All right, just a couple more poems
of sympathy for the devil or the animal.
This is an homage to animal life, "Philosopher Orders
Crispy Pork."
[LAUGHTER]
I'm actually very tender toward animals.
I mean, we have canine teeth, so I'm reconciled to eating them.
But they have to have good lives.
The reverence we owe them, the credit we owe them for this joy
that our canine teeth have is to give them
a good life and a good death, the thing
we require for ourselves.
How horrific that we don't do that.
Spend a little extra money, even for crimping
your lifestyle a little, to get an animal that's treated right.
I'm sorry to get on this little soapbox, but it grieves me.
It causes me such excruciation.
You could make my life a little better by doing this.
"Philosopher Orders Crispy Pork."
This here, it's a confession.
I'm just nailing myself on the cross.
"I love him so.
This animal, I pray, was treated kindly.
Let me pay as much as even greater pig lovers see
fit to guarantee him that.
As for his fat, I'd give up years--
yes, years-- of my own life for such a gulpable semblable.
My life, such as it is, this liberality of leaves.
The world won't need those 17 more
poems, after all, there being so few subjects to be treated.
Three, if by subject we mean anyone submitted to another's
will.
Two, if by subject we mean topic.
[LAUGHTER]
One, if by death we wind up meaning love.
And none if a subject must entail the curlicue's
indulgence of itself."
It winds up being a critique of postmodernism.
I'm sorry I got off track there.
It started with love and ended with hate.
Because we have canine teeth.
I can't help it.