Well, to the piece de resistance, no?
This has to be preceded by a joke or it will be meaningless.
Some of you know the joke already
because I've told everyone that I knew the joke,
it was so tremendous.
So I beg of you to hold your tongue for the pleasure
of the [INAUDIBLE].
It's a joke about Roy Rogers, who
I learned to my great disappointment
was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and whose real
name was Leonard Slye.
S-L-Y-E. But thank God, I didn't know that before I wrote
the poem.
I've been too crestfallen to have put pen to paper.
Anyway, right, there was a story about Roy Rogers
I must share with you.
One day, he opened the mail, and out popped a big royalty check.
And he said, wow, that's a lot of money.
I'm going to saddle up my horse Trigger,
yeah, Trigger, and ride it home.
At the town I'm going to buy me a brand new Stetson,
a brand new cowboy outfit with pearl buttons,
and a brand new pair of lizard skin boots.
So off he rode, not even bothering to pause and tell
Dale where he was going.
And he got to town, and he bought himself a Stetson
and a brand new cowboy suit with pearl buttons
and a pair of lizard skin boots.
And was riding back home thinking,
boy, Dale is going to really think I've cut quite a figure
when I get there.
But little did he know [INAUDIBLE] ahead,
there perched an ornery wildcat.
And when he saw Roy Rogers riding full--
toward him full of pride in his brand new Stetson cowboy
suit with the pearl buttons and a pair of lizard skin boots,
he waited and waited.
And just as Roy got under him, he leapt on him
and started tearing up the Stetson
and then tearing apart the clothes
and lastly just tearing the heck out of the lizard skin boots.
And before Roy Rogers knew what had happened,
there he was lying on the ground and Trigger had run off
and he was bleeding all around him with this outfit destroyed.
Boy, was he mad.
He caught Trigger.
He rode home as fast as he could.
Banged open the door, he says, Dale, Dale, where's my shotgun?
And she was alarmed.
Of course, she was out there combing Buttermilk, her horse.
And she didn't know what was going on.
And Roy grabbed the shotgun before she
could get an explanation.
Off he rode on Trigger across the plains.
And she was so alarmed.
Why, she jumped right on Buttermilk
and off she rode behind him, trying to catch up
with this impulsive boy.
But too late.
Before she got there, she heard a bang!
When she arrived, there was Roy, standing there naked
and bleeding, holding a smoking shotgun.
Over the poor corpse of the wild cat that had done this to him.
She walked up to him.
She said, (SINGING) Pardon me, Roy.
Was that the cat that chewed the new shoe?
[LAUGHTER]
Such stories come from a factory in Pennsylvania, I'm sure.
Well, this is somewhat of a takeoff on that,
uses the basic plot for its plot.
But of course, it would be senseless simply
to repeat the story.
So it has a somewhat different ending to it.
And in this poem, as I think, I hope at least, most good poems
try to draw in a great deal from different things that
aren't normally found together.
And some of Freudian psychology and pop culture
and Christian Greco mythology and sexuality
and all that stuff.
You'll see how it ends.
Because Roy is, at once, a hero and of course, quite a child,
maybe that goes with being a hero.
I don't know.
I'd like to find out someday.
It's called "Roy Rogers."
And then we'll plunge onward to the cake and cookies.
"No advocate of social security, of the poor
who really have to strive, disgusted with themselves,
each day just to stay alive.
When he gets his royalty check, it's
the father wish of all those that
have kept us going since the star pasted on our foreheads
in first grade kept us walking thereafter,
cross-eyed into the future."
[LAUGHTER]
I crossed my eyes, afraid my contacts would pop out.
"And the kid again, he knows that Dale out back in the shed,
fussing with her horse named Buttermilk,
will forgive him however he sins.
He's Johannes [? Kelpius ?] sitting up in his tree
in Eastern Pennsylvania, bringing together
mind and spirit by thinking about all the girlfriends he'll
never have and all the more elevated because he'll never
have them.
Roald Amundsen, putting off discovering the South Pole as
long as he can, but finally unable to help
himself discovering it.
Dale, Dale, he shouts!
I'm going to buy myself a new cowboy outfit!
Without waiting for a reply--
his name means King, doesn't it?--
he's off, seeing himself resplendent in pearl buttons
and lizard skin.
But as so often happens in human affairs, even for royalty,
the province of statisticians, the wildcat,
that [? miffed ?] [? anchorite, ?] who's waited
all his life for this, something full enough of pride to deserve
his attentions, swells in his tree, a leaping dandelion.
And it's over in seconds.
The arch fiend gallops off in his new dress
while the man lies, as scratched all over
as a map of Czechoslovakia after the Anschluss of communists
in 1948.
But now, tapped on the shoulder by that perpetual virgin,
as always riding behind to save him
when he's naked and full of anger, who says,
giving in once more with a sigh, pardon me, Roy, it's time.
It's time.
For what?
That's the question."
Well, thank you.
Let's go see--
[APPLAUSE]
[INAUDIBLE]