This next poem is actually in 30 sections.
So I'm actually going to take over Kim's time.
So sorry, sorry, Kim.
[LAUGHTER]
But you got paid anyway, right?
[LAUGHTER]
No, no.
Actually it's in 30 sections, but they're really short, so.
And it's about me turning 30.
And I actually started writing this when I was 40, actually.
So it's called "30."
1.
I will publish a book by the time I'm 30.
2.
April, June, September, November.
3.
Breasts or chest in an empty stomach lying under side.
4.
At age 30, my mother gave birth to me--
of five children I'm the middle, her favorite, the oldest son
of my generation.
I chose to not have offspring.
5.
I turned 30 on November 26, 2001.
New York City still smelled of ash.
6.
An omen of blackbirds roosting on electrical wire.
7.
For the very first time I fell in love with a man.
8.
Every morning I count the almonds I drop in my oatmeal.
9.
There are 30 hours in a day, minus six,
which I could totally use.
[LAUGHTER]
10.
Taylor Swift sings of young, abandoned in 22 Ooh-ooh.
That I abandon.
11.
I detest the rock band 30 Seconds to Mars
despite not having heard their music.
Leto is forever Catalano to me.
I think you need to be a certain age group to get that one.
12, Space Station expedition 30 Soyuz capsule
landed in Kazakhstan.
A friend adopted a cherubic boy from a Kazakhstan orphanage,
renamed him Julian.
He now resembles his French-Polish father.
13.
My soul brother's birthday is May 30th.
I often fail him.
14.
Forgiveness has proven to be the hardest lesson.
15.
15 is halfway there.
There is halfway to 60.
16.
Adulthood passes nowhere near a New Yorker in his 30s.
17.
If I run on a treadmill for 30 minutes
I'll burn a cupcake or two.
18.
I met a lion mane sorceress wearing a glittery sweater.
We ate dim sum, went on adventures.
19.
The last TV show I regarded as religion was 30 Rock.
20.
In many parts of the world, 30 chickens constitute wealth.
21.
Zero dark thirty is military slang
for the unspecified time in the early morning
hours before dawn.
22.
-30- was the title of the final episode of the final season
of The Wire.
23.
In the season of a man's life, psychologist Daniel J Levinson
defines the dream, youth, illusion, inspiration,
omnipotence, heroic drama, and how
it needs to be modulated during the transition period--
28 to 33 of early adulthood for survival.
24.
I aged out of 30 under 30.
25.
At the end of a press release, the end of a story.
26.
In a clearing a sawed off tree.
I count its rings, history.
27.
-30- was a telegraphic shorthand to end transmission
in the American Civil War.
28.
My roommate and I rushed to our Manhattan rooftop
and saw a tower downtown crumble into smoke and nothing.
29.
When my knee inadvertently touched his at a poetry reading
he moved not a muscle.
30.
Ice, in a word, moan arising from the throat.