WEBVTT

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I read a funny poem.

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I want to dedicate this poem to
my old friend, George Shelton.

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This is a poem I feel that--

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of course, certain
subjects become current.

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The rock and roll
poem is already passé.

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I'll read one of them later.

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There's just a genre
of rock and roll poems,

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people yearning nostalgically
to recover their lost

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youth in the '60s and
the Age of Aquarius,

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fringed vests, so
forth and so on.

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Really pathetic enactments.

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I feel like the kung fu poem is
just beginning to be written.

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And I'm a pioneer
in that territory.

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The first line of this--
this is sort of analogy

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too, a generational elegy.

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And the first line of the poem
is also the title of the poem.

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"Fred Had Watched a Lot
of Kung Fu Episodes."

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So when the policeman asked
to see his driver's license,

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he said, does the
wind need permission

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from the hedgehog to blow?

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Which resulted in a
search of the car, which

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miraculously yielded nothing
since Fred had swallowed all

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the mescaline already
and was just beginning

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to fall in love with
the bushy caterpillar

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eyebrows of the
officer in question.

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In those days, we could
identify the fingerprints

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on a guitar string
by the third note

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of the song, broadcast from
the window of a passing car.

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But we couldn't
tell the difference

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between a personal disaster
and "having an experience."

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So Fred thought being locked up
for the night was kind of fun,

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with the graffiti on the
drunk tank wall chattering

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in Mandarin and the sentient
cockroaches coming out

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to visit in triplicate.

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Back then, it wasn't a
question of pain or pleasure.

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It wasn't a question of
getting to the top then trying

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not to fall at any cost.

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It was a question
of staying tuned in,

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one episode at a time,
said Fred to himself

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as he walked home
the next morning

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under the spreading lotus
trees on Walnut Street.

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feeling Oriental.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Since I wrote that poem, I've
read several other kung fu

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poems.

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It's entering either,
depending on how

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you look at it, the marketplace
or our aesthetic province.

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