WEBVTT

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Maybe another little
poem in that same vein

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so I can get them
out of my system.

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This is called "Trader."

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I read it on the
radio the other night

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and I know the disk jockey
looked at me a couple of times,

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because there was a big
sign, which I noticed later,

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up above the window, saying
obscene utterances over

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the radio are finable
to the extent of $10,000

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and imprisonment not less
than five years, and so I--

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but that's a poet's paranoia.

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Anyway "Trader" is about a--

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maybe it's happened
to you-- you've

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seen a girl that you cared
very much for about 10, or 11,

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or 12 years later.

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And this is what happened, I
saw this girl on the street.

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And in high school, she
was the cheerleader,

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and I was the linebacker,
and all that kind of stuff.

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And her life was
going miserably,

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and I was sort of pleased--

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[LAUGHTER]

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Only to the extent that
I wanted to marry her,

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but she wanted to marry
the day after graduation,

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and I wanted to go to
college and get off

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the farm and stuff like that.

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Anyway, so she married somebody
else who became a machinist

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at an Oldsmobile factory--

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[LAUGHTER]

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and then a milkman.

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So anyway, this is
called "Trader."

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"I traded a girl two
apples for an orange.

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I hate citrus, but
she was beautiful.

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As lovers, we were rotten.

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This was before the
sexual revolution

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and we only necked and pawed.

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Don't write below the
lines, but now she's

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traded that child's
red mitten I only

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touched for a stovepipe hat,
four children, and a milkman

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husband.

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Soon I learned there
will be no milkman

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and she'll want to trade again.

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Stop, I won't take a
giant Mariana's Trench

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for two red apples.

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You've had your
orange, now lie in it."

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Of course, since she's
scarcely literate,

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she won't realize that
I've gotten even with her.

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I always think the
enormous strain

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that goes into becoming
a poet in America,

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or any kind of artist.

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And I don't think it gets any
easier as the years go by.

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But there's this sense of--

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A friend of mine was writing
a manic musical, rock comedy.

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And we're trying to create
this situation where

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a ranch boy in North
Dakota was going

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to tell his Republican
father that he was going

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to become a ballet dancer.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And it's still something
I think akin to that.

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But as Louis Simpson
once said in a poem,

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be true to your
own strange kind.

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