After the pool was drained for the season,
they arrested the kids who marched to the white school.
Who stood and sang "Like a Tree Planted by the Water."
They took them to the jailhouse in school buses.
They took them to the drained pool in sealed 18-wheelers.
The Sheriff told them they were to be taken to the woods
and there shot.
Then the Sheriff told them they would be taken to the pool
and there drowned.
Granddaughter of V's babysitter, who was put in the pool.
She had never seen before then, he
was one mean man, that Sheriff.
A pool, a dry, drained pool, whatever else it is,
is a big hole in the ground.
A sealed truck, whatever else it is, is a sealed truck.
Headline, the Negroes failed to move.
The weather would break.
The Sheriff's button says never.
The children's minds say never waver.
V, rising to contempt, and that Sheriff,
may he be taken to the woods and there made
to sing "Like a Tree Planted by The Water".
May he be linked to the first rib he broke,
and it be fashioned of bronze.
And run through the end of his nose.
He may then be taken to the pool and they're
taught the dead man's float.
And then be taken to the library and there
will his hideous pink testicles be removed
by the assistant librarian and put
in the terrarium with the resident spider.
The ethical this, what we really want,
says my friend Harry is to get the present in the present,
that which is not this.
To feel and transmit.
Dear Abby, friends of ours have a son
who has gone the hippies route.
When we inquire about their children,
they have others who are married and one who is in the service.
Should we ask about their hippie son
or should we just not mention him like he is dead?
We know that they are pretty sick about the life he leads.
Dear needs to know, knowing that your friends would
be humiliated or embarrassed by the mention of their hippie
son, don't mention him.
Everybody has a problem.
What's yours?
These are verbatim.
Radio ministry, now the non repentant homosexuals,
they're declaring war on the gospel.
Now the infidels are dying from the neck-up,
now I didn't write the Bible, and now your old-line churches
are losing members.
Now, if I'm going to be saved, I have
to be saved from something, the vile and the dirty
and your low-downs.
It's not like joining the rotary club, salvation,
it's a heaven or hell issue.
Now V, she wanted something entirely different.
To feel and transmit the ethical this, that is not that.
The gospel helps some bear the pain.
Helps bury the hate.
The swimming pool is also buried therein,
and therefore this petition for relief
awakened to the task, call for calm, waver never.
Forever forward, backwards never,
it says on the ex-invaders machine.
The dirt up there on the ridge is called Loess.
Wind blown stuff, good for growing peaches.
Hemingway penned some of a farewell to arms
on the ridge when he was married to Pauline, wife number two.
I think I'll move a little further in, here.
Dear Abby, my mother-in-law said she read in your column
about how to make dirty diapers disappear.
Dear misinformed, I am not a magician.
Everybody has a problem.
V, deep down, she may have been as sad as a cover band.
She might have felt drier than a clod of Arkansas dirt.
Lonely, lonely, lonely, like the hunter green suitcase
that hadn't been used since her honeymoon.
Some honeymoon she later told Gert,
with that off color smile.
She almost had to rape him.
She said this near death as her executive organs were shutting
down and she was finishing the New York Times crossword,
September 2nd, in ballpoint.
What is the suffix of book?
Ish.
Who is a major exporter of coconut oil?
Samoa.
A colorless liquid.
ouzo A defeatist's words.
I no space lose.
The artist of the etching and aquatint,
el sueño de la razón produce monstruos.
Does it follow that the sleep of monsters produces reason?
Some would say she was in full pursuit of her ruin.
Some would call it her pathetic adventure.
I would say, you did not understand
the magnitude of her longing.
I say, where was the suitor to her senescence?
Another disaffiliated member of her tribe.
I say, do we have to go through this every time, the shunning
thing?
Any simple problem can be made insoluble,
such as how to share an Elberta with the fuzz still on it.
Crickets in the house are good.
A Crow is a bad sign.
Empty rooms love the dark.
The key to tranquility is equal opportunity.
When the siren sounds, it's time for our curfew.
Old moon, a wrecking ball.
The town under demolition from within.
Color provides a structure, albeit soul sucking.
The woods were felled by Chicago Mills,
an Arkansas arc is not a rainbow, but an iron bridge
over troubled waters.
Dear Abby, I am 11 years old.
But I know all the facts of life because I
live in a dirty neighborhood.
My problem is that in our family, we get pregnate quick.
My sister got pregnate when she was 16
just by sitting next to a boy in church.
Can this be?
Dear young miss, No, somebody must have moved.
An object unworthy of love she thought she was.
It was a cri de coeur.
Those of our get had given her a nom de guerre, V.
A Simple act to join a March against fear
down an old military road.
We were watching an old movie the night the table started
walking toward us and there was trouble on Division.
She became a disaffiliated member of her race.
I'm one of them now, she said, upon release from jail.
I'm an invader.
To feel in conjunction with the changes of my time.
The most alive I've ever been.
My body lifted itself from the chair
it walked to where I saw a silent crowd.
To act just to act that is the glorious thing.
Yet it has come to my attention that a whisper campaign
has been directed against the main character,
an invisible woman.
She could have buried her feelings like power lines.
Walked around free and common as air that bathes the globe
or sued the chickenshits and gone
to live in Provence smelling of gauloises and cafe au lait.
You have your life until you use it.
You forfeit the only life you know, or go to the grave
with a song curdled inside you.
No more damned if you did, and damned if you didn't.
For me, it has always been a series of doors.
If one is open precipitously, a figure
is caught bolting from bed, if another, a small table,
a list of demands on school paper
if another, a child on the linoleum, saying she
wants a white doll.
A woman sitting on a bed holding a folded flag, a shelf
of trophies behind her head.
An ironing board bottle of bourbon
on the end, sewing machine on a porch.
To walk down the road without fear to sit in a booth
and order a sweet soft drink.
To work at the front desk.
To be referred to as gentleman.
To swim in the pool.
To sit in the front row and watch Run Wild, Run Free.
Next week, Death of a Gunfighter.
To make your way to the end of the day
with both eyes in your head.
Nothing is not integral, you want to illumine what you see.
Fear reflected off an upturned face.
Those walnuts turning black in the grass.
It is a relatively stable world, gentle reader,
but beyond that door, it defies description.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]