I'd like to read some slightly more serious poems now.
[LAUGHTER]
This is, you'll probably notice during the course
of this very long 45 minutes that there are only
three themes at play here--
drink, sex, and death, preferably in that order.
[LAUGHTER]
So, I'll just give you a little synoptic run through.
So this is the first couched very firmly
in the third person in case you think this is autobiographical.
"The Park Drunk."
"He opens his eyes to a hard frost, the morning's
soft amnesia of snow.
The thorned stems of gorse are starred crystal,
each bud like a candied fruit.
It's yellow picked out and lit by the low pulse of blood
orange rioting in the Eastern trees.
But the snow has furred to silence,
uniformity, frost amplifies, makes singular,
giving every form of sound an edge, as if frost wants to know
what snow tries to forget.
And so, he drinks for winter for the coming year
to open all the beautiful, tiny doors
in their craquelure of frost.
And he drinks like the snow falling,
trying to close the biggest door of all."