WEBVTT

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I'll read one more, "The
Drunk Hedge Clipper."

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The hedge clipper, drunk,
took up his sharpened shears,

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went out one night,
a stoned Pygmalion.

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He staggered past dark
banks, the ship shape

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smears, and snipped his
scissors at a screaming woman.

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He bowed, and
threw his coat down

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on the water of a
streetlight for her.

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In the alleys,
pawnbrokers dance,

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the color of old tartar
beneath the moths.

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He walked more precisely.

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He sauntered into Western
Union, helped himself

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to yellow messages.

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Ticker tapes grew
arms and loved him,

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convertibles went scalped
for days thereafter.

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He pinned a gay collapse
of corkscrew curls

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on a surf boarding buoy,
between thrills and spills,

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while the silhouettes of
buildings browbeat him.

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And he wondered how
those cubes and angles,

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those omniscient orbits, how
can a lonely hedge hopper

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clip, and make something to
shout his lonely elusiveness,

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show his hands are steady,
though his skull may ache.

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Now apples fall, and
innocent giraffes

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eat wisdom from the trees.

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Like Peter Pan, I'm
flying drunk again.

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My zebra love, come
to the verdant zoo.

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We'll drink again
to the wildebeest,

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and then we'll stay
alive deep in the jungle,

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while the dinosaurs crash into
glaciers, and grow very numb.

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I will make you small,
green, dew claws.

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My desires whelp these small
animals, this reticulum

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of kangaroos, this
pod of whales,

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spinning the spinning dark.

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Carved out of ferns, and leaves,
and hedges, the chunky profiles

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of armadillos, the
hearts of porcupines.

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Drunk, the hedge clipper,
sculpting in the park.

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The exoskeletons, the
funny snouts and tails,

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the embryos that
lurk inside him,

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and that come when he ruminates
upon them in his cups.

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In they come, when he
is snoring in the jail,

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spies from the ark.

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And the raven hops in
time to the soft thirsting

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of their golden eyes.

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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