WEBVTT

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And this next poem
is a repentance

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of all the harsh things I
ever said about my parents.

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[LAUGHTER]

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It's called "Phone Call."

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"Maybe I overdid it
when I called my father

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an enemy of humanity.

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That might have been
a little strongly put,

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a slight overexaggeration,
an immoderate description

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of that person who at that
moment, 2,000 miles away,

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holding the receiver
six inches from his ear,

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must have regretted
paying for my therapy.

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[LAUGHTER]

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What I meant was that my father
was an enemy of my humanity,

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and what I meant behind that
was that my father was split

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into two people, one of
them living deep inside me

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like a bad king or an incurable
disease, blighting my crops,

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striking down my herds,
poisoning my wells--

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the other standing
in another time zone,

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in a kitchen in
Wyoming with bad knees

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and white hair
sprouting from his ears.

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I don't want to
scream forever, I

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don't want to live
without proportion

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like some kind of
infection from the past,

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so I have to remember the second
father, the one whose TV dinner

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is getting cold while he holds
the phone in his left hand

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and stares blankly out
the window where just now

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the sun is going down and the
last fingertips of sunlight

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are withdrawing from
the hills they once

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touched like a child."

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