WEBVTT

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OK.

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Let's see.

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We're in Arizona so I'm going
to read an Arizona poem.

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This is an easily
pleased crowd, I think.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And after that, I think I'll
sing "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"

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for you guys.

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Now, this call poem is called
"Ars Poetica, or Hotelling

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on the Cheap in Arizona."

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And sometimes when
I go on book tours,

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they stick me in these
really funky, strange hotels.

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And this is one of them and
it happened to be in Phoenix.

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[LAUGHTER]

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"Ars Poetica."

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"Ars Poetica" is like your
theory on the art of poetry--

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"or Hotelling on the
Cheap in Arizona."

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So I check into the hotel.

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"The needle-thin junky
checked me in at 10:00.

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Ash fell from her mouth, the
cigarette having gone dead.

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She said, check out
is when you're done."

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[LAUGHTER]

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I guess you know that
experience over here.

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There's no way I mean to--

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"I left with a room
key wet in my hand,

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still warm from the last
mule assigned to room 230.

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I climbed the steps and hurried
because the moon was round

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and would spill my
sheets all night.

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But what use was a key with a
door, lock gone, swung open?

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I tried the light switch with
its greasy fingerprints of hell

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and sized up the bathroom.

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The freebies of shampoo
and mouthwash half empty.

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I touched the one
towel permanently

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imprinted with the face
of every redneck biker

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from Goshen to Tulare.

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I could've talked to
that face in that towel.

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Roommate for the night.

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Shit, I said.

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Left and threw
open the curtains.

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The balcony was small too.

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A dead pigeon, its pipe
cleaner of legs in the air,

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has spit up its seed.

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I looked over the edge, a
boy print on the asphalt

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where some fellow--

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body print on the asphalt
where some fellow--

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no, a woman with
smarts, once jumped.

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So this was my final
outpost, me traveling the--

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me, the traveling violinist
with arthritic hands

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and a violin with only one
single string left, used up,

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my concert collar dirtied.

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I returned to wash my
face in the bathroom.

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I had failed the night
before and will fail again.

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I then eyed two flies kicking
in the bowl, one climbing

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under the back of the other,
the professorial ranks of state

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colleges suddenly clear."

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[LAUGHTER]

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[APPLAUSE]

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