WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.024 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.024 --> 00:00:02.524 align:middle line:84% Me and John Milton [CROSSES FINGERS TO INDICATE CLOSENESS]. 00:00:02.524 --> 00:00:05.900 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:05.900 --> 00:00:09.170 align:middle line:90% Thank you, Frances. 00:00:09.170 --> 00:00:10.850 align:middle line:84% God, I hate poets who give readings 00:00:10.850 --> 00:00:12.080 align:middle line:90% during the World Series. 00:00:12.080 --> 00:00:15.008 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:15.008 --> 00:00:19.400 align:middle line:90% 00:00:19.400 --> 00:00:23.330 align:middle line:84% This is called "Dog House Burning." 00:00:23.330 --> 00:00:27.590 align:middle line:84% "It was a time of separating the halves from the hives, 00:00:27.590 --> 00:00:30.350 align:middle line:90% the strung out from the stone. 00:00:30.350 --> 00:00:36.590 align:middle line:84% Indistinct memorandae peppy with overture promised relief, 00:00:36.590 --> 00:00:38.960 align:middle line:84% so we called it a day when it had only 00:00:38.960 --> 00:00:41.030 align:middle line:90% been a couple of hours. 00:00:41.030 --> 00:00:45.680 align:middle line:84% Disorganized as ants on LSD, embarrassed to be so whomped 00:00:45.680 --> 00:00:48.890 align:middle line:84% upon, slurring our preternatural -- 00:00:48.890 --> 00:00:53.480 align:middle line:84% slurring into our preternatural walkie-talkies. 00:00:53.480 --> 00:00:57.350 align:middle line:84% So I went looking for my father's village, nothing 00:00:57.350 --> 00:01:01.880 align:middle line:84% now but collapsed ruins in a meadow of [INAUDIBLE] fox 00:01:01.880 --> 00:01:06.170 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE] and hearth cleaners, guys in wheelchairs playing 00:01:06.170 --> 00:01:11.180 align:middle line:84% bagpipes, hidden agogic flowers, once found in this area, 00:01:11.180 --> 00:01:16.220 align:middle line:90% but no more, probably mercury. 00:01:16.220 --> 00:01:19.700 align:middle line:84% Now only a mustache holds me to his world, 00:01:19.700 --> 00:01:23.720 align:middle line:84% so I had to leave, grabbing a peanut when a sandwich would 00:01:23.720 --> 00:01:28.850 align:middle line:84% have gelled better, or a beeper, so it could be traced, 00:01:28.850 --> 00:01:33.590 align:middle line:84% if not fully colored in, given approachable halo 00:01:33.590 --> 00:01:36.440 align:middle line:90% dotted lines of force. 00:01:36.440 --> 00:01:38.240 align:middle line:90% I didn't live in a house. 00:01:38.240 --> 00:01:42.560 align:middle line:84% I lived in a toolbox for the tools that built the house. 00:01:42.560 --> 00:01:46.460 align:middle line:84% Where could I hide from the bibliography of my second wife 00:01:46.460 --> 00:01:48.950 align:middle line:90% and a new understanding? 00:01:48.950 --> 00:01:52.340 align:middle line:84% I was still fouled up with the old understanding. 00:01:52.340 --> 00:01:57.440 align:middle line:84% Sleepless afternoons rancorous stigmata of my release 00:01:57.440 --> 00:02:01.730 align:middle line:84% for the imprisoning corrections of my own design. 00:02:01.730 --> 00:02:04.250 align:middle line:84% Later, we'd figure out what it all 00:02:04.250 --> 00:02:08.900 align:middle line:84% means when it doesn't mean so much, or someone will. 00:02:08.900 --> 00:02:12.410 align:middle line:84% The last person we'd want to, the department chair 00:02:12.410 --> 00:02:15.470 align:middle line:90% or young proctologist. 00:02:15.470 --> 00:02:19.310 align:middle line:84% I saw an opening and jumped the way night throws itself 00:02:19.310 --> 00:02:23.240 align:middle line:84% into day to dissolve in the jumble of its puzzles. 00:02:23.240 --> 00:02:28.310 align:middle line:84% Just a few disconnected equations like eels on ice. 00:02:28.310 --> 00:02:32.540 align:middle line:84% It seemed a good time to divest and hit the circus. 00:02:32.540 --> 00:02:34.340 align:middle line:90% They've changed so much. 00:02:34.340 --> 00:02:37.460 align:middle line:84% The tigers now exceedingly happy, 00:02:37.460 --> 00:02:41.390 align:middle line:84% knowing there was no place left for them in the wild. 00:02:41.390 --> 00:02:46.370 align:middle line:84% The wild itself, a theme park transversed by monorails. 00:02:46.370 --> 00:02:50.090 align:middle line:84% Here at least, they got good dental care. 00:02:50.090 --> 00:02:52.640 align:middle line:84% But my second wife would have known that, 00:02:52.640 --> 00:02:57.650 align:middle line:84% being an aspiring aerialist herself with no connections, 00:02:57.650 --> 00:02:59.960 align:middle line:90% which is what she said it took. 00:02:59.960 --> 00:03:03.110 align:middle line:84% Ergo, all she did was hover six inches 00:03:03.110 --> 00:03:07.490 align:middle line:84% over the dinette set, a foot over the toilet, 00:03:07.490 --> 00:03:09.860 align:middle line:84% until the ambition bug bit, and she 00:03:09.860 --> 00:03:14.030 align:middle line:84% took on the moon, who turned her into some sort of moth 00:03:14.030 --> 00:03:18.860 align:middle line:84% and made her eat my sweaters, although examining 00:03:18.860 --> 00:03:22.780 align:middle line:84% her mouth parts, which is what our marriage had come to. 00:03:22.780 --> 00:03:26.180 align:middle line:90% 00:03:26.180 --> 00:03:29.000 align:middle line:84% You'd wonder how she even chewed, made, 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:33.270 align:middle line:84% it seemed, of tiny fingers and a sort of blotter. 00:03:33.270 --> 00:03:39.030 align:middle line:84% Ye who wish to judge me pay heed to your own bad occlusions. 00:03:39.030 --> 00:03:41.330 align:middle line:84% I knew not what to do to protect her 00:03:41.330 --> 00:03:45.650 align:middle line:84% from her masochistic fling with the Dura log. 00:03:45.650 --> 00:03:50.300 align:middle line:84% It was too much to ask the pile of robot parts I'd become, 00:03:50.300 --> 00:03:55.520 align:middle line:84% spurned un-oiled, unable to download the forms required 00:03:55.520 --> 00:03:57.980 align:middle line:90% for my own acquittal. 00:03:57.980 --> 00:04:02.810 align:middle line:84% As in a pornographic movie, exhaustion etched my brow, 00:04:02.810 --> 00:04:07.100 align:middle line:84% my ears pulled back by vicious ponytails. 00:04:07.100 --> 00:04:10.070 align:middle line:84% I brought my brother fluids twice a day 00:04:10.070 --> 00:04:12.320 align:middle line:84% and removed the jewels he produced 00:04:12.320 --> 00:04:14.930 align:middle line:90% from his forward aperture. 00:04:14.930 --> 00:04:18.019 align:middle line:84% Ducklings raided my seedlings, then 00:04:18.019 --> 00:04:21.230 align:middle line:84% the emperor sent me to the paraffin district 00:04:21.230 --> 00:04:26.720 align:middle line:84% to fall upon my sword or write 5,000 tanka about crickets 00:04:26.720 --> 00:04:28.880 align:middle line:90% and shit. 00:04:28.880 --> 00:04:32.180 align:middle line:84% I couldn't get the blinker on my helmet off. 00:04:32.180 --> 00:04:34.910 align:middle line:90% I folded with two pair. 00:04:34.910 --> 00:04:37.970 align:middle line:90% A bark dogged my every step. 00:04:37.970 --> 00:04:41.930 align:middle line:84% A sluice pearled in my silver loids. 00:04:41.930 --> 00:04:44.390 align:middle line:84% The dog long gone, and the doghouse 00:04:44.390 --> 00:04:49.670 align:middle line:84% remained, un-spinning in the un-void, lovely debauched body 00:04:49.670 --> 00:04:52.490 align:middle line:90% gone cold in the grave. 00:04:52.490 --> 00:04:55.790 align:middle line:84% For a while, I stirred charcoal in the doghouse, 00:04:55.790 --> 00:04:58.880 align:middle line:90% out of the rain, then kindling. 00:04:58.880 --> 00:05:01.130 align:middle line:84% Then one night, the kindling ran out, 00:05:01.130 --> 00:05:05.750 align:middle line:84% so I plucked a slat compliant with decay. 00:05:05.750 --> 00:05:08.510 align:middle line:84% Thus began in a float of flurries 00:05:08.510 --> 00:05:12.290 align:middle line:84% the burning of the dog house, when none of us knew 00:05:12.290 --> 00:05:14.200 align:middle line:90% what would befall." 00:05:14.200 --> 00:05:18.000 align:middle line:90%