Since you're sitting in an auditorium,
I've never read this poem.
But it sort of uses sitting in an auditorium
and an enforced role of audience as a metaphor.
So I always thought this was a--
strange to say this.
This is a poem about how I really felt,
as opposed to the other ones.
This is--
[LAUGHTER]
I heard that come up out of my brain
and that came right out of the mouth, so.
It's titled Untitled One.
A curtain rose.
I mean, I really feel this is, like,
the history of my life here.
I'm going to tell it to you this way.
A curtain rose.
I felt an obligation.
I tried to feel the thing that blossoms in me.
Here in my seat, assigned.
The whole world intelligently lit, up there in front of me.
I tried to feel the untitled thing that blossoms in me.
The abnegation that doesn't stutter, not at all, not once.
Or no, that stutters once and once only.
What the days are a rehearsal for, breathe in, breathe out.
What the held breath is ventriloquial for,
the eyes quickly shut, then scribbled back
open again, rasping martyrdom.
The glance once again shouldering the broadcast
out there, the loud, flat broadcast.
The glance ambushed once again by the apparent warmth
of the picture.
I blinked.
Tomorrow came.
Nothing came true.
Birds scattered and the minutes clucked, single file.
Daggering, talkative, the breaths
ministered to nothingness.
A tight bond, theirs, an hysterical love.
Never mind, the thing said, those robberies.
I love you, they said.
Or in a broader sense, this example
suggests I tried to feel the days go on without me.
Walking in the park, a small tin of shoe polish
nestled in the grass.
From over the trees, the names of people
were called out via loudspeaker.
Then there were numbers, the score,
incessant coarse ribbon, floated by elegantly,
then smeared itself all over the sky.
The small hole inside, I'm supposed to love.
I tried to house it.
No, I tried to gorge it.
I hovered 'round it with sentences to magnify the drama.
I choked it with waiting.
I whispered, don't be afraid, and petitioned it with rapture.
The plumed thing, the cross-dressed lingering,
dramatic, all my thin secrets giddy, all my whispers
free-spending.
Tomorrow came.
Slowly it scattered.
Then it came again, first fragile, eyes closed.
Then peeling away its cellophane eyes, striating open,
it did it again, each time so easy,
first blurring a bit then nearing five.
The sparrows a scribble, the magnet rising,
tomorrow starting to strip itself clean again of itself.
But casually, tirelessly, and without innuendo.
Just oh so plucky, peeling the minutes off, the little white
worms.
Quavering up to a strong, fine whiteness.
High varnish, yet non-committal.
Giving thanks, or so it seemed.
Then backing away, unexpurgated, sort of disfigured.
Then again, tomorrow came.
Never a chorus, only the hero.
And tomorrow, and tomorrow, one after another,
up into the floodlights.
I tried to feel the story grow, name by name, one at a time.
My eyes grew heavy.
I could feel my attention slipping.
I tried to shoulder the whole necklace of accidents.
I waited for them all to reappear at the end,
to take a bow, all at once, altogether,
that I might remember.
[APPLAUSE]
OK, that's it now for the-- because you
can't, like-- then there's going to be
the poem you don't applaud for.
And then I'm going to get all screwed up about that.
So this-- call it quits right now and wait until the end,
thanks.