WEBVTT

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This is a poem about--

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I had a very disastrous
youth really.

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This is another poem
about a youthful disaster.

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My parents both worked
when I was young

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and consequently, I was
very much to myself,

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very much on my own.

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And this is a poem
about a time that I

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was playing with my pet turtle
in the sink in the upstairs

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of our house, and a friend
of mine called me out

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and I went outside and left the
water running with the turtle

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in it, in the sink upstairs.

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And this is a poem
about what happened.

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And it's called "Zimmer and
His Turtle Sink the House."

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[LAUGHTER]

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"I had soaked the old house
until the plaster bulged

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like fungus from its lath.

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Bead ferns grew in the rainbow
spray of the waterfalls

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down the carpeted
stairs and the meter

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in the cellar ticked off
the waters of my mistake.

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I had forgotten, gone away
and left my turtle burping

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through the water, running
in the upstairs sink,

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gone away and left the
old house torpedoed

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in filling with only a cold
blooded helmsman on the bridge.

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All the towels, old underwear,
and mops that I could muster

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never dried the house up,
never turned the meter back

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from what it told.

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The turtle was gone,
swept to the basement,

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no doubt, where he had grown
into a loggerhead, grumbling

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and steel jawed like my father,
angry at my carelessness,

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ready to snap my digits off
if I gave him half a chance."

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Thank you.

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That's fine.

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