WEBVTT

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Maybe read one or two
more in this round,

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and come back to
these poems later.

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Leave the mythological
poems until near the end.

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I don't know.

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Remember in "Strangelove," they
kept calling it a "pre-vert"

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all the time.

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I hope you don't
think I'm a "pre-vert"

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for talking about
death all the time.

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But it's kind of
a quality of life

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that we're getting in shape
for, which is a horrible thing.

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But it's kind of sad and one of
the further ironies of life--

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The more you study, the
more you try to write,

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the more you try to create, all
the time the clock is ticking.

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And the closer you're
getting to death,

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which instead of preparing
you for something actually

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is, to me, the end.

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So I concentrate on
this not because I'm

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particularly morbid, but
because these things actually

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do happen.

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They have to be dealt with.

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Sometimes the mind balks at it,
not knowing how to handle it.

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How do you handle the Charles
Whitman, the Speck, the Sirhan

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Sirhan.

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Are we all potentially this way?

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Is humanity
potentially depraved?

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Are we so frustrated
that is the only way

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that we can express ourselves?

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Can we understand
these people, as well

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as having sympathy for
the people that are shot?

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These are the
tremendous questions,

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I think, that alongside the
political issues of choosing

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the lesser of two
evils as president,

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or how we can successfully
get out of a war

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without having more
of our people killed.

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This quality of
individual death to me

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is the other three parts
of the death problem.

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The other part of
the death problem

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is it's a horrible atrocity.

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It wasn't the atrocious part of
the elderly battlefield nurse

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that she was going to die.

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It was very quiet.

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She's dying inside of her.

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Wally Brown was instantaneous.

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That is the horror of
dying by a heart attack

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with no history of heart
attacks in your family,

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and dying at 34 in
seemingly perfect health.

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The other one, of course,
is the bodily brutality,

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which came out a bit
in "Teufelsdreck."

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This type of brutality,
and the ability

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to laugh about it, that
only man can be perverse.

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Let us try another poem
called "Mrs. Godkin's Son."

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This is based on a true
happening from Wisconsin.

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Fantastic crime
annals of Wisconsin,

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which I'm cataloging
slowly over the years.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I used to think Boston.

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We just have
gangland slain there,

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with the Italians
and some of the Irish

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that are brought in to help
them out when they run out.

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When the Italians and
Sicilians get all killed off,

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they either have
Anglos or they have

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Irish people help them out.

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And that doesn't
touch us really.

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The good middle class people
aren't touched by this.

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But here is a different
kind of horror.

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The horror of a young man
who is from a rural Wisconsin

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area, and the mother tells
him that all women are whores

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and that he should stay away.

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That he should stay home, take
care of her until she dies.

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That he should dedicate
his life to his mother.

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Well this sadly enough did work.

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He really believed her,
she poisoned his mind

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for a few years.

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I've changed the name to Godkin
as an obvious, terrible pun.

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That she is after all,
supposedly, God's kin, as we

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all are.

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But these atrocities do happen.

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The son, after the death of the
mother, couldn't face society.

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And he used to go out at
night, and dig up coffins,

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and bring home women.

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And try to play the
masseur and revive them,

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so that he could place mother
in this room-- which he kept all

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the time in perfect condition.

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The rest of the house
was like a pigsty,

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but her room was
almost like a shrine.

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And it does have just slight
religious overtones as far

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as trying to preserve the
alleged purity of his mother,

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when all the time she'd
been poisoning him

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against the flesh.

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Which to me is one of the
greatest imaginable sins

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too, this type of perversion.

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So also he decapitated
some of the people

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and shrank the heads, and
gave them to the children

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and said that they came
from the Philippines.

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It did stand up,
society believed it

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because this was around the
time of the Second World War

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when another American atrocity.

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Bringing heads back, and pots
and remains of Viet Cong.

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Or in the old days, it
used to be the Indians.

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I remember reading
newspaper articles

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about a little old
ladies from Boston--

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not far from where I live--

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used to send away
and get Indian bones.

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From out here, I suppose.

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And used to make buttons for
their dresses out of them.

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So this idea of collecting
parts, and digging up

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people's graves, and
putting them in museums

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is nothing new to our society.

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And if they dug up our
graves, what would happen?

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But this is all the atrocities.

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Not to make you
sick, exactly, but--

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[LAUGHTER]

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He took some of the skin
off many of his people

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and made lampshades out of
them too, which were greatly

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admired by his neighbors.

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All right, I'll
get into the poem.

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"Mrs. Godkin's Son."

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"Oshkosh, Wisconsin 1968.

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His mind, disposed
to her rantings,

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echoed the taunt that
all women are whores.

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He kept the kettle
whistling 10 years,

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and dared not sweep the
dust beneath the braided rug

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of Death's bedroom.

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Nights amid obituaries,
he studied like Rasputin

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the occult and mystical.

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For he had a special
way with women.

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Moonlit, his shovel clinked
against a treasure house

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of female coffins.

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He sacks the
overripe bodies home,

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but they failed to
breathe beyond the sink

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where his masseur
hands, fondled in love,

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to restore one mother
amid her heirlooms.

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Dishes were piled,
green scum thick.

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The garbage of years
grew like a dump.

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Only her room with a
virginal shrine to the memory

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that she alone with his.

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Masked and blind to see that
need fails to carry flesh

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beyond the grave.

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Heads that refused to
murmur to his touch,

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or shrunk and doled
to neighbor kids.

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Who lied to parents
about the Philippines.

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They smiled and said at least
they weren't American heads.

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Poor, harmless, old man.

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But empty graves aroused him.

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They call to find a wall of
bodies dressed out like deer.

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Hung gentle as
lovers, and no mother

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stirred to rail against lust."

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[DISTANT AIRPLANE]

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You can sleep tight tonight,
our National Guard is awake.

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