This next poem is called, "It's not the heat so much
as the humidity."
[LAUGHTER]
It was written moving on--
upon moving back to my place of birth Kansas City.
And I hadn't lived there in about eight years
but I feel this irresistible urge to go back this summer.
Only a dish of blueberries could pull me out
of this lingering funk.
I'm tired of taking the kids down to watch the riots.
No longer impressed with fancy electrical nets.
Sick of supersonic nightsticks.
By myself a hot dog and a glass of beer, that helps.
It's hard to say who's winning, nobody is winning.
Boy, Kansas City, big zoo, oriental art,
starlight theater, Annie Get Your Gun
going into its 17th year.
[LAUGHTER]
Once I met Tab Hunter there.
[LAUGHTER]
4 o'clock in the morning standing
in line at the Coke machine.
So tall and blond though not much of a conversationalist.
[LAUGHTER]
It's good to be home.
Trying to soften the blow for young girls
who are inclined to fall off of their porches.
Some of my best friends are curse on those
who do or do not take dope.
[LAUGHTER]
When autumn comes or when fall arrives
in her chemise of zillion colors,
I will sign noisily as if an old and disgusting leg had finally
dropped off.
No more drinking beer, no more the perpetual search
for an air conditioned friend.
No more friends.
I'll take piano lessons, French lessons, speed reading lessons.
And if there is still time to kill, golf at a blue
jay tumbling out of the maple tree.
Cars slide by with their windows up whispering
of a Mexican restaurant with really good chile verde.
The gutters billow with mauve death.
A mother's sad voice sends out a tugboat whistle
through the purple mist.
She worries about her children.
And the dangerous fishhook of melancholy
dangles from every dog's ear.
The dog that saved my life that keeps on saving it
each long humid night.
The dead dog.
And so a shiny baseball hovers over the city.
No one asks why.
And so it passes on.
And so a telephone starts to ring in a widow's cake filled
kitchen.
A roller skate collides with a lunch pail.
[APPLAUSE]