So I'll read just a very, very little bit.
But are there any questions about this particular
presentation or anything?
OK.
OK, I'll read.
[LAUGHING]
So I teach a creative writing workshop.
And I ask my students to--
I give them assignments.
I just like everyone to do the same thing--
not because it's monotonous, but because then everyone else
to sort of solve the same problem.
And I usually give assignments like, well,
you're going to write a seven-line poem.
And you have to use the word toaster oven in line 1.
And you have to use the word bazooka in line 2.
And then you have to make a transition between a paper
hat and a geisha dancer midway through the second line.
And then you have to make other transitions.
So I do all these sorts of things
just so that the students will forget what they were supposed
to do, which is write at home, because then usually
something nice happens.
But this is a poem I wrote.
I often do these poems myself, because I
feel it's only fair if I give students an assignment that I
should do it too.
So this is called "Diary/Blog."
So I ask my students to all start a blog
and to write a poem about blogging or writing
on the blog platform.
And I noticed the weird thing was
like when I started blogging, I seem to be talking to somebody,
this you.
But I actually didn't know who it was.
It was like, who is this person I'm talking to.
Seems to be kind of someone I might love or something like,
but I wasn't really sure.
So this is sort of about that experience.
And it's called "Diary/Blog."
"Monday, you are a part of the incompleteness of my afternoon.
The lessons of the motivational speakers of,
et cetera, et cetera, come upstairs.
They see me at my desk.
They raised the ocean one half of three degrees
over a 20-year-old's life.
They take the coffee apart, like it's two.
The articulation-- it comes apart too.
A mother do this, a daughter do this.
Everyone who was near me smells like anise.
Nonetheless, I have been thinking about you at dinner.
I mean, eating dinner.
Please see me on your phone.
My speech is a little bit hard to make up.
I think of myself as a restaurant in Chelsea
that wakes up at 2:00 AM and goes
to a restaurant in Chelsea.
I do not need to look for tanning salons.
I bruise myself.
I get sick on envelopes.
Saturday, you get married.
The room I am constructing feels like alcohol
in my head, which is decorated with conversations
and fake Moroccan lamps.
And everything is in it, even the glass dishes and candles,
even the feet that belong to the feelings.
They are painted red.
Like you, this would seem unappetizing.
In combinations, I have spent many evenings
having tempura green beans and a bottle of Coke to run with you.
Cheryl, where are the planters and the screw gun
that publishes itself on the internet every other year?
Every other year it watches the TV.
When I looked away, you had signed off without saying.
On Thursday, I usually wait to my birthday
to open these photographs.
So there was a time lag between my expectations and the gift.
On Friday, I tell you I want you.
And I want you to know yourself.
And I am very attracted to your eyelids
and the minutes that come between them
and the chairs that think they see volcanoes in your eyes.
And I think you are standing between something I see
and something I don't.
But I don't really have the chair when this occurs.
And you are yourself again and again.
And yesterday, and oh too much comes into this."
Oh, I think I missed a page.
Ha.
[LAUGHING]
How weird.
That was OK.
All right, I'm going to read the second page.
I've read the first and the third page.
I've only forgotten where I am.
"Tuesday, I know someone.
Her name is Cheryl or Darryl.
And she is an artist.
I know K-Mart is not nearby a lake.
I know the pileated woodpecker and WindSong Cologne,
an aftershave for $7.99.
I know the English fonts.
I know Google because it has completed my attention.
My attention knows a few of my wives
and their former girlfriends.
I and they and everyone I know likes
to gather me around wooden shaped things, like blankets
or teeth sets or the occasional cockroach that
are aromas in my bedrooms.
What are the things that are occasional in kitchens?
Today, I'm like myself.
And you, still so silk-like and/or sullen,
call me if you were not so bored as I am.
Now and then, and now and then tonight,
which is basically the same thing,
I don't like to see taxis, especially coming up
8th Avenue.
Yet I believe in my own obedience.
Every star is an advertisement for another star.
Every taxi is an advertisement for a bus.
Cheryl is a television set made from wood
and painted to look like you.
You were here.
You were talking to me in Japan.
You were talking to me now.
Then as now, I don't hear you anyway.
I get tired because I am writing like a literary magazine
at the Annual American Book Association meeting
or a snowstorm inside a blog.
Oh, yeah, all I've done today is drink and read your emails.
You forgot to sign your name."
Sorry, that was out of order.
But I don't know that it makes that much difference.
[LAUGHING]