This poem is called "How the Friends Met."
It's a poem, it's about four years old or so.
And it still seems to me to be a fairly decent description
of how one goes about making friends.
Or at least the friends I end up making.
"So what do you do?
What can you do?
Leave the room altogether?
Crazy.
Your eyes are the wallpaper.
Makes it tough, doesn't it?
Peel them away.
You call that pain, it's not.
It's insane.
You make it.
Keep going.
Confront a light pole.
Smoke a mythopoeic cigarette forever.
Mark a spot with your mysterious shoe.
Scratch hate in the sidewalk.
A man will come along and there will
be reason enough to knife him.
Sure enough, there comes along a worse than Bogart.
There you are, smoking the light pole.
The spot you marked appears between your eyes
and then becomes the sidewalk.
And the man walks right up the sidewalk, into your room,
looks at the wallpaper and laughs.
So, what do you do?
What can you do?
Kick him out?
Hell no.
You charge him rent."
[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]