Other requests?
Because some of you were forced to read the book,
you poor dears.
[LAUGHS]
A captive audience.
OK.
"The Ballad of Student X" is a great place.
Did I hear something?
"The Ballad of Student X."
"The Ballad of Student X?"
You want to hear that?
OK.
It's very funny.
OK.
[LAUGHTER]
OK.
"The Ballad of Student X."
I know, yeah, we're teachers, and this
is a composite character.
I used to teach this class of 200 students
at San Diego State, and it was filled--
I guess, the news got out that I was a easy teacher
and it was filled with fraternity boys.
And they'd come to class on their skateboards drunk,
and you know how the-- yeah.
What page is that?
OK, let me find it.
OK.
It's an old-fashioned story ballad,
so I'm going back to doing old-fashioned stuff now.
[LAUGHS]
OK.
It's called "The Ballad of Student X."
It's a composite character, and a bit exaggerated.
"And T.J., he downed eight shots of mezcal, ate the worm.
Two prostitutes and a hellhound stole his skateboard
and hundreds in cash.
Stabbed his friend while he blacked out in a ditch.
His mother wired me 5000 to bail him out.
He's an animal, a jackass, but he's my student.
If he dies in a T.J. prison, he'll be on my conscience.
She said, He got straight A's and decent SATS,
captain of the football team in junior high.
After my divorce, he went through a bad patch.
Could have been All-American.
He's exceptional, give him a break.
He wrote from rehab, I found god.
A tweet from a halfway house, he saw Krishna.
At a dude ranch he shouted, Allah, on a mountaintop.
He cried for salvation, world peace and love.
Some 12-step blather, don't believe a word of it.
Spring break, he smashed into a tuk tuk in Chiang Mai.
Maimed an old pedestrian in Phuket.
Plied them with cash, no questions asked.
Can you give me an incomplete and comment on my poems?
There's one about my grandmother who died of COVID.
We shared a virtual hug, teared up on Zoom.
Next week he drove his Beamer off a cliff.
Lucky he landed on a giant banyan tree, got away
without a scratch.
Instagrams of frat parties, sake bombs at Yuki's.
Arms around bronzed girls in bikinis and sunsets.
Please professor, two more days, I'm blogging about MLK,
writing an opus, hand rolling Maui Wowie for social justice.
[LAUGHTER]
Last week he came to me in a dream
dressed for Mortal Kombat, lizard green.
After decapitating a jihadist and three cleaver wielding
ghouls, he emerged from a flaming school bus showered
and shaved.
How we heal this nation, I do not know.
Primal sins erupt through tortured souls.
He graduated with his brothers magna cum
laude, chanting, Liberté, égalité, fraternité, or death."
[LAUGHTER]
[CLAPPING]
That's an old-fashioned ballad with off rhymes.
Forgive me students, it's a composite character
I just have--
it's not what you know, it's an exaggerated character.
But they really-- yeah.
Yeah.
That's what happens, that's how we poets get revenge, we
write about you and exaggerate.
Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
OK.
[INAUDIBLE]
Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
OK.