I think perhaps as in a longer poem
I'm going to read after a short intermission
that the Western frontier has got nowhere to go but in.
And my poetry seems to be going inward.
Half jokingly I'd like to read a poem
called "Underwear" because my thoughts turned underwear.
[APPLAUSE]
Obviously my thoughts are turning inward.
It's not really related to the theme
but I just had a request to read this poem.
So I got to work it in.
I made it good trying to work it in.
"I didn't get much sleep last night thinking about underwear
and this is a serious poem about underwear.
Have you ever stopped to consider underwear
in the abstract.
When you really dig into it some shocking problems are raised.
Underwear is something we all have to deal with.
Everyone wears some kind of underwear,
even Indians were underwear, even Cubans wear underwear,
the Pope wears underwear I hope.
Underwear is worn by Negroes, the governor of Louisiana
wears underwear I saw him on TV.
He must have had tight underwear, he squirmed a lot.
[LAUGHTER]
Underwear can really get you in a bind.
You have seen the underwear ads for men and women
so alike but so different.
Women's underwear whole things up, men's underwear
holds things down.
Underwear is one thing men and women do have in common.
Underwear is all we have between us in the end.
And you have seen the three-color pictures
with crotches and circle to show the areas of extra strength
and three-way stretch promising full freedom of action.
Don't be deceived.
[LAUGHTER]
It's all based on the two-party system which
doesn't allow much freedom of choice
the way things are set up.
America in its underwear struggles through the night.
Underwear controls everything in the end.
Take foundation garments for instance,
they are really fascist forms of underground government making
people believe something but the truth,
telling you what you can or can do.
Did you ever try to get around a girdle.
Perhaps non-violent action is the only answer.
Did Gandhi wear a girdle?
Did lady Macbeth wear a girdle?
Was that why Macbeth murdered sleep?
And that spot she was always rubbing
was it really in her underwear?
Modern Anglo-Saxon ladies must have huge guilt complexes
always washing and washing and washing out damned spot.
Underwear with spots very suspicious.
Underwear with bulges very shocking.
Underwear on clothesline of great flag of freedom someone
has escaped his underwear maybe naked somewhere help.
[LAUGHTER]
But don't worry everybody still hung up in it there
won't be no real revolution.
And poetry still the underwear of the soul and underwear
still covering a multitude of faults in the geological
sense strange sedimentary stones inscrutable cracks.
And that only the beginning for does not the body stay alive
after death and still need its underwear or outgrow it,
some organs tend to reach full maturity only after the head
stops holding them back.
If I were you, I'd keep aside an oversized pair
of winter underwear.
Do not go naked into that good night.
And in the meantime, keep calm and warm and dry no you
stirring yourselves up prematurely over nothing.
Move forward with dignity and invest.
Don't get emotional and death shall have no dominion.
There's plenty of time my darling,
are we not still young and easy.
Don't shout."
[APPLAUSE]
I have a five minute intermission.