And I'll finish with this poem, which will be
the last poem in the project.
It's called Some Toxin.
And just thanks again for having me here.
I love it here.
And this is just like being a very beautiful few days.
So I am just very grateful.
Some Toxin.
This is what we get.
This is the penance for extending and extending
the human lifespan.
Now, some people have 120 years.
But those years are increasingly spent
being bombarded by adorable profiles of the oldest people.
Interviews about what keeps them ticking.
The secret is always some toxin like bacon or vodka.
And the joke that ensues is also always the same.
The chemicals preserved him.
That is fine.
But just once I would like to crumple the metro section
and find that the key to long life is rage and trauma.
That bitterness girds the organs in equal measure.
If I could choose to be born in any era,
I would opt to predate these longer lives.
There's just so much violence always.
It's better to have it visited on you
back when your attackers would end up dead much sooner.
When you would die sooner too.
All I want is for someone to understand me.
But it seems my keenest friends and I, we've scattered.
We've struggled for peace for permanence.
And somehow in that struggle, we ventured far from each other.
And this is what we get.
This is the penance.
Back when even the powerful died younger.
We would lose one another and dutifully
wait to be reunited in heaven.
We wait for that still.
But now in the absence of heaven we
say someday we'll find each other year after year on Earth.
Thanks.
Thank you.
We have some Q&A.
Yes.
So if you want to take at the podium again.
Raise your hand if you have a question for her.