WEBVTT

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My last poem.

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It's all I brought,
so there's no encore.

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[LAUGHTER]

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"I passed a dozen men lined
up at the door of the plasma

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center.

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It was 5:00 in the morning.

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One wore a logo of a
sunrise on his T-shirt.

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The moon was still up and
so were Saturn and Venus

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glowing like stars.

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I read the ocean is absorbing
carbon dioxide slowly

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but more of it, and this new
acidity is dissolving shells.

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The food bank can't afford
holiday boxes this year,

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but Walmart customers barreled
down the door on Black Friday

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and trampled a worker to death
in the name of a bargain.

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We are evolving, my friends,
into a species that does not

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care about us whatsoever.

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I dropped beloveds and stole
my friends from John McCain.

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I stole Atlas Shrugged
from Barnes and Noble

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and then never read it.

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Though I can say the Lord's
Prayer and Pledge of Allegiance

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by heart.

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I went with my heart
instead of from memory.

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Remember when you said,
sometimes you're like a stone.

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I want to be more like a stone.

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People take pictures of car
accidents with their cell

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phones as they drive past.

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They text them to
other people who

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drive by different accidents
and take their own pictures.

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My orchids died over
a period of months

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because I watered them too
much, an undocumented death.

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When Obama won, I watched
Jesse Jackson cry on TV.

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I was with a Buddhist
priest, and we both

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called our families.

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A week later, Joan said it's
the end of the age of irony,

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and she looked so
small and frail.

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I felt guilty for betraying
my own sense of hope.

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Once you said I hope
I'm not inspiring a poem

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when I left you
drunk on the couch.

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It was 6:00 in the evening."

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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So Stephanie, you
said no encore,

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but are you still up
for some questions.

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Yes, absolutely.

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[CHUCKLES] Or not.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Stephanie?