So that's a little piece of "Orange Alert"
for you, hopefully, to tease you and make
you a little interested in it.
And I think that I have now reached my two-poem warning
time.
[CHUCKLES] Is that the case?
OK.
And so what I'm going to do is a different thing.
I'm going to read one poem from my brand new manuscript that
still has markings all over it.
And I have no idea whether it's interesting or not interesting.
And then I'm going to--
I've been trying to think of this poem
that I really want to write.
And I have not been able to do it properly.
And so I'm just going to--
I really want to think super fresh.
And I'm going to write it in front of you.
I'm going to do my best.
I'm just going to do it properly.
So we'll see how that goes.
This poem is called "Texting Ishmael."
And then the next one is called "Queer Ishmael,"
the one that's unwritten.
[LAUGHTER]
So-- this is this "Texting Ishmael."
It's warning him.
"In the season of Earth returning, hardly believing,
as always, in age, choking on impossible things, taken
by the tin plane aloft to the edited text of Abraham,
my supersonic spirit father, nestling
into me, the scared child nexting into me, warning me,
it's not you.
You are not the son who is going to.
I am so cold in my snowsuit, so delicately taken care of.
Who even knows who you are floating up among the Styrofoam
planets, torn from gravity and flung up within skyward?
You, sun bugger.
Just try and remember all this when he takes the knife
to your throat."