I'm going to dedicate this next one to my dad.
When we lived up on Cool Drive, Oracle and Magee,
kind up that way.
As Paul pointed out earlier, you can't help
but be a poet when you got those names in your life.
[CHUCKLES]
He was big on DIY.
We didn't have a lot of money back then,
so he was always fixing stuff.
And part of that involved sawing through circuit mains,
and things that you shouldn't saw through in the house.
So this comes from an early memory of that.
It's called the "Halloween Habit."
"We were poor in heat, poor in plumbing.
Poverty then, a plum uneaten in the icebox.
The bank account, a lunchbox that ate itself.
On Halloween, I hid in the swimming pool.
Our house was forever latched in dusk.
There were snakes in the walls.
They slithered a bitter alphabet as we slept.
One day, my father cut a door in the wall.
A samba of sparks and venom showered out,
the ceiling fell like snow.
And the next morning, I handled spent cigarettes
with a curator's careful lips."