WEBVTT

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I wrote a series of
poems I call portraits

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about friends of mine.

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Some of them are partly
imaginary I have to say.

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I don't know that much
about the people I know.

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I set myself two formal tasks in
them if I may put it that way.

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They're all about failures.

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And so I thought it would
be kind of symbolic of that

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if I had something--

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something about each
of them was missing.

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For instance, the first one is
called Portrait with Short Hair

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and what's missing there is
some of the hair you see.

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And also I wanted to get in
a reference in each of them

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to Mexico or almost to Mexico
for no particular reason.

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I've never been to Mexico.

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I'd like to go but I never have.

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Anyway, those two things
keep appearing I think

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and I'll read four of
them out of a set of five.

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The last one is about myself
and I'd rather not read that

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and show what's missing.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Portrait with short hair.

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The days, the days,
and the scissors

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you cut your hair
with oh how dull.

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Time to change the needle.

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Put on another record, no
something Baroque and think

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of the good times.

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Think of lakes and rivers.

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It's hot, let in some air.

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Let the smell of
leftovers be one

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with the perfume of
cooling asphalt leaves

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and the nights are wonderful.

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You alone, alone with the slums,
the flower pots, the stars.

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Think of the sea.

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Unzip just as though someone
were around to be made love to

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or anyway to pose for.

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The mysteries of sex.

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Someday you'll wake up back
on that Christmas morning

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in Mexico still a virgin.

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Portrait with flashlight.

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This took place in
New Mexico years ago.

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My friend was an usher
in a movie house.

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What lonely aisles you prowled
in search of the forbidden,

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blinking your usher's torch,
firefly of the balconies.

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And when you found
it, love, it was

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to pure French horns
soaring above the plains

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of Saturday's westerns.

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The defiant eyes, laughing
into the sudden beam.

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The soft Mexican curses, the
stains, the crushed corsages.

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Off, off with the bright buttons
poor spy, there's no disguise.

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Your Anglo hearts as
dark as theirs was

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and it speaks with the
same broken accent.

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Girls read it in your eyes
and ask for your autograph.

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And you give them poems,
poems with hair slicked back

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smelling of Bay rum sweat
and hot buttered popcorn,

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furtive illuminations.

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Portrait with tequila.

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I assume everybody here knows
how tequila is manufactured.

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Portrait with tequila.

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Pull down the shades, your
Black boyfriend is coming.

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He's not like you he wants
to live in the suburbs.

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You want to paint.

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It's your hand
does your dreaming

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for you, the same hand
braceleted with scars

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that smooth down
cats, sheets, men.

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Under it, your body is turning
into landscape metamorphosis

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of the moon.

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The stars, what
did the stars say.

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Caution in money matters,
in romance, oh prodigal.

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The White convertible
circles the block again.

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The neighbors are asleep,
the insects, the wind.

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It's late.

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But then he's married
and this is still Texas.

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Night is a giant cactus
blooming at your window.

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Potent, aromatic, the
liquors you press from it.

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Portrait with one eye.

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Now this one's all true.

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A friend of mine hearing--

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it took place some years ago.

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But a friend of mine
during the revolution

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was brewing in
Nicaragua bought a bus

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ticket to Mexico City, which
is all that he could afford.

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But thought he could
make it on from there.

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All right.

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But the bus unfortunately had
a stopover in Kansas City.

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He went around to
one bar, another,

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and ended up in the charity
ward of the hospital

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with one eye missing.

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He had been beaten up
and robbed of everything.

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And when the Kansas
City Star reporter

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came around to interview him--

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First, he had already told
the police this but the story

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appeared in the
Kansas City Star.

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When asked what his
occupation was he

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said lyric poet and this
story appeared in the Star.

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I've never seen that
identification made before.

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Also, there's a--

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I only hear from him now when
he calls me long distance

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and the call is always collect
there's a reference to that

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there.

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Portrait with one eye.

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They robbed you of your
ticket to the revolution oh

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and then they stomped you good.

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But nothing stops you.

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You have identified
yourself to the police

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as quote, "lyric poet" what
else with fractured jaw.

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Orpheus and perishable
liar, your life's a poem.

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Still, broken eye, arms and
all, jazz, jails, the complete

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works.

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And one blue silver
line beyond the Antilles

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vanishing, all fragments.

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You who could scream across
the square in Cuernavaca

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at a friend you hadn't seen
for years the one word bitch

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and turn away, that's style.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Or this, your other
voice, this whisper

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along the wires at night like
a dry wind, like conscience

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always collect.

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