[CLEARS THROAT] I wrote a poem in a very wide format
called "cinemascope."
And I asked the publisher to consider doing a gatefold,
having the poem actually fold out.
And my editor said, well, we'll be much more open to that
if you could write a poem to fit the other side of the page.
And I thought, like I'm going to-- like lightning
is going to strike twice.
[LAUGHTER]
And I was walking down the street thinking,
what could I write that would work as a foldout?
And also, one of the things that you
should know about the organizational conceit
of "Chronic" is that all of the titles of the poems
either begin or end with the letter C.
So that was a constraint that I had to work with.
And I was walking down the street, literally,
thinking about this problem.
And in the gutter--
gutters are great, aren't they?
[LAUGHTER]
In the gutter was a discarded pornographic magazine.
And I thought, centerfold.
"Centerfold."
"Into every life some possible lover should come.
You don't quite catch his name the first time through.
Call him Brian or Ryan.
You met him at the antelope petting zoo,
or on the steps of city hall at the yearly die-in.
He was a body among so many other bodies,
some furry and with horns, some able, some blistering
and sweat, some you heaved upon like amphibious D-Day craft
quitting the ocean.
Some unable to stand erect, their soft boy parts pressed
against you the way lunchmeat feels
when it falls from the sandwich onto your legs.
All the untouchable figures outspread upon the asphalt,
as if it's natural to recline this way, playing possum,
flashing the word "vacancy," glowing,
snuff-colored, against the motel background
of a pornographic magazine carelessly
tossed against the curb.
Recognize one face among the 23 airbrushed faces,
slightly withdrawn, obviously stoned,
nimbused in a union of elapsing smoke and incandescence.
Isn't he the one who looked upward into your gawp,
as if a deathbed held him against you?
He was living then.
You both were living.
And the vessel protruded, your hull dragging up
onto the beach, his carcass already a carcass on the sand.
No, he was a darling critter, a feral thing, but he struck you.
He bit you, and you broke inside.
And the condom broke.
Shoddy piece, princeling, posturer, dirty, dirty beast."