I wrote this in a really weird--
oh, I read it at a bar in New York.
I had a wonderful time there.
I didn't have anything to drink, but everyone liked me there.
And that always surprises me.
I've had that experience here too,
and I feel like it's like some kind of big joke
and like everyone's going to like kill me with an ax
just when you have me off guard.
But anyway.
I sat up all night in my host's very beautiful Greenwich
Village apartment, gorgeous apartment.
And I was so happy, you know?
And I just wanted to stay up and work.
But I couldn't get anything done.
And, then, I was about to quit at about 5:00 in the morning.
And all of a sudden, I had what I can only describe--
sleep deprivation, you know?
I had-- literally had this.
Kind of, I saw--
this doesn't happen to me.
I saw these-- first it was kind of silly,
but then it changed into something
almost sublime I thought.
And so I wrote this short poem based on--
"Can You Say That Again," it's called.
"My stepfather was busy splitting my stepmother's skull
with an ax, which struck me as excessive behavior
even for him.
Oh, I see, she'd first flown in the window.
And folding her black vespertilion wings,
had bitten his neck pretty bad, which quite naturally resulted
in instantaneous rabies, then their mutual demise.
Why didn't I think of that?
A conical mountain rose in the distance, a road
winding around and around it like the thread of a screw.
On it, children in white cheddars
descending slowly in song.
The two of them reborn in their company.
I never heard anything like it.
Each child then releasing, from hands
now unfolded from prayer, scarlet moths
who darkened the air.
The sound of their voices, like faraway choirs,
heard while dying by fire for the cause."