jackson trial. front page photo caption, san francisco chronicle june 14, 2005. after the bleeding the blood spattered walls draw the gaze of children wanting to see what has caused such a noise. how can they not stair. arms and legs, pieces of torso

scattered, the smell of new death and feared hair. they must be asking the same question. a person who blows themselves up must believe in something. must believe in something or else not. hopelessness degreesed in apnigzs, righteousness disguised in a tuxedo of death much the children don't understand. i being of the dead dying man the bleeding bystanders who left to buy cheese or tobacco. in car bombs suicide bombs and we keep talking as though this will end like the final judgment of that black man who looks white and sleeps with boys but doesn't touch them. after the bleeding the children's shoes will be forever stained in the crimson color of death.

who will set the doves free then. >> the next is sdaefrt on the horizon. i'm sure many of you have seen or heard regularly in the news. my father came from iran so every time i see those headlines and get an article in my e mail i have this moment of panic thinking about my family members in iran who might be the next victims of this terrible war administration this is, disaster on the horizon. it begins with words. daggers of men who bleed their nations of hope kill any promise. here is war, a bag full of hate posturing angry man rhetoric

unleashing disaster on the horizon. war has no face like a genie it doesn't go back in the bottle. the witchary gives nothing it is a tornado that sucks up life, spits out ashes and broken minds i can feel in my bones. near as anyone who's face i see who's eyes i hold tight fixod this comp us i see the war coming breaking lose in the mouths. they are monsters who can't see the people who will weep. they're are creators of the destruction that begins on the tongue and ends in the cold eyes of tomorrow. [applause] >> last year, i read 9 stories in my allotted 6 minutes this year i thought i would be ambitious and do 10. first is called cosmology. after they learned that the

universe was a mass produced toy tossed by a goddess they no longer wondered by laws was sure in the clockwork in a wind up bird were shot with uncertainties. optimists contributed the reason to the fact that the toy was broken. pessimists acknowledged this. but insistd that in it's broken state could the cosmos belong to those who lives within. the goddess grown found the universe under board games in a closet. she did not give it to her children. she did not have it fixed by her husband instead slipping away now and then from her family she delighted in the haphazard way it ran. the release in her life. >> the next one is entitled.

explanation. twisted tree branches explain exactly themselves. the next is called, a simple story. his love was too simple. if he met a woman who imagined what it would it be like to be her husband. he learned she was already attached. if she did interest in him he would bring her fresh oranges. she'd leave him certain that no man could love truly to such scant evidence. his evidence was not meager he was not trying to judge her. his love was too simple and he belonged to her simply if her love was as simple as his.

immigration. their final night together before she had to go back home, she clung to him as if he were a mighty sclif and between them and morning was an awful abyss. as they slept though neither felt it happening by dawn not even their finger tips were touching. he shivered and reached for her. the woman's hazy blue ice opened one at a time they took a while to focus when they did they appeared not to be looking at his skin but surveying a foreign land. >> this is called, regrets. if only she known as on her deathbed she would not find the love of her life she would have reached the same great age but never have lived.

next is retirement. the pampered old cat slept day and night happily dreaming about napping. [laughter] and slightly shorter than that called, quartery. >> the bug that crawled across the key board didn't leave word. the next story is a second chance. after their myth was written, echo was permitted to mayor nar sisz who spurned herrode to be shunned by his own cold reflection. she tried not to fret that vanity diminished him. what would have been the thrill and mystery thrilled her nippled body leaving a mockary of a voice. she carried him back to her

cavern, still, there lives together was wanting and not only because in their condition they had trouble conceiving children. they became astranged though she longed to give him everything and he was eager to take it all. each sought the other through a different mirror. >> called : what happened happened. and finally. [laughter] a story called terminals. in the last moment of his life, time slowed and slowed to a halt. no longer pressed as he has been in youth he strolled the youth on foot and thought over every thought. love and war and stars he

grabbed the meaning of it all as a whole. he yearned to share what he knew. though that lived on and might have learned moved to a future where his still voice would not be heard. thank you. [applause] >> hello. i'm going to read a scene from draining the sea coming out in march. it takes place in guatemala during the 80's. this is a scene from the polytechnic the tick cal school where they would take the disappeared. emanuel for the americas. we are inside the basement of the polytechnic and i'm admiring the bone is thattedose that your heal bone makes in the sunlight in the palms of my hand in my mind. when you come to my bed your

hands and breath is sweet and we can love like this for hours. i can find christ in your body. this too must be constructed and killed bike on television with pain and blood that's beautiful like a red refer. you made me into a woman and i surend erred into it a man-made into a woman and returned. but you don't want to my bed this is the metal cloth you are chained to in the polytechnic. and i do we do it slowly with timed extensions of christ, his face removed and his penis removed the maggets and the wounds the teeth and hair weeks before he is your christ in the black pit with you. each day becomes eternity of days the sun never sets or rises the light bulb on a wire as i

burn you 117 times with my cigarettes while the other guards have gone out for a meal beef stake tomatoes and red wines then i will ask for your for giveness. you look at me or rather you stair at me, make a picture on my eyelids and my disks covering my ice to the pupils through the tinted lenses. i wear the sun glasses in the room so this look a stair i have said, and a beast looks from his bodied cage where pain is made to a commodity of sugary things. your head pulled from the basin of water your breath can make me into our god but a god without

rivers a god without shadows shadow lonely on his thrown making you look more the whore. i whisper into the hole beneath the cracked blood and bonus. is it possible for me to also be saved? you begin wretching the vomit heaths you up from the cot where you were held by the chain you cannot stop the wretching continuing shaking of your arms. the hands not removed yet. i take the bottle of wine which i have been drinking and toss it down your throat as you begin crying like a child. crying but not speaking to me you remind me of my black self. tears and your mouth a gap like a bird as i put the wine in your

mouth and we drink the rest of it together. the unsainted god the sobbing girl there in the dark i hold you closely and we are like lovers. your ear shells on the floor next to my booted feet. my own hands handy work. after work i will have these specimens saved. i go to a tax dermist shop when the man gives a look of hear when i pull out the ear shells. he refused to do it. i return it later and unmake his look say, i will never do it again your ear shells forgotten in the trash bin of the polytechnic where i toss them of history. days later i'm convinced i see

one hand carried by a rat. seeking the traces of your body and the animals is this not a form of transcendence my darling. a downward rising the maggets small white gods like an animal mob. you did not answer my question with the language we used between us you vomited and stared into the lenses i wore to cover my pupils to keep some things in and some things out plastic screens. was it not possible to make love in that space. i could save you and i do make an essay and listened and obeyed. i hoped to carry your ear shell with me. i read the manual from beginning to end a manual for the master's and the slaves