WEBVTT

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So I'll read a few poems
in "The World Cloud," which

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is the digital section,
and it's for all of you who

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are addicted to social media.

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And it's sort of
my vision of what

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the internet is going to
become 10 years from now,

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maybe next year.

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And there's sort of
this device called

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smart snow, which I hope the
poems kind of evoke or explain.

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"Engines Within the Throne."

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"We once worked as clerks,
scanning mothballed pages

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into the clouds, all memories
outsourced except the fuzzy

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childhood bits.

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When I was an undersized
girl with a tic,

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they numbed me with Botox.

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I was a skinsuit
of dumb expression,

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just fingerprints
over my shamed.

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All I wanted was snow to
snuff the sun blades to shadow

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spokes, muffle the
drum of freeways,

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erase the old realism.

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But this smart snow erases
nothing, seeps everywhere.

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The search engine is inside us.

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The world is our display.

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And now every industry
has dumped whole cubicles,

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desktops, fax machines into
developing worlds where they

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stack them as walls against.

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What disputed territory,
we asked the old spy

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who drank with Russians
to gather information

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the old-fashioned way.

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Now we have snow
sensors, so you can

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go spelunking in anyone's mind.

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Let me borrow your
child thoughts.

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It's benign surveillance.

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I can burrow inside, find a cave
pool with rock-colored flounder

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and find you, half-transparent
with depression."

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