WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.820 align:middle line:84% The next poem is called, "Running Away from Home." 00:00:02.820 --> 00:00:05.400 align:middle line:90% And it always offends somebody. 00:00:05.400 --> 00:00:09.540 align:middle line:84% I find, as I grow older, I sort of 00:00:09.540 --> 00:00:11.580 align:middle line:84% count the groups I have yet to offend. 00:00:11.580 --> 00:00:14.350 align:middle line:90% And they're on my list. 00:00:14.350 --> 00:00:19.440 align:middle line:84% This is a poem about growing up in a small town in the West, 00:00:19.440 --> 00:00:23.080 align:middle line:84% a town dominated by the Catholic church of my childhood-- 00:00:23.080 --> 00:00:28.170 align:middle line:84% which, I remind you, is rather different than the post-Vatican 00:00:28.170 --> 00:00:33.937 align:middle line:90% Council church of Pope John. 00:00:33.937 --> 00:00:35.520 align:middle line:84% It's called, "Running Away from Home." 00:00:35.520 --> 00:00:38.340 align:middle line:84% And it is dedicated to two of my fellow Westerners, Kenneth 00:00:38.340 --> 00:00:40.230 align:middle line:90% Hansen and Richard Hugo. 00:00:40.230 --> 00:00:43.000 align:middle line:84% Between the four of us, we grew up in Washington, Oregon, 00:00:43.000 --> 00:00:43.890 align:middle line:90% Idaho, and Montana. 00:00:43.890 --> 00:00:52.370 align:middle line:90% 00:00:52.370 --> 00:00:56.630 align:middle line:84% Most people from Idaho are crazed rednecks, 00:00:56.630 --> 00:01:00.080 align:middle line:84% grown stunted in ugly shadows of brick spires; 00:01:00.080 --> 00:01:02.870 align:middle line:84% corrupted by fat priests in puberty; 00:01:02.870 --> 00:01:06.770 align:middle line:84% high from the dry altitudes of Catholic towns; 00:01:06.770 --> 00:01:10.850 align:middle line:84% spooked by plaster Madonnas; switched by sadistic nuns; 00:01:10.850 --> 00:01:14.120 align:middle line:84% given sex instruction by dirty old men in skirts; 00:01:14.120 --> 00:01:17.510 align:middle line:84% recoiling from flesh-colored calendars; bloody gods. 00:01:17.510 --> 00:01:19.490 align:middle line:90% Still, we run off at the mouth. 00:01:19.490 --> 00:01:23.420 align:middle line:84% We keep on running, like those rattling roadsters 00:01:23.420 --> 00:01:26.780 align:middle line:84% with vomit-stained back seats, used condoms 00:01:26.780 --> 00:01:29.930 align:middle line:84% tucked beneath floor mats that careen down hairpin 00:01:29.930 --> 00:01:33.200 align:middle line:84% turns through the blinding rain just in time to hit 00:01:33.200 --> 00:01:36.500 align:middle line:90% early mass at Coeur d'Alene. 00:01:36.500 --> 00:01:40.820 align:middle line:84% Dear Phil, dear Jack, dear Tom, dear Jim, 00:01:40.820 --> 00:01:43.213 align:middle line:84% whose car had a detachable steering wheel-- 00:01:43.213 --> 00:01:45.380 align:middle line:84% he'd hand it to his scared, protesting girl, saying, 00:01:45.380 --> 00:01:48.710 align:middle line:84% 'OK, you drive,' steering with his knees. 00:01:48.710 --> 00:01:51.050 align:middle line:84% Jim drove daddy's Buick over the railroad 00:01:51.050 --> 00:01:53.540 align:middle line:84% tracks piss drunk, just ahead of the Great Northern 00:01:53.540 --> 00:01:56.180 align:middle line:84% Freight barreling its way through the dawn straight 00:01:56.180 --> 00:01:58.040 align:middle line:90% for Spokane. 00:01:58.040 --> 00:02:01.790 align:middle line:84% Oh, those great times in Wallace and Kellogg's-- the good, 00:02:01.790 --> 00:02:05.240 align:middle line:90% clean fun. 00:02:05.240 --> 00:02:08.960 align:middle line:84% Dear Sally, dear Beth, dear Patsy, dear Eileen-- 00:02:08.960 --> 00:02:12.530 align:middle line:84% pale, faceless girls, my best friends at 13, 00:02:12.530 --> 00:02:15.920 align:middle line:84% knelt on cold stones with chilblained knees to pray, 00:02:15.920 --> 00:02:19.850 align:middle line:84% 'Dear God, dear Christ, don't let him go all the way.' 00:02:19.850 --> 00:02:22.760 align:middle line:84% Oh, the black Cadillacs skidding around corners 00:02:22.760 --> 00:02:25.340 align:middle line:84% with their freight of drunken Jesuit businessmen-- 00:02:25.340 --> 00:02:26.900 align:middle line:84% beautiful daughters of lumber kings 00:02:26.900 --> 00:02:29.840 align:middle line:84% avoided the giant nuptial mass at Saint Joseph's and fled 00:02:29.840 --> 00:02:31.220 align:middle line:90% into nunneries. 00:02:31.220 --> 00:02:35.630 align:middle line:84% The rest live at home, bad girls who survived abortions, used 00:02:35.630 --> 00:02:38.750 align:middle line:84% Protestant diaphragms, or refused the sacred obligation 00:02:38.750 --> 00:02:42.080 align:middle line:84% of the marriage bed, scolded by beat off priests 00:02:42.080 --> 00:02:46.940 align:middle line:84% after five and five years by Bill or Dick or Ted. 00:02:46.940 --> 00:02:49.070 align:middle line:90% I know your secrets. 00:02:49.070 --> 00:02:55.790 align:middle line:84% You turn up by 10:00 AM at the beauty shoppe drunk. 00:02:55.790 --> 00:02:59.390 align:middle line:84% Your kids sent breakfast lists to school. 00:02:59.390 --> 00:03:02.120 align:middle line:84% You knew that you were doomed by 17. 00:03:02.120 --> 00:03:06.410 align:middle line:84% Why should your innocent daughters fare better than you? 00:03:06.410 --> 00:03:10.340 align:middle line:84% Young, you live on in me, even the blessed dead. 00:03:10.340 --> 00:03:13.490 align:middle line:84% Tom slammed into a fire hydrant on his Indian Chief 00:03:13.490 --> 00:03:15.020 align:middle line:90% and died castrated. 00:03:15.020 --> 00:03:18.080 align:middle line:84% Jim, fool, fell four storeys from the roof of his jock 00:03:18.080 --> 00:03:20.060 align:middle line:90% fraternity at Ag and Tech. 00:03:20.060 --> 00:03:24.230 align:middle line:84% And the pure losers cracked up in training planes in Utah 00:03:24.230 --> 00:03:27.020 align:middle line:84% or shot by a nervous rookie at Fort Lewis. 00:03:27.020 --> 00:03:30.260 align:middle line:84% At least they cheated the white-coiffed ambulance chasers 00:03:30.260 --> 00:03:35.330 align:middle line:84% and death bed bedevilers and died in war in peace. 00:03:35.330 --> 00:03:37.880 align:middle line:84% Some people from Oregon are mad orphans 00:03:37.880 --> 00:03:40.880 align:middle line:84% who claim to hail from Stratford-upon-Sodom. 00:03:40.880 --> 00:03:45.230 align:middle line:84% They speak fake BBC, their Unitarian ferries 00:03:45.230 --> 00:03:49.790 align:middle line:84% from the yang group or the yin group-- no middle way. 00:03:49.790 --> 00:03:53.390 align:middle line:84% Some stay Catholic junkies, incense sniffers who scrawled 00:03:53.390 --> 00:03:56.990 align:middle line:84% 'Jesus saves' on urinal walls between engagements, 00:03:56.990 --> 00:03:59.030 align:middle line:84% or white disciples of Black Muslims, 00:03:59.030 --> 00:04:02.840 align:middle line:84% balding blondes who shave their pubic hair or heads for Buddha. 00:04:02.840 --> 00:04:07.010 align:middle line:84% I find you in secondhand bookstores or dirty movies, 00:04:07.010 --> 00:04:12.860 align:middle line:84% bent halos like fedoras pulled well down, bogarts of buggery. 00:04:12.860 --> 00:04:14.750 align:middle line:84% We can't resist the furtive question, 00:04:14.750 --> 00:04:15.770 align:middle line:90% 'Are you a writer, too? 00:04:15.770 --> 00:04:16.715 align:middle line:90% How did you get out?' 00:04:16.715 --> 00:04:19.886 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:04:19.886 --> 00:04:20.850 align:middle line:90% 00:04:20.850 --> 00:04:23.610 align:middle line:84% We still carry those rosary scars, 00:04:23.610 --> 00:04:27.600 align:middle line:84% more like a herpes simplex than a stigmata. 00:04:27.600 --> 00:04:30.360 align:middle line:84% Give us a nice, long fit of depression. 00:04:30.360 --> 00:04:32.850 align:middle line:84% Give us a good bout of self-hate. 00:04:32.850 --> 00:04:35.760 align:middle line:84% Give us enough Pope, we pun, and we'll hang-- 00:04:35.760 --> 00:04:38.220 align:middle line:84% hung, well hung, or hung over in the world's most 00:04:38.220 --> 00:04:39.840 align:middle line:90% durable morning after. 00:04:39.840 --> 00:04:42.750 align:middle line:84% We'd sooner keep the mote and lose the eye. 00:04:42.750 --> 00:04:44.730 align:middle line:90% Move over, Tonio Kruger. 00:04:44.730 --> 00:04:49.860 align:middle line:84% You never attended Our Lady of Sorrows or Northwestern High. 00:04:49.860 --> 00:04:52.620 align:middle line:84% Some people from Washington are great poet tasters, 00:04:52.620 --> 00:04:55.860 align:middle line:84% imbibers of anything, so long as it makes us sick enough 00:04:55.860 --> 00:04:58.620 align:middle line:84% to forget our sickness and carry on from the carryout, 00:04:58.620 --> 00:05:01.350 align:middle line:90% Hostess winkies wild duck. 00:05:01.350 --> 00:05:04.560 align:middle line:84% We "relate" as they say, to the Indians, 00:05:04.560 --> 00:05:07.320 align:middle line:84% bravest of cowards furtively cadging 00:05:07.320 --> 00:05:10.650 align:middle line:84% drinks with a shitfaced grin; outcasts 00:05:10.650 --> 00:05:13.260 align:middle line:84% who carry our past like a 90 pound 00:05:13.260 --> 00:05:16.530 align:middle line:84% calcified fetus we park in the bus station locker 00:05:16.530 --> 00:05:18.750 align:middle line:90% and run like sin. 00:05:18.750 --> 00:05:22.620 align:middle line:84% Boozers and bounders, cracked up Cracker Barrel jockeys, 00:05:22.620 --> 00:05:27.240 align:middle line:84% we frequent greasy bistros, Piraeus, and Marseilles. 00:05:27.240 --> 00:05:29.880 align:middle line:84% As we wait for our ripoff pimps, we 00:05:29.880 --> 00:05:32.790 align:middle line:84% scribble on napkins depthful verse we 00:05:32.790 --> 00:05:35.460 align:middle line:90% trust our executors to decry. 00:05:35.460 --> 00:05:37.620 align:middle line:90% Wills. 00:05:37.620 --> 00:05:40.170 align:middle line:90% We are will-less. 00:05:40.170 --> 00:05:43.830 align:middle line:84% As we have breath, we are willful and wishful, 00:05:43.830 --> 00:05:45.510 align:middle line:84% trusting that Great Archangel who 00:05:45.510 --> 00:05:47.880 align:middle line:84% Still Cares, who presides at the table 00:05:47.880 --> 00:05:50.520 align:middle line:90% set up for celestial bingo. 00:05:50.520 --> 00:05:54.390 align:middle line:84% We try to focus our eyes and fill in the squares. 00:05:54.390 --> 00:05:56.430 align:middle line:90% Some people from Spokane"-- 00:05:56.430 --> 00:06:00.990 align:middle line:84% my hometown-- "Some people from Spokane are insane salesmen 00:06:00.990 --> 00:06:03.420 align:middle line:84% peddling encyclopedias from door to door, 00:06:03.420 --> 00:06:06.720 align:middle line:84% trying to earn enough to flee to the happy farm before they jump 00:06:06.720 --> 00:06:10.110 align:middle line:84% from the bridge, or murder mom, or cut up their children with 00:06:10.110 --> 00:06:12.630 align:middle line:84% sanctified bread knives, screaming, 'You are Isaac, 00:06:12.630 --> 00:06:13.920 align:middle line:90% and I am Abraham.' 00:06:13.920 --> 00:06:16.450 align:middle line:90% But it's too late. 00:06:16.450 --> 00:06:18.450 align:middle line:84% They're the salutary failures that keep God 00:06:18.450 --> 00:06:19.710 align:middle line:90% from getting a swelled head. 00:06:19.710 --> 00:06:23.070 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:06:23.070 --> 00:06:25.950 align:middle line:90% 00:06:25.950 --> 00:06:28.170 align:middle line:84% Some shoot themselves in hotel rooms 00:06:28.170 --> 00:06:30.330 align:middle line:84% after gazing at chromos of the scenic route 00:06:30.330 --> 00:06:32.340 align:middle line:84% through the Cascades via Northern 00:06:32.340 --> 00:06:35.040 align:middle line:84% Pacific or the old Milwaukee and Saint Paul, 00:06:35.040 --> 00:06:39.000 align:middle line:84% those trains that won't stop rattling in our skulls. 00:06:39.000 --> 00:06:41.520 align:middle line:84% First, they construct crude crosses out of Band-Aids 00:06:41.520 --> 00:06:44.250 align:middle line:84% and stick them to the mirror, then rip pages from the Gideon 00:06:44.250 --> 00:06:48.720 align:middle line:84% Bible and roll that giant, final joint, a roach from Revelations 00:06:48.720 --> 00:06:49.650 align:middle line:90% as they lay dying. 00:06:49.650 --> 00:06:52.320 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:06:52.320 --> 00:06:54.120 align:middle line:90% Bang, it's all over. 00:06:54.120 --> 00:06:57.210 align:middle line:84% Race through purgatory, at last unencumbered by desperate 00:06:57.210 --> 00:06:59.400 align:middle line:84% manuscripts and the salesman sample case, 00:06:59.400 --> 00:07:01.590 align:middle line:90% along with the dirty shirts. 00:07:01.590 --> 00:07:04.905 align:middle line:84% After Spokane, what horrors lurk in hell? 00:07:04.905 --> 00:07:08.190 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:07:08.190 --> 00:07:12.690 align:middle line:90% 00:07:12.690 --> 00:07:16.380 align:middle line:84% I think continually of those who are truly crazy. 00:07:16.380 --> 00:07:18.720 align:middle line:84% Some people from Montana are put away. 00:07:18.720 --> 00:07:21.780 align:middle line:84% They shake their manacles in a broken dance with eyes 00:07:21.780 --> 00:07:24.210 align:middle line:84% blue-rimmed as a Picasso clown's. 00:07:24.210 --> 00:07:27.300 align:middle line:84% Still chaste but nude, hands shield their organs 00:07:27.300 --> 00:07:30.180 align:middle line:84% like the original mom and dad after the fall, 00:07:30.180 --> 00:07:33.640 align:middle line:84% or they dabble brown frescoes on the walls of solitary. 00:07:33.640 --> 00:07:36.690 align:middle line:90% Their Ajanta and Lascaux. 00:07:36.690 --> 00:07:39.480 align:middle line:84% While the ones that got away display giant kidneys 00:07:39.480 --> 00:07:42.780 align:middle line:84% at the spiral skating rink of Frank Lloyd Wright, or framed 00:07:42.780 --> 00:07:45.510 align:middle line:84% vermin in the flammable Museum of Modern Mart. 00:07:45.510 --> 00:07:48.990 align:middle line:84% But they're still Missoula in their craft and sullen 00:07:48.990 --> 00:07:52.440 align:middle line:90% ebbing, Great Falls and Butte. 00:07:52.440 --> 00:07:54.840 align:middle line:84% Meanwhile, Mondrian O'Leary squints 00:07:54.840 --> 00:07:56.820 align:middle line:84% at the light staining the white radiance 00:07:56.820 --> 00:08:00.480 align:middle line:84% of his well-barred cell, till ferocious blurs bump 00:08:00.480 --> 00:08:02.760 align:middle line:90% each other like dodgem cars. 00:08:02.760 --> 00:08:06.000 align:middle line:84% Oh, that broken-down funhouse at Natatorium Park-- 00:08:06.000 --> 00:08:08.970 align:middle line:84% held, the only fun the boy Mondrian ever knew. 00:08:08.970 --> 00:08:11.520 align:middle line:84% Now, seven humped, mutated, radioactive 00:08:11.520 --> 00:08:16.230 align:middle line:84% Chinook salmon taint the white radiance of O'Leary's brain. 00:08:16.230 --> 00:08:20.460 align:middle line:84% Oh, mad medical lake, I hear you have reformed, 00:08:20.460 --> 00:08:23.970 align:middle line:84% no longer Sunday afternoon the trippers' joy. 00:08:23.970 --> 00:08:27.780 align:middle line:84% Watch the nuts weep our endlessly nimble fingers-- 00:08:27.780 --> 00:08:29.190 align:middle line:90% funny, huh? 00:08:29.190 --> 00:08:33.780 align:middle line:84% The white ruin of muscular men twisting bars like gargantua; 00:08:33.780 --> 00:08:36.750 align:middle line:84% lewd Carusos; maimed chanticleers running off 00:08:36.750 --> 00:08:39.150 align:middle line:84% at the scars, they hoot their arias 00:08:39.150 --> 00:08:40.950 align:middle line:84% through the rhythmic clashing of garbage 00:08:40.950 --> 00:08:43.679 align:middle line:84% can lids that serve as dinner trays. 00:08:43.679 --> 00:08:46.560 align:middle line:84% Inmates are slopped while fascinated onlookers watch 00:08:46.560 --> 00:08:49.890 align:middle line:84% Mrs. Hurley, somebody's, grandma eating gravy 00:08:49.890 --> 00:08:51.270 align:middle line:90% with her bare hands-- 00:08:51.270 --> 00:08:53.190 align:middle line:90% just animals, Rosetta. 00:08:53.190 --> 00:08:54.300 align:middle line:90% She's not your mother. 00:08:54.300 --> 00:08:57.210 align:middle line:90% Don't let it get you. 00:08:57.210 --> 00:08:59.910 align:middle line:84% Suddenly, Mr. Vincenti-- who, with his 11 brothers, 00:08:59.910 --> 00:09:02.100 align:middle line:84% built roads through the Spokane Valley, 00:09:02.100 --> 00:09:04.950 align:middle line:84% where Italians moved like dreams of Martha Graham, 00:09:04.950 --> 00:09:07.710 align:middle line:84% as they laid asphalt over subterranean rivers-- 00:09:07.710 --> 00:09:10.050 align:middle line:84% spots a distant cousin, Leonard-- 00:09:10.050 --> 00:09:12.120 align:middle line:84% an architect until seventh grade-- 00:09:12.120 --> 00:09:13.980 align:middle line:90% who seems to know him. 00:09:13.980 --> 00:09:17.580 align:middle line:84% Leonard displays by way of greeting his only piece 00:09:17.580 --> 00:09:19.920 align:middle line:90% of personal adornment. 00:09:19.920 --> 00:09:21.780 align:middle line:90% How the tourists squeal. 00:09:21.780 --> 00:09:24.420 align:middle line:84% Watch them fumble at coat and fly. 00:09:24.420 --> 00:09:26.970 align:middle line:84% Gurgled and ginghamed relatives disperse back 00:09:26.970 --> 00:09:30.720 align:middle line:84% to the touring car, the picnic basket with its homemade grappa 00:09:30.720 --> 00:09:34.590 align:middle line:84% in giraffe-necked bottles as sun-scarred men 00:09:34.590 --> 00:09:36.360 align:middle line:90% urge olive children on. 00:09:36.360 --> 00:09:39.330 align:middle line:84% Grandma Hurley, who thought the treat was for her, 00:09:39.330 --> 00:09:42.750 align:middle line:84% shyly waves her gravy-dappled fingers, couple 00:09:42.750 --> 00:09:46.440 align:middle line:90% colored as her old brindle cat. 00:09:46.440 --> 00:09:48.210 align:middle line:90% Enough of this madness. 00:09:48.210 --> 00:09:50.250 align:middle line:90% It's already in the past. 00:09:50.250 --> 00:09:52.200 align:middle line:84% Now they are stabbed full of sopers, 00:09:52.200 --> 00:09:55.980 align:middle line:84% numbed and lobotomized in the privacy of their own heads. 00:09:55.980 --> 00:09:58.030 align:middle line:84% It's easier for the chaplain there, nodding. 00:09:58.030 --> 00:10:00.240 align:middle line:84% If you consent to be saved, just nod for God. 00:10:00.240 --> 00:10:03.450 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:10:03.450 --> 00:10:08.370 align:middle line:84% It's never over, old church of our claustrophobia; 00:10:08.370 --> 00:10:12.570 align:middle line:84% church of the barren town, the vast, unbearable sky; 00:10:12.570 --> 00:10:15.690 align:middle line:84% church of the Western plains, our first glimpse 00:10:15.690 --> 00:10:16.830 align:middle line:90% of brilliance. 00:10:16.830 --> 00:10:22.290 align:middle line:84% Church of our innocent incense, there is no goodbye. 00:10:22.290 --> 00:10:25.950 align:middle line:84% Church of the coloring book, crude crayon of childhood, 00:10:25.950 --> 00:10:29.490 align:middle line:84% thank God, at last you seem to be splitting apart. 00:10:29.490 --> 00:10:31.770 align:middle line:84% But you live for at least as long 00:10:31.770 --> 00:10:37.290 align:middle line:84% as our maimed generation lives to curse your blessed plaster 00:10:37.290 --> 00:10:38.355 align:middle line:90% bleeding heart." 00:10:38.355 --> 00:10:41.020 align:middle line:90% 00:10:41.020 --> 00:10:41.984 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:10:41.984 --> 00:10:42.948 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:10:42.948 --> 00:10:49.230 align:middle line:90% 00:10:49.230 --> 00:10:53.990 align:middle line:84% I seem to be consuming all of the water under this lectern.