WEBVTT

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OK, a couple more of these, then
I'll get back to the ghazals.

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This is-- well this is a
little poem called "Awake."

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It was written
during a period where

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I was centered in by a lot
of free floating anxiety.

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I was sitting against the
couch though, one day,

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very much injured after
getting out of the hospital,

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and the thermostat
blew off the wall.

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But I was in this sense
where I couldn't plug--

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well, this is like
hygienic psychology,

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something like Anne
Sexton puts out.

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But I was afraid to plug
in lights, and so on.

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So this is called "Awake."

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Everything I was
afraid of at the time.

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Sort of a mimetic poem hoping
to get rid of your fears

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by writing them down.

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Limp with night fears--

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hellborne, wolfbane,
Marlowe is daggered,

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fire, volts, African
vipers, the grizzly

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the horses sensed, the
rattlesnake by the mailbox--

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how he struck at
our thrown rocks,

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black water, framed by
the police, wanton wife.

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I'm a bad poet broke and
broken at thirty-two,

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a renter, shot by mistake,
airplanes and trains,

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half-mast hardons, a poisoned
earth, sun will go out,

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car break down in a
blizzard, my animals die,

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fistfights, alcohol, caskets,
the hammerhead shark gliding

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under the boat near Loggerhead
Key, my soul, my heart,

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my brain, my life so
interminably struck with an ax

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as wet wood splits bluntly,
mauled into section

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for burning.

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