So now I'll read something a little more normal for me.
[LAUGHTER]
For me.
And it's called "Percussion Grenade,"
and it's the title poem.
I actually haven't read it in a few years.
So if it's rusty, it might actually be a mercy to you.
I think it sort of speaks for itself.
It has some noises that come into it when I get the spirit.
And it begins like this.
"Percussion Grenade."
One.
Is it OK to live inside this percussion grenade?
Giving the high sign to the frogmen sucking
mud, the all clear to the women rolling
their hair into '40s processionals
In my Gondola of clouds, in my percussion grenade,
I loaf, and invite myself to lock and load.
Dine under the table, stir the alpha soup
with my epiphaneedle.
The thick hours with my rifle butt.
I cause a eutrophied current to glut and push close.
What a worry -warm.
I blot it, smile out, and sigh I atrophy
in my percussion grenade.
And I defy any paste sayer or roddy snop
to decry the sanction of my equipage.
Two.
In this scene I'm tricked out like a Valkyrie banshee.
My shins patched with splints, my mouth stretched to fit
a pure gold baptismal font.
My hair like armor, my hair like rags,
armored vehicle breast shield shriek my rhinocerine eros,
the inevitability of fate.
The way my hips shake, the way my death rattles.
How do you tell if there's a goddess of destruction
and death in your refrigerator?
In your bed?
In your cathode tube?
In your IV?
In your snack box?
And your Yorick socks, and your parking sheen.
How do you tell if it, tell if it, tell if it-- slowly now!
If at all, tell if it-- slowly!
It, tell if all, carefully-er, all in one breath?
Three.
Opeeeeeeeee- shriek!
Opine!
Opine of mine!
Crescendo!
Macaw!
I'm a Magpie with a car alarm and an airplane
and a patented genome.
A reinforced cockpit door and a poptab brain,
a vivisected aquifer, shunted and split 10 ways between here
and the San Fernando Valley, and the Rift Valley,
and the Kusk Valley, and the Rhine.
Tuscaloosa, and South Bend, and St. Mark's
Venice, and St. Mark.
Opeeeeeeeeeeeeo- galala, Opee- Orkney Islanders.
Bush twins Opeeeeee Cree, Opeeeeee- entropy,
Opeeeeee- enmity.
Opeeeeee- evisceration, Opeeeeee omenology.
Opeeeeee- genocide!
How your guts spill out tells me how you die, how you died,
how you diet in the post-death time zone,
up on Mars on the Stygian plain.
Skinny now.
What scattering of fingerprints.
What scattering of finger bones?
What dice tossed into the sky became your clutch
of daughters, lost to history with last week's literacy.
It had a dying fall.
Opeeeeee- C-3PO, tell me if you know, if everything that lives
is holy, how I know more about celebrity divorce cults
than what's happening in Baghdad, Washington, Compton,
Philly, Montgomery, Tashkent, Quito San Salvador, St.Denis
Darfur, Kabul, Kabul.
Opeeeeee- indeterminacy!
Opeeeeee- indistinction.
Opeeeeee- incrimination, Opeeeeee- indignity.
Blame, enmity, hatred, bile, melancholy, criminal lack
of empathy, death shrink, curse of static,
lime quick, eviscerating grave, clean clothes.
The uterine black hole issues a bull in B flat.
The color of the seasick universe is green.
Opeeeeee- wick wick.
Opeeeeee- window sash.
Opeeeeee- conflagration.
Opeeeeee universe.
Opeeeeee- lunchbox, Opeeeeee sandwich paper, bus fare,
machete music.
The blood unfolds like paper from the hewn lawn
of the skull.
Shaking the map out, reams of material.
And the blood washed clothes are good for something.
But the eight months gestation, and the 16 years
horniness, and the 90 years senescence, and the 70 years
mellowness, and the 35 years brilliance, and the 12 years
sweetness, are good for nothing.
Four.
Oh Kay Oh Kay Okey doke.
Yes, yeah, all right.
Sure thing, sure thing.
That's cool.
That's dope.
That's affirmative.
10-4.
How many words for acquiescence in the English language?
I consent.
I agree.
I'm down.
I'm with you, 100%.
That's peachy.
Just fine.
Hot dog!
Yeah, uh-huh, that'll do.
It works for me.
I can live with that.
It's a deal.
Sure.
OK.
Sounds good.
OK.
Okey doke.
Uh-huh.
Oh, gee.
Oh, geez.
Oh, cream cheese.
Oh, neon.
Oh, moron.
Oh, clout.
Oh, creep.
Oh, shit, oh, fuck, oh damn.
Oh, oh, oh--
OK.
Give it to me.
It's a deal!
I'll deal with it.
OK.
I'll take it.
It's OK I could take it.
It's cool.
It's the shit.
It's a suck.
It's a waste.
It's the grave.
It's the bomb.
It's gravy.
It's awesome.
It's great.
It's OK.
I can take it, it's OK.
It is?
I tell you, yes, it is.
It's OK.
It is?
I tell you it is.
It's OK.
Well are you sure?
I tell you it's, yes.
It's ah--
Well are you sure?
Are you sure now?
I tell you it is.
I give you my word.
It is.
It's OK.
I promise.
It's--
Well, OK.
It is, yes.
Well, are you sure now?
Yes!
Are you sure now?
Yes!
I'm-- Yes!
I'm OK!
I tell you, I promise you.
Yes.
It's OK.
OK?
OK.
OK?
OK.
OK?
OK.
[APPLAUSE]