Oh.
Do you want to do this one?
"Radio Couples."
Everybody say, "Radio Couples."
"Radio Couples."
Isn't that a groovy title?
Isn't a groovy title?
"Radio Couples."
You know, this was San Francisco, 1980.
And remember the big box radios?
Yeah.
And you know, radio couples.
So that's where it comes from.
"Radio Couples."
Smooth white roads by the mawing afternoon.
The chrome snout praised below the fog of sky, the sun red.
The jury of your father pursues you.
Glycerin in his gut, he loves you.
Yes, dead, but the woman of longing and insomniac makeup,
the young mom does not recognize your screams, alone
in a plume of smoke and liquor.
She loves you and ages.
You see her.
The brother envies you and, covert in his car,
the church shadow.
Frigid the doors appear, open, long to pronounce you "chente."
You turn on the modern networked to your ocular,
the mouth, the throat, the solar plexus, the hair,
the hardened skin, shielded, brilliant, rugged eyelashes
of the perpetual data crystal, the arc metal.
Your spine, you touch it and it twists,
murmuring ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta,.
In the rain they walk slowly across the boulevard, happy.
The couple peering down the alley, the surf and rails,
dreaming.
You're going to do the one in Spanish?
[APPLAUSE]
[INAUDIBLE]
OK.
All right.
But it was called "Radio Couples"
in Spanish, apparently.
Or we forgot to translate-- leave the title in Spanish.
Just a heads up, we'll do--
maybe that'll be it for this.
One poem that was a request, and then Juan Felipe
is going to finish out with his set from Newark.
OK.
Yeah?
[LAUGHTER]
Just so you know, generally, where we're headed.
"Parejas de radio, Radio Couples."
There you go.
Blancas calles lijadas por la mandíbula tarde.
El ocío de cromo reza bajo la pierna del cielo, la luz roja.
El policía en tu padre se persigue.
Glicerina en su ombligo, te quiere.
Sí, muerto.
Pero aquella de meses y maquillaje insomnio.
La madre, la joven, no te conoce.
Grita sola en un baño de humo y licores.
Te quiere y se hace anciana.
La miras.
El hermano te envidia y es invisible en su auto.
La catedral silueta fría.
Las puertas aparecen.
Se abren.
Te quieren pronunciar "gente."
Prendes el aparato conectado a los dedos.
La boca, la garganta, los pechos, la caballera,
la piel ronca, oscura, brillante, dura, pestañas
de infinitos números, cristales, la curva.
Plata su espalda.
La tocas.
Se voltea, murmurando eléctrica.
En la lluvia caminan despacio el boulevard feliz la pareja.
Mirando el callejón, la espuma y el metal.
Piensas.
Yeah.
[APPLAUSE]
Yeah, it's almost like those go--
bots, remember?
It's a little car, but you can undo the car
and it turns into a robot.
Remember those--
Transformers?
Yeah, those transformers-- go bots?
The transformers.
So this poem works like that, you know?
There's a radio in there somewhere.
And there's a couple in there somewhere.
But it's all being opened up and you see all these other figures
in it.
See, there's a father, there's a woman,
there's a bunch of other things.
Because you're opening up that transformer.
So I guess I was treating these poems like transformers.
That's what I was doing, man.
[LAUGHTER]
That's how it's operating for me.
OK, all right.