WEBVTT

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I'll finish with a poem--

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I started this poem out in the
spirit of satire, or parody

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even.

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What I want to make
fun of was the habit

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poets had about taking their
own birthdays a little too

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seriously, and writing a
middle-- midlife crisis death

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poem, especially when their
birthdays ended with a zero.

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You could put an
anthology together,

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someone probably has
already, of these poems

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that are on turning
40, 50, and 60, so on.

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And, for some reason,
they are gloomier

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as the number gets bigger.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Why that is--

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But in this poem,
I wanted to get

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a sense of the source of all
this sadness, and so the poem

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started out in that vein.

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It's called "I'm Turning Ten."

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[LAUGHTER]

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"The whole idea of
it makes me feel

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like I'm coming down
with something, something

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worse than any stomach
ache or the headaches I get

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from reading in bad
light, a kind of measles

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of the spirit, a mumps of the
psyche, a disfiguring chicken

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pox of the soul.

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You tell me it is too
early to be looking back,

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but that is because
you have forgotten

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the perfect simplicity
of being one

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and the beautiful complexity
introduced by two.

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But I can lie on my bed
and remember every digit.

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At four I was an Arabian wizard.

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I could make myself
invisible by drinking

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a glass of milk a certain way.

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At seven I was a soldier,
at nine a prince.

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But now I am mostly
at the window

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watching the late
afternoon light.

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Back then it never
fell so solemnly

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against the side
of my tree house,

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and my bicycle never
leaned against the garage

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as it does today, all the dark
blue speed drained out of it.

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[LAUGHTER]

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This is the
beginning of sadness,

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I say to myself, as I
walk through the universe

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in my sneakers.

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It is time to say good-bye
to my imaginary friends, time

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to turn the first big number.

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It seems only yesterday I used
to believe there was nothing

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under my skin but light.

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If you cut me I could shine.

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But now when I fall upon
the sidewalks of life,

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I skin my knees.

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I bleed."

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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