WEBVTT

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I'm going to read
one last piece,

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and then we can all go home.

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Or we can ask questions.

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Another question?

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No, OK.

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It's called the, "Piss of God."

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We start with Jesus and
end with the "Piss of God."

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This is the last piece I read
also today at the juvie hall,

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and they told me not to
have any obscenities,

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and I wasn't sure if this
was an obscenity or not.

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But I went with it.

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It was the last reading.

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"The Piss of God."

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"Sometimes a man falls
asleep in the midst

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of buttoning his
jackets, his fingers

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hanging on to the last button.

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Sometimes embedded
in hot asphalt,

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you see a key shined by the
soles of pedestrian shoes.

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You check your pockets,
suddenly worried.

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The sidewalk calls using
the trick of gravity

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to bring you to
your knees to close

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your eyes to make you sleep.

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If there's grass,
if you can see it,

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each blade catches a
sliver of streetlight.

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Each blade wants you to hold on.

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Face down, you swear you
can feel the Earth spin.

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Hold tight or you'll spin
off into outer space.

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Forget about ceilings, about
walls, about doors, about keys.

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The bread you ate
at lunch is already

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turning to soil inside you.

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Night soil now.

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Darkness hovering inside.

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Soon your flesh will
crumble off you.

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Those on their way to
work the next morning

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will pass your
whitened skeleton,

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like so many Styrofoam
cups bleached perfect.

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If not for the rats, you
could crawl beneath a bush.

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A bush, a bench, a bridge.

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The alliterative universe.

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Rats too can pass
through that needle's eye

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to enter heaven, as easily as
they pass into a box imagined

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into a house.

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Houses inside buildings,
houses inside tunnels.

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Some exist for only a day,
some miraculously longer.

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This box held a refrigerator.

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The refrigerator
is in an apartment.

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A man is in the box.

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Tomorrow, the box will
be flattened and tossed.

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You've seen the garbageman
stomping them down

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to fit into the truck.

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Wake up in the
grass soaking wet.

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Dew is the piss of God.

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Another bullshit night in
suck city, my father mutters.

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And then there's the Celtics
losing just across town.

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Last night, Mackey had a
La-Z-Boy set up in rat alley,

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watching a television
hot-wired into a light pole.

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My father stepped into
Mackey's living room,

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checked out a couple
of minutes of play.

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Can they still be called
the glory days of Byrd?

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Step out of your room, settle
into a discarded recliner.

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Are you inside now, or out?

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Position your chair
before your television.

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Take your walk,
find your coffee.

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By morning, it will all be gone.

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No inside, no outside, no
cardboard box, no mansion,

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no birth, no death, no
container, no contained.

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A zen koan, a frickin' riddle.

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A garbage truck
hauled the TV away.

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Another will be put out
on the sidewalk tonight.

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But a La-Z-Boy, my Lord, maybe
not again in this lifetime."

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Thanks.

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[APPLAUSE]

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