WEBVTT

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I have a number of Texas--

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West Texas, mostly-- poems.

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I went to school in Texas,
and I married a Texan.

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And I have hundreds
of Texas relatives

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through that marriage, who
refer to me as Uncle Dick.

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In Texas, there are no such
things as one syllable words,

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you know.

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They're all more
than one syllable.

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And the best known one,
I'm not going to read,

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but this is a more recent one.

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And this has-- the
title comes from a song

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by my favorite all-time country
and western singer, Jimmie

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Rodgers.

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And it is the "Blue Yodel."

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And the lines are, "Going
where the water tastes

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like cherry wine
because this Texas water

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tastes like turpentine."

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And the title is, "Texas
Water Tastes like Turpentine."

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It's in the voice of a
man who lives in a bar,

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as he says, just off the
freeway in West Texas.

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And there are such
people, of course.

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And this is his view.

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"We live in a bar
just off the freeway

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in a permanent
state of nostalgia,

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listening to brokenhearted songs
and gunfire from the parking

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lot.

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This is the frontier of
the postmodernist era.

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One of us lost his
leg in the war,

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but he can't remember which war.

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After midnight, he can't
remember which leg.

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We still have private parts,
semi-private at least.

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But we are surrounded by
dangerous dry counties

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and the abuse of loneliness.

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There are as many ways of being
dead as are ways of dying.

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All afternoon, we watch
the heavy industry

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of flies on flypaper.

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Outside is raw distance and
the apotheosis of glare.

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We close at 2:00 AM.

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It's a long journey from
Texas to West Texas.

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The world as we know
it is mostly unknown."

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[APPLAUSE]