"It was night for many miles.
And then the real stars in the purple sky,
like little boats rode out too far, began to disappear.
And there in the distance, not the promised land,
but a Holiday Inn with bougainvillea
growing through the chain link by the pool.
The door swung wide twin beds, twin lamps,
twin plastic cups wrapped up in cellophane
and he says, "No, Henry, let's not do this."
Can you see the plot like dotted lines across the room?
Here's the sink to wash away the blood.
Here's the whiskey, the ripped up shirt.
Here is the tile of the bathroom floor.
The disk of the drain punched through with holes.
Here is the boy like a sack of meat.
Here are the engines.
The little room that is not a room.
The Henry that is not a Henry.
The Henry with a needle and thread
hovering over the hollow boy passed out
on the universal bedspread.
Here he is again being sewn up.
So now we've come to a great battlefield.
The warmth of the fire.
The fire still burning.
The heat escaping like a broken promise.
The horizon widened like an open road.
Henry's putting his hands all over him
to keep him in the room but the words
keep rolling on the keeper's lips.
'He won't kiss me.
He won't kiss me.'
We're talking about God now, not boys.
This is the part where, this is the part
where, this is the part where you wake up in your clothes
again.
This is the part where you're trying
to stay inside the building.
"Stay in the room for now," he says.
"Stay in the room, for now."
This is the place, you say to yourself,
where everything starts to begin.
The wounds reveal a thicker skin and suddenly there is no floor.
Meanwhile, there's something underneath the building
that is trying very hard to get your attention.
Let's say you're dreaming about a devil
with red skin and black horns.
A man with almond eyes and a zipper that
runs the length of his spine.
A standard devil.
The one from the Underwood Ham label.
A man who is standing, cloven hoofed,
in the middle of a Howard Johnson's
pointing at you with a glass of milk saying, "Drink this."
Before I [INAUDIBLE].
You pinch yourself, but you're still sleeping.
You pinch yourself, but you are still sleeping.
You pinch yourself, you pinch yourself, you pinch.
But the man says, "Take one.
Take it.
Here is the first escape."
Pills, valves, a new velocity.
And the voices are getting louder.
You can see the grill, the pots and pans.
The Apple pies with their big sliced grins.
And you can see the shadow that the man is
throwing across the linoleum.
How it resembles a boat.
How it crosses the tiles just so.
The masts of his arms rasping against the windows.
The bell rings, the dog growls.
And then the wind picking up, and the light falling,
and his mouth flickering, and the dog howling,
and the window closing tight against the dirty rain.
And he's pointing at you with a glass of milk
as if he's trying to tell you that there
is some sort of shining star now buried deep inside you.
And he has to dig it out with a knife.
Here's the hallway, and here are the doors,
and here's the fear of the other thing.
The relentless thing.
Your body drowning in gravity but you are fighting it.
And you want some help.
And then help arrives but it isn't helpful at all.
This is the meanwhile, the in between.
The waiting that happens in the space
between one note and the next.
The part where you confuse his hands with the room.
The dog with the man.
The blood with the ripped up sky.
"Henry," he's saying.
Who is it that's talking?
I thought I heard the clink of iced tea.
I thought I heard the clink of teeth to glass.
The dog, his bowl.
His sloppy grin.
The number of wounds.
The exact sequence.
The words now lurching in its mouth and drifting.
The words now drifting away.
He puts his hands, he's putting his hands.
He puts his hands all over you to keep you in the room.
But here's the angel of cornflakes and milk.
And here is the angel of open wounds.
And here's the angel of wash you clean.
The angel of taking it all the way.
We have not been given all the words necessary.
We have not been given anything at all.
We've been driving all night.
We've been driving a long time.
We don't want to stop.
We can't stop.
He's standing over you.
His hands are open or his hands are fists.
It's night.
It's new.
He's driving.
It's happening all over again.
It isn't happening.
It's love or it isn't.
It isn't over.
You're in a car.
You're in the weeds again.
You're on a bumpy road and there are criminals everywhere,
longing for danger.
Open the door and a light falls in.
Open your mouth and it falls right out again.
He's on top of you.
He's next to you, right next to you in fact.
He has the softest skin wrapped entirely around him.
It isn't him.
It isn't you.
You're falling now.
You're swimming.
This is not harmless.
You are not breathing.
You're climbing out of the chlorinated pool again.
Is there an acceptable result?
Do we mean something when we talk?
Is it enough that we are shuddering from the sound?
Left hand raising the fork to the mouth,
feeling the meat slide down your throat thinking,
my throat, mine.
Everything in this cone of light is mine.
The ashtray and the broken lamp.
The filthy orange curtains and his ruined shirt.
I've been in your body, baby and it was paradise.
I've been in your body and it was a carnival ride.
You're inside you, he's inside you.
He's between the two of you.
You're the residue.
Gold bodies in a red red room.
You are here.
You are not here.
You are the room, you're in the room.
You aren't in the room.
Stay here for just a little longer.
They want to stop but they can't stop.
They don't know what they're doing.
This is not harmless.
The, how to touch it?
We do not want the screen completely lifted
from our eyes.
Just lifted long enough to see the holes.
Tired and sore and rubbed the wrong way.
Rubbed raw and throbbing in the light.
They want to stop but they don't stop.
They cannot get the bullet out.
Cut me open and the light streams out, stitch me up
and the light keeps streaming out between the stitches.
He cannot get the bullet out.
He thinks, he can't and then he does.
A little piece of grit to build a pearl around.
Midnight June, midnight July.
They have been going at it for days now.
Getting the bullet out.
Digging out the bullet and holding it up to the light."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]