WEBVTT

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"How to Write a Love Poem."

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"Just today, telling a boy in
juvie how to write a love poem,

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I'm stammering over ideas
of detail and unique,

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trying to get him not to
say happy or sparkling eyes,

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but to talk about what is his
love's, only hers and no one

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else's.

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Like how the first time
I picked up something

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from somewhere, a
book, maybe a phone,

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and on the train
platform, you smack it

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straight down out of my hand.

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And we stare at each other
dead faced for a millisecond

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and then burst out laughing.

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Like that, I tell him.

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And he's cracking up.

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He's dying in this
jail, where he

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doesn't know how soon he'll be
out, even though he's just 18.

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But right now, he's
full belly doubled over.

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And I describe it to him again.

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And who knows what this
beautiful tethered young man

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has done to forfeit
his life in this place?

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But I remember again,
as he pounds the fused

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the plastic table, how I
want sometimes secretly

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to hold your head in my
hands again and tell you

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that a castle of a brownstone
in Brooklyn is yours,

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that we'll be sweet forever
and make outlandish things

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from fish and peppers.

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And this time I'll mean it.

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Except I don't tell
the boy that part.

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But he only needs the part
where when I least expected,

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you'll slap something
out of my hands,

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and we'll roll on
the floor laughing.

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And that's what I
wanted to remember,

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if you'll remember that too.

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Except I worry you don't.

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But the boy tells me still
chuckling, his eyes glassy,

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that he gets it.

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'I get it,' he says,
'detail, I get it,

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yeah,' and shows me the part
he's already written to his

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girl about how he's not mad
that a new man is holding her,

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and how she deserves that.

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Because she's beautiful.

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And if he was the new
dude, he'd hold her too.

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And he respects dude for
knowing how deserving she is.

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And I say, 'yeah,
I get it like that.

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You're on it.

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You already know what to do.'"

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