WEBVTT

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I'm going to, kind of, stay in
the same vein for a little bit.

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A little light because we need
a little bit of that, too.

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Here's another poem
that I read a lot.

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And some of you who
heard me already,

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I hope you don't get
tired of these poems.

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But I like them a lot,
so I like to read them.

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This one has to do with the
fact that, for some reason,

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the Mexicanos that
came to Los Angeles,

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like I'm sure
here, a lot of them

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brought their chickens
and roosters with them.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And I really hated them,
to be honest with you,

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because they stunk, they
made a lot of noise.

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I just couldn't stand them.

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And I thought that when I moved
to Chicago, about 10 years ago,

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I really thought I
was going to get away

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from these damn
chickens and roosters.

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[LAUGHTER]

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[INAUDIBLE]

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Well, that's what it is.

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I mean, people who
know Chicago, the thing

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is that I moved into this
Puerto Rican neighborhood.

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And guess what?

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Chickens and
roosters everywhere.

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And the thing was, is that
they have three story flats

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and it's all concrete.

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And I thought, well
they wouldn't be there.

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But they have them
in the hallways.

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In the apartment buildings,
they have them walking around.

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So since I couldn't
get away from them,

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I decided I might as well give
in and write about at least one

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of them.

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So this is about an
East LA area rooster--

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Echo Park, actually--
that I wrote about.

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And it's called "The Rooster
Who Thought It Was A Dog"

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[LAUGHTER]

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"Echo Park mornings came on the
wing of a roosters nine squawk.

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This noise, unfortunately,
also brought

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in the afternoon, evenings,
and most hours of the day.

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The rooster had
no sense of time,

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nor any desire to commit to one.

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He cock a doodle whenever
he had the notion.

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For late sleepers, day sleepers,
or your plain, ordinary,

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run-of-the-mill night sleepers,
annoyance had this roosters

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beak.

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It was enough to
drive one crazy.

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Often I opened my
back window that

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faced the alley just across
from the backyard where

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the rooster made his home.

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Shut up or I'll blow your
stinking brains out, I'd yell.

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Great communication technique.

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It worked on the
brats next door--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--but the but the
rooster never flinched.

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With calm aplomb, it'd
continue to squawk.

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For one thing, the
rooster never gave out

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a bona fide cock-a-doodle--
it sort of shouted it out.

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It happened that the rooster
lived with three dogs--

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a German shepherd and two mutts.

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The dogs barked through
their existence.

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They barked at
everything in sight.

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I finally concluded-- that
rooster thought it was a dog.

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Somehow, I didn't
mind the dogs barking,

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but when the rooster
barks that's murder.

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In fact, I often saw it
running alongside the dogs

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as they raced across
the dirty yard,

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barking at passing
cars and people.

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If the dogs went left,
the rooster went left.

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They'd go right, and dang if
the rooster didn't go right as

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well.

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Now, I don't know if this is a
regular condition for roosters.

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I thought I had a story
for the Weekly World News.

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I could see it now--

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the rooster who
thinks it's a dog.

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Who knows what rooster
dementia we had here?

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And whether the rooster
chased cats up trees

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or pissed on fire hydrants,
this wasn't clear.

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But once I grasped the
heart of the matter,

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I began to see the
rooster in another light.

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I felt sorry for this fowl
with an identity problem.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And I wondered how it must
react when its owners threw

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chicken bones to the dogs.

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Would it nibble at the
remains of its favorite hen?

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I shuddered at the thought.

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Yet, despite the revelation
of the roosters bark,

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the problem of sleep didn't end.

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Then, one day, a new
neighbor-- a young lady

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who often drank herself
to bliss-- got a gun

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and blew the rooster away.

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She became somewhat
of a local hero.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I must say, though, it was
an unfitting in for the bird.

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But I suppose one can tolerate
barking dogs, but barking

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roosters-- that's another
matter altogether."

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

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