WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.680 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.680 --> 00:00:05.880 align:middle line:84% I always say this poem is sort of my poem for New York. 00:00:05.880 --> 00:00:09.000 align:middle line:84% It mentions Emma Lazarus and a statue, 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:13.380 align:middle line:84% which Emma Lazarus's poem, "The New Colossus" 00:00:13.380 --> 00:00:16.350 align:middle line:84% is inscribed upon the base of the Statue of Liberty. 00:00:16.350 --> 00:00:19.410 align:middle line:84% It's, "Give us your tired, your hungry, your poor. " 00:00:19.410 --> 00:00:23.820 align:middle line:84% And this is another, sort of, awful dream about American 00:00:23.820 --> 00:00:26.100 align:middle line:90% capitalism, I guess. 00:00:26.100 --> 00:00:29.900 align:middle line:90% It's called "Itinerary." 00:00:29.900 --> 00:00:34.920 align:middle line:84% "One dream I have is the voice of the statue is gunfire. 00:00:34.920 --> 00:00:41.630 align:middle line:84% Mother calls, the landlord calls, but the line is silent. 00:00:41.630 --> 00:00:45.020 align:middle line:84% I watched myself decompose in the mirror a minute. 00:00:45.020 --> 00:00:47.810 align:middle line:84% And I check for bites, like I'm supposed to. 00:00:47.810 --> 00:00:51.380 align:middle line:84% I check nothing's left of the oats, like I'm supposed to. 00:00:51.380 --> 00:00:54.380 align:middle line:84% I wait for a word to appear in my alphabet soup, 00:00:54.380 --> 00:00:55.920 align:middle line:90% like I'm supposed to. 00:00:55.920 --> 00:00:59.540 align:middle line:84% But my friends swoop down like owls and fly into the wall. 00:00:59.540 --> 00:01:03.860 align:middle line:84% They tell me what I owe, and screech, and fly into the wall. 00:01:03.860 --> 00:01:08.120 align:middle line:84% And I wash myself and think her mother dressed the wound. 00:01:08.120 --> 00:01:12.290 align:middle line:84% And I dress myself and think how father cleaned the fish. 00:01:12.290 --> 00:01:15.020 align:middle line:84% And Heidegger, of all people, tells me 00:01:15.020 --> 00:01:18.320 align:middle line:84% three dangers threaten that kind of thinking: 00:01:18.320 --> 00:01:21.560 align:middle line:84% there's one I call liberty he says, there's one I call oats, 00:01:21.560 --> 00:01:23.900 align:middle line:90% there's one I call what I owe. 00:01:23.900 --> 00:01:26.660 align:middle line:84% Which means soon, soon the landlord will come 00:01:26.660 --> 00:01:29.000 align:middle line:90% and he'll admire my soot. 00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:33.470 align:middle line:84% His heaps, he wonders, which of his heaps will he bless? 00:01:33.470 --> 00:01:35.750 align:middle line:84% And his hand inside my hand is like holding 00:01:35.750 --> 00:01:38.030 align:middle line:84% a handful of poppies, or a handkerchief 00:01:38.030 --> 00:01:40.550 align:middle line:90% a child dipped in milk. 00:01:40.550 --> 00:01:42.110 align:middle line:84% And when I leave the apartment I'll 00:01:42.110 --> 00:01:44.630 align:middle line:84% count the women without children. 00:01:44.630 --> 00:01:48.720 align:middle line:84% If I don't I'll count their children's broken guns. 00:01:48.720 --> 00:01:52.160 align:middle line:84% When the train to work stalls beneath the river, I'll try, 00:01:52.160 --> 00:01:55.670 align:middle line:84% I'll try not to say how close the end of the self comes: 00:01:55.670 --> 00:01:57.860 align:middle line:84% it's like a handful of poppies, or no, 00:01:57.860 --> 00:01:59.810 align:middle line:84% it's like the bowl they rest in, or no, it's 00:01:59.810 --> 00:02:02.130 align:middle line:84% more like the water filling them both-- 00:02:02.130 --> 00:02:05.780 align:middle line:84% each possesses nothing the water coming through this window 00:02:05.780 --> 00:02:07.580 align:middle line:90% won't. 00:02:07.580 --> 00:02:09.830 align:middle line:84% Which means soon, soon I have a dream 00:02:09.830 --> 00:02:12.260 align:middle line:90% I take the city down with me. 00:02:12.260 --> 00:02:15.560 align:middle line:84% I strike the name of my company from the building. 00:02:15.560 --> 00:02:18.680 align:middle line:84% And when a friend writes the word wisteria she disappears. 00:02:18.680 --> 00:02:20.390 align:middle line:84% And when the elevator falls a story-- 00:02:20.390 --> 00:02:23.780 align:middle line:90% I use this strange word god. 00:02:23.780 --> 00:02:26.840 align:middle line:84% And when a man I've already met introduces himself to me 00:02:26.840 --> 00:02:28.110 align:middle line:90% he collapses. 00:02:28.110 --> 00:02:30.170 align:middle line:84% Which means soon the bees forget. 00:02:30.170 --> 00:02:32.863 align:middle line:84% Which means soon the colony collapses. 00:02:32.863 --> 00:02:34.280 align:middle line:84% And when I tell one of the workers 00:02:34.280 --> 00:02:35.840 align:middle line:90% to tell me how she works. 00:02:35.840 --> 00:02:41.060 align:middle line:84% How I work is my business, she says, and collapses. 00:02:41.060 --> 00:02:45.920 align:middle line:84% And when I'm home I undress how my father rinses an apple. 00:02:45.920 --> 00:02:49.910 align:middle line:84% I rinse my mouth how my mother undress as a man. 00:02:49.910 --> 00:02:53.840 align:middle line:84% And the play I go see is the man playing me collapses. 00:02:53.840 --> 00:02:56.360 align:middle line:84% And the woman I go see it with is the voice 00:02:56.360 --> 00:02:59.090 align:middle line:90% of a gun when it backfires. 00:02:59.090 --> 00:03:03.860 align:middle line:84% And one dream I have is you visit me, Emma Lazarus. 00:03:03.860 --> 00:03:07.640 align:middle line:84% One must bless his heaps is all you'll tell me. 00:03:07.640 --> 00:03:10.130 align:middle line:84% There's one I call the colony, there's 00:03:10.130 --> 00:03:14.500 align:middle line:84% one I call soon, there's one I call what collapses." 00:03:14.500 --> 00:03:15.000 align:middle line:90%