WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.670 align:middle line:90% 00:00:02.670 --> 00:00:07.025 align:middle line:84% That Porcine fascist is a radio talk show host. 00:00:07.025 --> 00:00:09.740 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:09.740 --> 00:00:13.190 align:middle line:90% 00:00:13.190 --> 00:00:19.910 align:middle line:84% This poem, it's a poem about memory, I suppose. 00:00:19.910 --> 00:00:23.240 align:middle line:84% But I realize, this is one of the few poems I've 00:00:23.240 --> 00:00:26.810 align:middle line:84% written that seems to be, well, set in memory, but also, 00:00:26.810 --> 00:00:30.470 align:middle line:90% set in Tucson a long while back. 00:00:30.470 --> 00:00:35.530 align:middle line:84% It's called Screensaver, Pharaoh. 00:00:35.530 --> 00:00:38.020 align:middle line:84% We had eaten the placenta in a soup 00:00:38.020 --> 00:00:41.300 align:middle line:84% that someone based on a family recipe for menudo. 00:00:41.300 --> 00:00:42.420 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:42.420 --> 00:00:43.510 align:middle line:90% There was someone else. 00:00:43.510 --> 00:00:45.010 align:middle line:90% It was Bill, I think. 00:00:45.010 --> 00:00:48.430 align:middle line:84% Joked that it tasted just like chicken. 00:00:48.430 --> 00:00:51.370 align:middle line:84% This year's model was brand new, and the needle 00:00:51.370 --> 00:00:53.500 align:middle line:90% stuck on lipstick Vogue. 00:00:53.500 --> 00:00:56.890 align:middle line:84% Costello snarling, not just another mouth, not 00:00:56.890 --> 00:01:00.310 align:middle line:84% just another mouth, until Joe set the bong down 00:01:00.310 --> 00:01:03.910 align:middle line:84% and flicked the tone arm forward from the scratch. 00:01:03.910 --> 00:01:08.170 align:middle line:84% And anyway, by this time, Amy was shouting from the bedroom 00:01:08.170 --> 00:01:10.810 align:middle line:84% that she'd finally gotten Star to sleep, 00:01:10.810 --> 00:01:14.860 align:middle line:84% that the music should be Mozart or something. 00:01:14.860 --> 00:01:16.990 align:middle line:84% I've forgotten the midwife's name, 00:01:16.990 --> 00:01:19.960 align:middle line:84% but she sat sprawled on a patio chair. 00:01:19.960 --> 00:01:24.040 align:middle line:84% The distant blink of Tucson down the mountainside. 00:01:24.040 --> 00:01:26.530 align:middle line:84% She held an iced Corona and told us 00:01:26.530 --> 00:01:30.790 align:middle line:84% she was too worn out to drive the snaking foothill two lanes 00:01:30.790 --> 00:01:31.930 align:middle line:90% home. 00:01:31.930 --> 00:01:37.450 align:middle line:84% Good dope, cheap champagne, a soup of afterbirth, everybody 00:01:37.450 --> 00:01:39.550 align:middle line:90% but the midwife garrulous. 00:01:39.550 --> 00:01:44.980 align:middle line:84% And now Papajeno was flapping birdman wings in his mating 00:01:44.980 --> 00:01:47.500 align:middle line:90% dance around fair Papagena. 00:01:47.500 --> 00:01:51.700 align:middle line:84% So the talk turned to duets, scholastic in the way 00:01:51.700 --> 00:01:54.550 align:middle line:90% that stoner conversations go. 00:01:54.550 --> 00:01:57.280 align:middle line:84% Whose placenta was it we slurped down 00:01:57.280 --> 00:02:01.270 align:middle line:84% with cilantro and a dash of cumin, telling ourselves 00:02:01.270 --> 00:02:03.550 align:middle line:90% the taste was not half bad? 00:02:03.550 --> 00:02:05.650 align:middle line:90% Amy's or Star's? 00:02:05.650 --> 00:02:09.070 align:middle line:84% And what about Derek, who now had moved to Mykonos, 00:02:09.070 --> 00:02:11.680 align:middle line:90% leaving his storied seat behind? 00:02:11.680 --> 00:02:15.790 align:middle line:84% What portion of the recipe was owed to him? 00:02:15.790 --> 00:02:18.080 align:middle line:90% Now came the tricky part. 00:02:18.080 --> 00:02:20.410 align:middle line:90% Where did the soul inhere? 00:02:20.410 --> 00:02:23.800 align:middle line:84% The midwife rimmed her long neck with a lemon slice 00:02:23.800 --> 00:02:26.740 align:middle line:84% and allowed that we'd ingested perfection. 00:02:26.740 --> 00:02:30.880 align:middle line:84% The bodies all in one: liver, kidney, blood supply. 00:02:30.880 --> 00:02:34.690 align:middle line:84% Its vascular estuary spidering from Delta 00:02:34.690 --> 00:02:37.420 align:middle line:84% to sea, tasting not just of flesh 00:02:37.420 --> 00:02:41.170 align:middle line:84% but of the corpus entire, which we all agreed 00:02:41.170 --> 00:02:42.430 align:middle line:90% was pretty far out. 00:02:42.430 --> 00:02:43.900 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:02:43.900 --> 00:02:49.720 align:middle line:84% Lord, how I yearn sometimes for those days of sudden bedazzling 00:02:49.720 --> 00:02:52.690 align:middle line:84% insight, however false and addled? 00:02:52.690 --> 00:02:54.325 align:middle line:90% My eyes went Blakean. 00:02:54.325 --> 00:02:59.530 align:middle line:84% And by the firelight, I watched the quaking dance of souls, bi- 00:02:59.530 --> 00:03:03.310 align:middle line:84% and tri- and quadrificated and hovering among us 00:03:03.310 --> 00:03:05.020 align:middle line:90% in a pea soup fog. 00:03:05.020 --> 00:03:08.710 align:middle line:84% Lavishes dry ice aswirl from a spliff. 00:03:08.710 --> 00:03:12.550 align:middle line:84% My soul, your soul, our soul, the oversoul 00:03:12.550 --> 00:03:16.360 align:middle line:84% broadcasting its 100,000 watts of Motown 00:03:16.360 --> 00:03:20.230 align:middle line:84% to the radio speakers of the whole Southwest. 00:03:20.230 --> 00:03:25.360 align:middle line:84% Aretha's soul and Otis' soul and Sam Cook's soul and Numa 00:03:25.360 --> 00:03:29.140 align:middle line:84% weighing 20 grams of blazing light. 00:03:29.140 --> 00:03:31.600 align:middle line:84% But then the tone arm reached the Arias, 00:03:31.600 --> 00:03:34.210 align:middle line:90% and the LP clicked off. 00:03:34.210 --> 00:03:37.510 align:middle line:84% The room became sleeping bags and pillows. 00:03:37.510 --> 00:03:41.320 align:middle line:84% Mexican blanket covering a ratty sofa. 00:03:41.320 --> 00:03:44.470 align:middle line:84% The parts we didn't eat, we doubled bag 00:03:44.470 --> 00:03:46.930 align:middle line:84% and carried to the dumpster, padlocked 00:03:46.930 --> 00:03:49.240 align:middle line:90% to confound the coyotes. 00:03:49.240 --> 00:03:51.850 align:middle line:84% The midwife took the couch and slept. 00:03:51.850 --> 00:03:54.320 align:middle line:84% And by the firelight, the whole clan 00:03:54.320 --> 00:03:58.480 align:middle line:84% slumbered, the cave wall throwing shadows. 00:03:58.480 --> 00:04:02.590 align:middle line:84% This was 30 years ago where the business of the world 00:04:02.590 --> 00:04:05.530 align:middle line:90% has taken us, I can't say. 00:04:05.530 --> 00:04:06.760 align:middle line:90% I reboot. 00:04:06.760 --> 00:04:10.420 align:middle line:84% The pixels gather themselves and pulse at me. 00:04:10.420 --> 00:04:15.760 align:middle line:84% I could Google Amy, Google Star, Map Quest Speedway Boulevard, 00:04:15.760 --> 00:04:19.570 align:middle line:84% and call up Derek's obit from the Sentinel. 00:04:19.570 --> 00:04:25.150 align:middle line:84% But the screen instead coalesces to a tomb painting Pharaoh. 00:04:25.150 --> 00:04:28.960 align:middle line:84% Lordly, he walks, preceded by his vassals 00:04:28.960 --> 00:04:31.780 align:middle line:84% who bear his emblems and trophies 00:04:31.780 --> 00:04:34.990 align:middle line:90% hoisted atop tall staffs. 00:04:34.990 --> 00:04:39.100 align:middle line:84% Among them is Pharaoh's placenta preserved 00:04:39.100 --> 00:04:41.560 align:middle line:90% and flapping like an ensign. 00:04:41.560 --> 00:04:46.420 align:middle line:84% Race to the sky, the Crimson portal hovers in the wind. 00:04:46.420 --> 00:04:50.395 align:middle line:84% From it, the God King fell headfirst into this world. 00:04:50.395 --> 00:04:54.040 align:middle line:90% 00:04:54.040 --> 00:04:55.855 align:middle line:84% Kind of cornered the market on poems 00:04:55.855 --> 00:04:56.980 align:middle line:90% about placenta [INAUDIBLE]. 00:04:56.980 --> 00:04:59.350 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:04:59.350 --> 00:05:01.560 align:middle line:90% You only need one. 00:05:01.560 --> 00:05:06.000 align:middle line:90%