Lois said she only gave 90 second introductions,
and she wasn't kidding.
I think that's really nice because you
have to stand out there in the wings and feel terrible.
Can everybody hear me?
Is that reaching you in the back?
OK.
I'm going to start off by reading a riddle poem tonight.
This is an audience participation poem,
and it won't work at all if you don't participate.
You have to guess the answers to these riddles.
And the poem is called "Song for Seven Parts of The Body".
OK.
One.
This one, a common type turns in was once attached.
Fed me as sweetly as an opium pipe.
Oh, birthday's on limber us, eyes sit back,
ears go indoors, but here, nothing changes.
This was, this is.
Navel.
Beautiful.
What an audience.
Terrific.
Belly button.
Navel.
OK.
This one's easy.
Two.
Mostly, they lie low, put up shells, sprout hairs.
And if they sing, they know only leather cares.
Blind marchers five abreast.
Left, right, silent as mushrooms or puff paste,
they rise up free at night.
Toes.
Very good.
I think I should applause.
No.
Three.
I have a life of my own, he says.
He is transformed without benefit of bone.
I will burrow, he says, and enters.
Afterwards, he goes slack as a slug.
He remembers little the prince is again a frog.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
Four.
[LAUGHTER]
Here is a field that never lies fallow.
Sweat waters it, nails hoe the roots.
Everyday death comes in with the window.
Everyday newborns crop up like asparagus.
At night, all night on the pillow,
you can hear the narrow sprouts crackle
rubbing against each other, lying closer than lemmings.
They speak to their outposts in armpits.
They speak to their settlers in crutches.
Neighbor, neighbor, they murmur.
Hair.
Right.
OK, five.
They have eyes that see not, they
straddle the valley of wishes.
Their heels make their own rules.
Among them are barbers, melons, fishes, doorknobs and spools.
At times, they whisper touch me.
Breasts.
Right.
Six.
Imagine a mouth without you, pink man goodfellow.
A house without a kitchen, a fish less ocean,
no way to swallow.
Tongue.
Very good.
And the last one, seven.
These nubbins, these hangers on, here not.
Wise men tug them in thought.
Lovers may nibble each others.
Maidens, gypsies, and peasants make holes in theirs
to hang presence.
Earlobes.
Thank you all very much.