Is this thing-- is this working.
It's OK.
All right.
As Lois mentioned, I drove racing cars.
I spent about five years of my life or five years.
But almost seems like part of another life
doing that until I set of deceleration record
in California.
I went from 110 to zero in 3/10 of a second.
With the help of a concrete wall and as a changed man.
I mention that because this first poem
deals with that experience.
I began teaching high school as soon
as I got into a wheelchair.
And it was kind of an interesting way
to do it because I didn't have any discipline problem.
I don't know if it was all of the casts that I was wearing.
Either made students feel sorry for me or intimidated them.
But I had one eye that was full of blood, bright red.
It was very handy because any time--
[LAUGHTER]
was good for letching too but any time anybody would step out
of line I'd-
[LAUGHTER]
turn the eye on them.
But the school board got upset.
A girl turned to stone and her parents complained and anyway.
This first poem is a poem in three parts.
It begins with a dream which goes into a motorcycle trip.
The second part goes back to an experience
of racing and the third part back to the motorcycle trip.
It begins with a quote from an essay
by Federico Garcia Lorca on the duende.
Duende translated literally from Spanish means hobgoblin.
But in Andalusia where Lorca lived, duende means much more.
Duende is a quality that one has or does not have.
He says, that which has black sounds has duende.
He speaks of a flamenco singer who has duende.
And one another singer who's technically just as good
but does not have duende.
But he says, the true struggle is with duende.
The duende will not appear if he does not
see the possibility of death.
If he is not convinced he will circle death's house.
This poem is called "Between Rooms."
I dreamed I was a nun.
Escaping vows to some dark order down a black stairwell.
I woke up still running.
The stairs were my spine.
I ran from the pit of myself.
Riding a motorcycle day after day,
the continent passing beside me.
Wind and light till I can't stop.
Miles of towns and prairies move through my sleep.
Come back and I ride them again.
A room revisited over and over.
A flawed face familiar but always a name
you can't remember.
The fear of death before sleep comes.
Fear of nothing or the lack of it.
Fear I scorn at noon, scorn danger and its pictures
vivid in my head.
I'm riding a motorcycle though I'd rather walk.
But walking a man looks suspicious.
I've seen the sidelong glances of farmers thinking
they own the world at 5:00 AM.
Even their cows are wary.
I raced around death's house, glad to be just out of reach.
Though several times it snagged my clothing
and I tore them getting free.
110 miles an hour the concrete wall
zoomed in like a fist, impact and fire.
My nose covered my eye like a patch.
Drowning in blood, a black man filled me with tubes.
All the faces around the table looking down
and no one answered.
I thought I was dead and feared cremation.
I couldn't break a bone in my body
that hasn't already been broken.
Right arm, right leg, left arm, left leg, skull, nose, 12 ribs,
two vertebrae and skin.
Broke lots of skin.
I heal quickly and cherish my scars.
I still crave speed though I fear it.
I love silence but despise still air.
Visit the cemetery to recount a past I don't want to escape.
I've got four cylinders under me and in my hand 130 miles
an hour.
I won't use it right now but I know it's there.
I left Kansas City an hour ago.
The center line's a tape I'm reeling in.
My back hurts.
It's getting colder and looks like rain.
I'll stop in Wichita sometime after dark.
I was telling a class the other day,
I spent a week in a Catholic girls
school in Winona, Minnesota.
I gave a reading one night and a nun came up to me
after the reading.
She was 60, 70 years old, asked if I
would read to a group of cloistered nuns
that she was in charge of the next day and I said I would.
So, at 8 o'clock the next morning
I found myself in a room full of nuns inside a convent.
And just before I began reading, she came over and punched me
in the ribs and she said, by the way these girls know all
the words so you don't have to pull any punches with them,
you know.
Which really put me at ease.
So, I started reading poems and I got to this poem.
And not thinking about it, I read that first line.
I dreamed I was a nun and all of a sudden
the room got very small.
[LAUGHTER]
And a little voice over here kept
saying, in my maiden form bra.
[LAUGHTER]
In this part said, no no no.
I find I have one self that acts and the other self that watches
and horrified sometimes.