I'll read one more.
Let's see the title.
Second page.
Tenth page please.
I'll read one more.
It'll be on page 74.
Before I finish this poem, again, thank you guys.
It's been great to be here.
I enjoyed waking up to 80 degrees today.
So it was very nice, so thank you
for pulling that out for me.
You're very personable that way.
And I love monsters.
I think you're picking that up when I'm talking
about Godzilla and whatnot.
I love monsters, and zombies have made a big comeback,
right?
But how are zombies different than the old zombies,
the classic zombies?
The modern zombie is what-- how would you describe it?
They're faster.
They're fast.
They're like Olympic sprinters, right.
And so I've never been able to decide if that's
a good thing or bad thing.
Because if you think about it, that slow zombie,
it's like the least threatening thing ever.
Yes, it'll eat your face off and chew your brains out,
but if you just sort of like walk at a brisk pace,
you should be fine.
And so I think that's why the modern zombie runs nine zillion
miles an hour.
But there's still something unsettling
about that slow, implacable zombie,
and I think that's where it gets its power.
But I realized at some point that zombie was really
kind of never coming back.
And one day I was having some lunch with friends
and we were eating-- you guys have Chick-fil-A out here?
So we're having lunch at Chick-fil-A. Well, they
were having Chick-fil-A. I was just
kind of sitting, hanging out.
And we were getting into the same discussion,
and I had this moment where you suddenly realize,
that this is a poem.
And so I'm like, guys, enjoy your chicken nuggets,
I'm out of here.
And so I ran home and I wrote this poem.
And I guess the only thing that I should gloss
is, I mentioned Cthulhu in the first line.
How many of you are familiar with HP Lovecraft?
He was sort of a horror writer in the turn of the century,
sort of pulp fiction, and Cthulhu was sort of one
of his main monsters.
And I mentioned Cthulhu in the first line.
"Elegy for the lumbering monster."
"Vaya con Cthulhu is what I always
say in moments like these, though it
tends towards wasted sentiment in the best, most
literary ways.
And anyway, I'm struck by your end, your unremarked end,
your ragged demise.
And I wonder if you have even been informed
that all your shambling power is gone, that nobody thinks
of you anymore, abject blips of terror
pinging about in the catacombs of the heart.
From your cheaply-adorned sarcophagus,
a word which means flesh eating, you stumbled out as
though you were in no hurry, except
to make your listless, plaintive hymn.
And this was supposed to be an eternal horror,
but to us now, you're plucky more
than evil, determined in a way that Americans can never
get enough of, zombified in the brine
of our own apocalyptic zeal.
I wonder if you know, if you understand your fall in place,
now that all our beasts, our lithe undead,
our sprinting succubae have broken away, aerobic,
clawing at the subcompact in wild reverse,
the steering wheel slick with undetermined blood,
the tires smoking sickly on the black ribbons of asphalt,
which I cannot help but remind you is made of other dead
beasts: The allosaur, the brachiosaur,
the suddenly wiped-out for reasons we don't know,
and so are fascinated, imagining the black horizon's end.
My own end is what we don't speak of,
though in the marble blindness of your eyes,
it's easy to imagine, and I do, but away from me I run."
Thanks guys.
[APPLAUSE]