March 16, 1995
SF State theater arts graduate, John J. Powers, presented "Poems from the Plague," a poetry reading and tribute to people in AIDS wards everywhere last Monday night.
Powers, 41, along with a few of his friends, each of whom are SF State alumnus or former members of the theater arts or English departments, read poetry about the feelings and phenomenons that people in AIDS wards experience.
Graduates with AIDS returned to SF State to educate and entertain the students not just about AIDS and its affects on people's lives, but also to express that people with AIDS are real people too, Powers explained.
"I know I'm not going to die merely because I got fucked in the ass without a condom, or because I swallowed a stranger's semen. If I die, it is because a handful of people in power, in organized religions and institutions, believed that I am expendable," Don Chan Mark, who hosted the event, read to the audience.
Mark, who received his masters in English from SF State, opened the reading with those words, taken from "Brushfires in a Social Landscape," a series of poems and photographs by David Wojnarowicz.
Powers wrote "Poems From the Plague" during the time he spent in two AIDS wards: The Davies Medical Center in San Francisco and Chelsea-Westminster Hospital's Thomas Macaulay AIDS ward in London, where he now lives.
Throughout the course of the reading, several AIDS related subjects were addressed, most of them about the medical conditions of people living in AIDS wards.
Powers was inspired by one of his old professors at SF State, Mohammad Kowsar, to come to San Francisco and present "Poems from the Plague."
Powers said the tribute also provided him with the opportunity to reunite with old friends and to reflect on common experiences they share since being diagnosed with the AIDS virus.
"I know many other students that have been affected by AIDS," Powers said. "There have been quite a few changes on this campus."
Powers, who has been reading and writing poetry for 10 years, tested positive for the HIV virus in June 1992.
At the time, he was studying at SF State and working to pay for college.
Since being diagnosed, Powers has spent half his time in San Francisco at the Davies Medical Center.
According to Powers, he moved to London because England has a national health service. The funding that goes toward those who have AIDS and or HIV is much more than in the United States.
Although he has enjoyed his time here, Powers no longer feels like San Francisco is his home and is looking forward to going back to London.
"I would like to think that I might live longer in London," he said.