OK.
Let's see.
We're in Arizona so I'm going to read an Arizona poem.
This is an easily pleased crowd, I think.
[LAUGHTER]
And after that, I think I'll sing "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"
for you guys.
Now, this call poem is called "Ars Poetica, or Hotelling
on the Cheap in Arizona."
And sometimes when I go on book tours,
they stick me in these really funky, strange hotels.
And this is one of them and it happened to be in Phoenix.
[LAUGHTER]
"Ars Poetica."
"Ars Poetica" is like your theory on the art of poetry--
"or Hotelling on the Cheap in Arizona."
So I check into the hotel.
"The needle-thin junky checked me in at 10:00.
Ash fell from her mouth, the cigarette having gone dead.
She said, check out is when you're done."
[LAUGHTER]
I guess you know that experience over here.
There's no way I mean to--
"I left with a room key wet in my hand,
still warm from the last mule assigned to room 230.
I climbed the steps and hurried because the moon was round
and would spill my sheets all night.
But what use was a key with a door, lock gone, swung open?
I tried the light switch with its greasy fingerprints of hell
and sized up the bathroom.
The freebies of shampoo and mouthwash half empty.
I touched the one towel permanently
imprinted with the face of every redneck biker
from Goshen to Tulare.
I could've talked to that face in that towel.
Roommate for the night.
Shit, I said.
Left and threw open the curtains.
The balcony was small too.
A dead pigeon, its pipe cleaner of legs in the air,
has spit up its seed.
I looked over the edge, a boy print on the asphalt
where some fellow--
body print on the asphalt where some fellow--
no, a woman with smarts, once jumped.
So this was my final outpost, me traveling the--
me, the traveling violinist with arthritic hands
and a violin with only one single string left, used up,
my concert collar dirtied.
I returned to wash my face in the bathroom.
I had failed the night before and will fail again.
I then eyed two flies kicking in the bowl, one climbing
under the back of the other, the professorial ranks of state
colleges suddenly clear."
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]