You probably remember in the UK--
I don't know why I'm reading this poem.
There was a lot of riots in the UK a couple of years ago
and a lot of looting, and police violence and stuff.
And I was talking with a close friend of mine about it
at the time, and we were just screwing around and trying
to envision what we would do if that sort of scale of rioting
broke out in New York City.
Particularly in Union Square, which
is sort of like the main hub of Manhattan in a lot of ways.
And we both in the same beat did a ditto and said,
I'll go steal from Whole Foods.
Or whatever.
Because every time I go to Whole Foods,
it's like an exercise in my own poverty.
It's always like the pate and the pine nuts
I can't afford and stuff.
And so we just sort of started live-writing
this poem in front of each other sort of,
and listing out all the things we would steal from Whole Foods
if we were given the chance.
And the end of the poem also has this weird sort of--
I tried to imagine what poem cops knew.
And I tried to imagine a bunch of cops who had studied Milton
in grade school or something.
So you're going to hear me sort of intentionally mess up
some "Paradise Lost."
The poem is called "Whole Foods."
"Officers please, if you see a man shoot
past you tonight and his hair is on fire, and what
skin he has left it peels off his back like cheesecloth,
and a pitchfork is stuck in each thigh,
and he's carrying bag after white plastic bag of Swiss ruby
chard, or swollen mangosteens, or chicory root, his rutabagas
he loves.
He loves the Humboldt Fog, he loves his Black Forest Worms,
and our yellow and red ones, our good Korean pears.
He loves his goat's milk, Gouda, his pignolis,
and the olives so fat you could smother your child
to sleep with one.
All units, if you see him fire our wild rice from his sawed
off shotgun, and pour nectar down his throat,
and chant in some dead language what, to your ears, you'd swear
it was lines one and two.
You learned them by heart in grade school.
Man's first no the fruit of disobedience.
No, that fair tree.
The first word.
Who speaks the first word?
It's a black sleet in God's land to wipe out the kings.
And the line.
How does the line end?
And the night.
Who will the night end?"
So that's that book.