WEBVTT

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I'll just read two more.

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One's a little short
and one's a little long.

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This is sort of a poem for
the area in which I grew up,

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which is a very strange,
conflicted area,

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as you will soon find out.

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"The Likes of You."

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The likes of you
means each hour,

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for lack of a church
bell, your priest rings

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a hand-me-down guillotine.

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And into the wood chipper
falls the farmhand

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who each spring, instead
of the cherry blossoms,

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blooms from the cherry trees.

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It means he's in
league with your town

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drunk, your chief of police.

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It means they're
reminiscing, blotto tonight,

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about their reign of terror
over the mud puppies,

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and over the combine blades,
and over the peregrines.

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And they drape their 60,000
miles of veins like angel hair

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from the last of the evergreens.

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It means last on the
list of everything

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they'll never teach you
about the white trash,

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tax frauding unincorporated
village that established you,

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circa 1986.

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And you won't find this
in your want ad digest.

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And you won't find this in
your father's father's father's

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Farmer's Almanac.

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Is that when your dogs die
of three species of tapeworm,

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you hold each one by the tail
like a broiler, start counting

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off, nine, nine, nine.

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And when you're pissing into
the reservoir, when you're

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poisoning the city's
drinking supply, when

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you're cursing the mayor's new
pipeline and spray painting god

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forgives, but we don't
on the 99 cent clapboard

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you stole from
Wickham's and nailed

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to the front of your
house with a chukka boot,

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you throw your dogs and
their 17 bags of chow

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into the west branch
of the Delaware River.

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It means they never teach
you your brother's shadow.

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It stinks like the
priest's, only worse.

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It means your thoroughbred
with her lathered,

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incomplete withers and Death's
French accent in her cough.

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When that horse
dies of wet brain,

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it means you buy
all the worst liquor

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you can find in the
Legion Hall, and dump her

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into the Delaware River.

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And generations,
generations you'll

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hear them bragging
about that backwoods

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piss drunk horse funeral.

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He wore out the skins
on his hanger toms

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and tossed each one
like a hogshead of wine

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into the west branch
of the Delaware River.

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It means the river floods for
the 17th time in 10 years.

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It means bloated and with
four hooves pointed at god,

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you positively ID the cow
that won the blue ribbon

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at the Delaware County
Fair, floating dead

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down the west branch
of the Delaware River.

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It means what they
won't teach you

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in the academy is how
each drink you drink,

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that's the last
fuck you'll fuck.

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And it means the last from the
tallied up list of everything

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they never intended to teach
you about your heritage,

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like least of all,
how grateful you

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ought to be that there's
only this one world left

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for you to die in.

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