WEBVTT

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I'm going to read short
poems and a few of them

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have a little narrative, mostly
they don't, mostly they're

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lyrics.

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The first one has a narrative,
it's called "Hurricane."

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When his father says,
"Think before you speak,"

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it's like telling a clown
to be serious for once,

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like telling an actor to
freeze long moments on a stage

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and reconsider the
lines he's memorized,

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like telling the color yellow
to tone it down for the funeral.

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The boy is 11, it's hard to
think with a noisy rain still

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coming down in buckets.

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Last night a hurricane slammed
the street, and in the morning

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the boy's uncle stopped by
in a canoe, waving a paddle,

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and big trees were
upended, everyone

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could see what
made a tree a tree.

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Across the street, in front of
the pharmacy with his friends,

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someone's blond and
beautiful visiting

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older sister leaned down
and kissed them on the lips.

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All stories explosive
as a storm or ordinary

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as a walk, lose in the telling,
lose everything in fact.

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The lips go slack,
the clean smell

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of the small puff
of breath dissolves,

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his uncle is a man who
works in a garage, what's

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left is a great noise
in the night that

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took all the other noise away.