WEBVTT

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And I'll conclude
with a poem we have--

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it'll take about five
minutes to read--

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titled, again, "Written After
a Massacre in the Year 2018,"

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which begins with an epigraph
from Coleridge, who says,

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quote, "To see is
only a language,"

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which is from his poem, "Written
During a Temporary Blindness

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in the Year of 1799."

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"1.

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To see is only a language,
and I can't speak it today.

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They've wrapped a heavy
blanket over my face.

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The cops deliver the influenza.

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But before injection, they
need to wait for someone

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to fix the central heating.

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No one wants to
interrogate me until they

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fix the central heating.

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I chatter with the broken
refugees in this prison,

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our faces wrapped in darkness.

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2.

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A list of frozen bodies, a
lost list of unclaimed bodies,

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a lost list of privatized
bodies, a lost list of bodies

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they seized, we
are the lost list.

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But we don't know
where they keep us.

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3.

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The border bisecting
the infected--

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the border bisecting
the infected fumes

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of the infested factories,
the utopia of statelessness,

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the utopia of
transience, they tell us

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Lake Michigan is the Central
America of the Midwest.

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They send us here so we
can share hepatitis swabs

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with dirty immigrants.

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Hold on to your DNA,
refugee citizens.

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The only question about life is,
what does it mean to live it?

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4.

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Financiers selling
bodies, speculators

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selling blood and
sperm, they slink

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into the webs of the city.

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They tell me I
don't have the right

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to grieve over my own body.

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They tell me to pray and
to grieve is illegal.

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5.

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What did he shout before he
massacred the grandmothers?

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What did he shout before he
massacred the worshippers?

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What did he shout
before he massacred

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the nurses, the silent,
praying skeletons?

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He was on his way to the river
the blood would never reach.

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He was on his way
to the Nazi meet-up

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the blood would never reach.

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The stock market just opened.

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The exchanged value
of a slaughtered Jew

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is like the exchanged
value of a slaughtered Jew.

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If your body is on fire,
a private firefighter

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will put it out much
faster than a state one,

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the death of a sensuous lung.

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6.

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The song of the ram's horn by
the river, the early Americans

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marched to meet the
caravan in the desert.

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An authoritative body tells
me I can't disembody my body

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without embodying the
collective bodies' body.

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And if I disembody the
collective bodies' body,

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then I will have to disembody
the imagined community's body.

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And if I disembody the
imagined community's body,

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then I will need to ignore the
fields of multiple destruction

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today.

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I dip my finger
into a cup of blood

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and wish for plagues
to destroy the emperor.

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I need to destroy the
nation state, but when will

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I find the time?

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7.

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The bourgeoisie pay
taxes to kill immigrants,

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bathe in the cryptocurrency of
a bank that will never exist.

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8.

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The song of atonement at the
river sings, pray harder,

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and the massacre will go away.

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Pray harder, and the
massacre will not

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turn into another massacre.

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Pray harder, and the poor
people will become rich people .

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Pray harder, and the slaughterer
will turn into a butterfly.

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Pray harder, and the 30
million white males with guns

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will turn into a river
of testicles rolling down

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the street.

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When they repossess my body, my
heart will soak in petroleum,

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and my mouth will
be a baby in a cage,

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the poetry of the
shattered bone,

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and the flame of
the human document.

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9.

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The catastrophe is
caressed ad nauseam.

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The greased-up
multitudes are not

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afraid to say the same
thing over and over again.

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Death leaks from their shoes,
and the slaughtered Jews

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are like slaughtered Jews.

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I dream about returning to
a prayer that doesn't exist.

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It disappeared yesterday when
they assassinated the morning,

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and turned our life
into spectacle.

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10.

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You hid behind the
soldiers with machine guns

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running down the street.

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You were praying for plagues
and wishing your parents would

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come out of the building alive.

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The worshippers
of the dead trees

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knew that where there is a first
kill, there will be a second.

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Where there is a
third kill, there

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will be a fourth,
a fifth, a 500th.

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The anecdote destroys
the analysis.

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11.

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The immigrants split their
bodies into communal assets.

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To assimilate, they
must stand by the river

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with a prophylactic
angel in their hands,

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disguised as a
rocketing hedge fund.

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In the rupture, in the rubble,
in the pathological eye

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sockets, in the counter odyssey
of the whites of your eyes,

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in the parliamentary
assault rifle,

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the parliamentary
machine guns splatter,

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the illegal bodies in
cages are painted over

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by the analytics and
mathematics of the hemisphere.

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How do you quantify the broken
toddlers rolling on the ground?

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How do you quantify
the murmuring grief

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of the Americas?

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12.

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Marines medicate mothers and mix
their milk with mononucleosis.

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Millionaires multiply in
the machinery of mourning,

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manufacturing mausoleums for
martyred Marxists and Mercedes.

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Middle managers mistake
manipulative merchants

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for munificent moralists.

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A military massacre on
the municipal motorway

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is like a military massacre
on the municipal motorway.

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Metaphysical mayors mediate the
mythology of mystical markets

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while monitoring the
murders of migrants.

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My mouth is filled with words."

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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