"Curve."
I just did time at UCLA, and they had--
I mean, there were two just signal events
in my first week there.
One was to walk into the faculty housing apartments
where they had us kept.
And to enter the elevator for the first time
and to see a big sign on the wall that said,
there is no danger of running out of air or of this elevator
falling uncontrollably.
[LAUGHING]
What-- somebody really worried about our worries,
which we didn't have yet.
It's like, when I used to hitchhike.
When I was a kid, I would hitchhike.
And one time-- and truck drivers were the best guys
to pick you up because they were good drivers and safe,
so I'll see about that.
Once I climbed up into the cab of this truck.
And when I got in, having hauled my stuff up there,
I opened that enormous door, I got in the seat,
I pulled that enormous door shut.
And he looked over at me, grinning, and said,
I want you to know I'm a gentleman.
Oh boy.
It's like when you see the sign where the motel says "clean."
Somethings go without saying.
Anyway, "Curve."
The other signal occasion was, I thought,
I'd heard all the things about LA.
I thought, what does it mean culture here and all this stuff,
so I checked out the Sunday paper.
And there, in the literary section of the Sunday paper,
they had printed a poem of mine, with no comment, but just
a poem.
Now I don't know if someone tipped them off
that I was coming or what, but it was amazing.
It was also a poem that nobody else has ever understood.
I think they picked the shortest one in the book.
I was pleased.
I thought, how wonderful, what an enlightened town.
And then I read the poem.
This was Sunday-- my first Sunday in LA.
And I got to the fourth line from the end
and I realized that they had changed the word
spinner to the word sinner.
[LAUGHING]
I'll read you this poem and you'll
see that it changes everything.
The poem's called "Curve."
"Freezeburn forms whirlpools and bear fur has curve.
My line is gravity's sheer vertical.
Memory's the same seme.
Sail a memo down--
there's the spooled.
Real-- plunge into simulcast.
Caught up in the network is a blue planet, spinner par
excellence.
It's too small, throw it back."
LA had to have a reason for throwing it back.
I wrote them a letter that they never published.
I said, it's nice of you to fix the poem up.
I wish you had changed the V in the title "Curve" to an S,
then everything would have made sense.
But they never printed the poem or cared to notice.