I have a number of Texas--
West Texas, mostly-- poems.
I went to school in Texas, and I married a Texan.
And I have hundreds of Texas relatives
through that marriage, who refer to me as Uncle Dick.
In Texas, there are no such things as one syllable words,
you know.
They're all more than one syllable.
And the best known one, I'm not going to read,
but this is a more recent one.
And this has-- the title comes from a song
by my favorite all-time country and western singer, Jimmie
Rodgers.
And it is the "Blue Yodel."
And the lines are, "Going where the water tastes
like cherry wine because this Texas water
tastes like turpentine."
And the title is, "Texas Water Tastes like Turpentine."
It's in the voice of a man who lives in a bar,
as he says, just off the freeway in West Texas.
And there are such people, of course.
And this is his view.
"We live in a bar just off the freeway
in a permanent state of nostalgia,
listening to brokenhearted songs and gunfire from the parking
lot.
This is the frontier of the postmodernist era.
One of us lost his leg in the war,
but he can't remember which war.
After midnight, he can't remember which leg.
We still have private parts, semi-private at least.
But we are surrounded by dangerous dry counties
and the abuse of loneliness.
There are as many ways of being dead as are ways of dying.
All afternoon, we watch the heavy industry
of flies on flypaper.
Outside is raw distance and the apotheosis of glare.
We close at 2:00 AM.
It's a long journey from Texas to West Texas.
The world as we know it is mostly unknown."
[APPLAUSE]