WEBVTT

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I was going to read
some poems that

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came out of that experience
but I don't know if I will.

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I think I won't.

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I come from Detroit,
Lois mentioned that,

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and I've written a lot about it.

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The young people were
talking to me the other day

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and asking me what I
would do if I were they.

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I would go out and have
fun, I would not be a poet.

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I don't know what
the hell I told them,

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I didn't know what to
tell them, but when

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I worked in the
factories as a young man,

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those are the worst
years of my life

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I think until I
became a teacher,

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but they were worse, much worse.

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But I didn't realize that
in three or four years

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that really I was, I was
meeting so many people

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and I was a receptor
for so many people.

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I had no idea that 20 years
later that it would all

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be so alive for me
in my imagination,

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when I look back I can see
so much of that experience

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with incredible clarity.

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This is a little poem that
I wrote about one about five

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or six years ago, maybe
about five or six years ago.

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I had a wonderful, just a
fantastic week or two weeks.

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I don't know I was going
through a difficult time

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and I went to bed,
which might seem stupid,

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but I just gave
up on everything.

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And I went to bed and I
began to write in bed,

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and I didn't want
to get out really.

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And I stayed in
bed I don't know,

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I guess it was a couple
of weeks I wouldn't

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go to work or talk to anybody.

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And gradually things got
really good you know I mean,

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I got into this whole bed trip
and into my poetry the way

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I hadn't been in a long
time enjoying things.

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And this was one of the
poems that came out of it.

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Once I got up to
go to the bathroom

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my wife changed the sheets.

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And in a curious way
kind of killed it.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I came back and it did, I don't
know it didn't seem like home.

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So I went back to work and
that's why I'm here today

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really.

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It sounds cold
"Blasting from Heaven"

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at the time I thought it
was the worst of the poems I

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wrote in that two weeks.

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I wrote about 10 or 12
poems, but I think now

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it was far and away the best.

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It was all a little crude made.

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When I was after it's a poem
about being up all night

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and across my factory,
and I've been working

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and I go into a little beanery
of these strange people

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and they've been up all
night, everybody crazy

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the way you are when
you're up all night,

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haven't slept a long time.

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And I try to capture
the kind of humor

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and the stupidity and in the
way everything seems so profound

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at those times.

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Called "Blasting From Heaven."

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The little girl won't
eat her sandwich.

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She lifts the bun and looks
in but the gray beef coated

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with relish is always there.

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Her mother says,
do it for mother.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Milk and relish in a hard bun
that comes off like a hat.

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A kid's life is a cinch
and a mother's life--

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What can you do with
a man like that?

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She asks the sleeping cook
and then the old Negro

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who won't sit.

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He's been out all
night trying to get it.

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I hope he gets it, what
did he ever do but get it?

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The Negro doesn't look,
though he looks like he's

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been out all night trying.

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Everyone's been out
all night trying,

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why else would we be
drinking beer at attention?

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If she were younger or
if I were Prince Valiant,

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I would say that fate brought
me here to quiet the crying,

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to sweeten the sandwich of
the child, to waken the cook,

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to stop the Negro from bearing
witness to the world The dawn's

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still hasn't come.

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And now we hear the
8 o'clock whistles

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blasting from heaven and with
no morning, the day is sold.

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