WEBVTT

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I just finished
assembling this book.

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And it takes me a
while to find things

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in it because I
can't remember where

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the absolutely single
and only correct

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order in which I finally
decided to put them.

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But in a moment, I will
have found the poem.

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Experienced platform
performers, sometimes they

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pretend to get lost
just to give themselves

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a break between pieces.

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But I'm too professional
to do anything like that.

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[LAUGHTER]

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[FLICKERING SOUNDS OF A
 CIGARETTE LIGHTER]

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This is another little
story, I guess, this poem.

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It's called "Pissing
Off The Back

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Of The Boat Into The
Nivernais Canal."

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It's set in France, where
it's OK to do such things.

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[LAUGHTER]

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The French have no shame.

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"Pissing Off The Back Of The
Boat Into The Nivernais Canal."

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"It's so cold, my cock is
furled like a nutmeat, and cold,

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for all its warm aspirations
and traffic of urine.

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37 years old, and it takes
me a second to find it--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--the poor pink slug, so
far from the brash volunteer

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of the boudoir.

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I arc a few finishing
stutters into the water.

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Already they're converted,
opaque and chill.

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How commodious the dark universe
is and companionable the stars.

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How drunk I am.

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I shake my shriveled
nozzle and three drops

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lurk out like syllables from
before they were languages.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Snug in my pants, it will leak
a whole sentence in Latin.

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[LAUGHTER]

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How like a lock-keeper's life
a penis biography would be,

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bucolic and dull.

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What the penis knows of
sex is only arithmetic.

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The tongue can kiss and
tell, but the imagination

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has, as usual, most of the fun.

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It makes discriminations,
bad jokes.

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It knows itself to be
tragic, and thereby, silly.

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And it can tell a dull story
well, drop by reluctant drop.

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What it can't do is be a body,
nor survive time's acid work

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on the body it
enlivens, I think,

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as I try not to pitch
my wine-dulled body

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and wary imagination with
it into the inky canal

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by the small force of
tugging my zipper up.

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How much damage to themselves
the body and the imagination

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can absorb, I think,
as I drizzle to sleep,

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and how much the imagination
makes of its body of work,

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a place to recover itself."

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I have another poem
that I'm going to have

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to search for very briefly.

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And while I'm looking
for it, I'll tell you a--

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my last words on the
subject of the last poem.

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Do you know what the elephant
said to the naked man?

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How do you eat with that thing?

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[LAUGHTER]

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