OK, everyone say--
OK, everyone say, ladies and friends.
No, wait a minute.
[LAUGHTER]
Everybody says, visitors and friends--
Visitors and friends--
--tonight we have--
--a duo poem--
--called "I Am Not a Paid Protester,"
--with two voices."
Ready or not.
You are a paid protester.
No.
We know you're being paid.
No.
We know you are being paid at this very moment.
No.
We know you are being funded by shadow investors.
That is incorrect.
[LAUGHTER]
That's totally incorrect.
You understand?
Totally incorrect.
We know that you meet with shadow investors
interested in overturning our structures.
Hey, I'm not concerned with your structures.
As a matter of fact, you do not have any so-called structures
at this time.
That's what you've been instructed to say.
We know.
No, you do not.
You have been instructed to launch a spiral, a ring,
across the edifice to install a fracture,
a severance, a crevice.
What are you saying?
How do you know?
We know you do things, and then you do them.
I'm protesting.
That is all.
No, you are not.
What?
[LAUGHTER]
I am here of my own free will.
There is no such thing.
[LAUGHTER]
Yes.
That is why I am protesting.
You are paid.
[LAUGHTER]
Listen.
I am protesting out of my own free will.
There is no such thing.
How about some candy?
You're bribing me.
I don't do that.
Of course.
Well, I got ginseng.
I don't do that.
OK, you want to take my-- you want to take my frog?
You got to be kidding.
Wait a minute.
Just hold on, OK.
Just hold on.
Take it.
You're out of your mind.
You can meditate with it.
How about that?
Never in your life or mine.
Where on earth are you right now?
We're getting nowhere.
Excellent.
What?
Excellent.
We are on the way.
I am hitting the button.
Get out of your bubble, OK?
I'm hitting the button.
What button?
The Deportation button.
Wow.
You hear me?
Wow.
I'm hitting it.
That's not the Deportation button.
You got that?
Push it.
You're tricking me.
It's the mass hypnosis button.
You are out of your gourd, sir.
Push it.
I don't want to push it.
Push it.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
OK.
And now you'll finish out?
Hopefully, we'll finish out with some new work.
OK.
You want some water?
Sure.
Push it.
[LAUGHTER]
So I was reading a poem, up in Iowa poem by David Ignatow.
Is that how you pronounce it?
Ignatow-- by David Ignatow, was a great poet.
And one really cool thing is that he writes interview poems.
And I said, wait a minute.
That sounds really great, an interview as a poem,
and you can have two voices.
Oh, I got to do that.
Because that's a lot of fun.
And you create two characters, and they
start going at each other.
Or it can be really mellow.
Or "I'm Not a Paid Protester," and that was going around.
It's still going around.
As a matter of fact, me and Farid are paid protesters.
No, I'm just joking, Farid.
[LAUGHTER]
And so that's how that poem came about, yeah.
And so those double, there's two lanes.
Here's the one that's accusing the other,
and here's the one that's responding on that page.
You're going to have two lanes of language,
one talking to the other.
And that's also really interesting, too.
Give it a shot.
Give it a go.
You're going to like it and for only $0.25.
[LAUGHTER]