WEBVTT

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I was putting together
this reading today,

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and I was trying to show
Lynda, my wife, what

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I was going to read.

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And she said, that's a really
dark reading, isn't it?

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And I realized that
it would probably

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have to be a dark reading
if the author of the poems

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is someone whose fondest
childhood memories are helping

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stock a fallout shelter.

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[LAUGHTER]

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When my father died a
couple of years ago,

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one of the things
that I ended up doing

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is going through his things.

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And I found that
during World War

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II, when he was in the army,
he had fastidiously read--

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and he hardly read
any books at all,

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but had fastidiously
read and annotated

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the Bible, particularly
the Book of Revelation.

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And I'd never read the
Book of Revelation before,

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and I started
looking at it then,

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and it's really a wild document.

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And so there's an
epigraph from the Book

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of Revelation in this poem.

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And it's got a
lot of stuff in it

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which maybe needs a
little bit of explanation.

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There's a flying saucer
cult in this poem.

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There's a woman who's received
the stigmata in the poem.

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Chernobyl is in this poem.

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There's also a guy
that someone I know

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met at a writer's colony,
which in this poem becomes me.

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And this guy had this
huge federal grant,

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he was a painter, to devise
a semiotic, a symbol which

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would indicate even two or
three thousand years from now,

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that a drum was carrying
radioactive material.

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And also, there's a terrific
book that years ago--

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I think it was Steve
Orlen told me about,

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called The Three
Christs of Ypsilanti.

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Have any of you ever
heard of this book?

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A guy named Milton Rokeach,
a psychologist in Michigan,

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years and years ago,
decided that he'd

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be able to cure three
schizophrenics who all believed

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they were Christ by
making them live together

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for a year in a single room.

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And actually they got worse,
and they fought all the time,

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so Rokeach made them conduct
all of their interactions

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according to Robert's
Rules of Order.

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So all that stuff is in there,
but it's not that long a poem,

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there's six short sections.

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It's called "The
First Six Seals,"

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and it's got an epigraph
from Revelation.

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"I saw a scroll, it had
writing on both sides,

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and was sealed
with seven seals."

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Revelation 5:1.

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"Seal one, The Three
Christs of Ypsilanti.

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All three Christs in a locked
room for a year, sharing meals.

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A daily business meeting
conducted, of course,

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to Robert's Rules of Order.

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Each session commences with
a different song, Blue Moon,

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Yankee Doodle, never
hymns, for they

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spark untherapeutic
theological debate, which

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leave each Christ exhausted.

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Tonight they talk back to a
TV set bolted to the wall.

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Joseph screams,
Leon's a heretic.

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We'll burn for watching
Sea Hunt, Milton Berle.

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Leon Almighty,
Clyde Christus Est,

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Joseph Hallowed-Be-Thy-Name.

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Pre-thorazine and manic,
their Godhead is degenerative.

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The experiment will fail.

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For what could shame
them into human form?

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Joseph bewails another
lost Yahtzee game.

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Leon, scowling,
changes channels.

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Seal two, The Prophecy.

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It's a monologue.

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Then Mrs. Clark received
the final message,

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spoken to us from her trance.

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Prepare for the saucer to
land at midnight by the patio.

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December in Wisconsin,
it had snowed all day.

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She urged us to stay calm,
to remove all metal objects

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from our pockets and clothes,
for in the spacecraft's heat,

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they'd scorch our skin.

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We threw down earrings,
belts, and coins,

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sliced the zippers from
our pants and skirts.

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We gathered in a
circle in the yard

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and waited for the
mothership's approach

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on this, the final
day of the world.

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Someone spoke of this
snow as the world's last.

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Mrs. Clark led us
all in Amazing Grace.

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Then the silence settled
in, the snow swirling up,

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we huddled that way till dawn.

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Seal three,
Semiotics, Posterity.

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These 50 gallon drums, he's
telling me, Their water's

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radioactive, two millennium.

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It's breakfast at
the artist's colony.

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His paint flecked sleeve
is reaching for the ham.

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His grants, not NEA, but
AEC, devise a semiotic,

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a symbol still readable
in AD 4,000, some idiogram

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for deadly.

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They'll stencil it in red
on every barrel they store,

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I'm working for posterity.

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His studio's a cactus forest,
six-foot exclamation points,

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thunderbolts, and skulls like
teetering stacks of heavy metal

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album covers.

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Hardest to paint are simple
things, Cézanne said that,

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or someone like him.

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Just call me the
goddamn toxic Cézanne.

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Seal four, The
Ecclesiastical Commission

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to Investigate the
Receipt of the Stigmata

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by Mary Van Hoof, Marquette
University Hospital, 1952.

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Holy Week in a psych ward
cell, her hands and feet

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are bandaged, and she claims
to feel the scrape of thorns

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all night against her forehead.

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The stenographer
charts each ecstasy,

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and all sharp objects have
been taken from her room.

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Blood tests daily.

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Stigmatic blood in theory
should be iron-poor,

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its salt content low.

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Father Gray performs
his daily interrogatory.

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How often does the
Virgin come to you?

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Is she, for example,
right here in this room?

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What prophecies has she
uttered in recent weeks?

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Is it true your father makes
you sleep tied to a chair?

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Your mother, is she
often hurt by him?

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Is it true he broke
her collarbone?

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What sort of hair shirt
did he make you wear?

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Seal five, Cathedral Building,
a Photo of Chernobyl.

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Inside the reactor core, a
zigzag pulse of light drilling

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through the walls,
six story crack.

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The lead-robed
worker turns to us,

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the camera flash
reflected in his goggles,

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white-hot asterisks,
exploding spiral galaxies.

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He'll die of thyroid
cancer in a year or two,

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but the work will last
at least a century.

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Slow retrieval of deadly
debris, the crews stabbing trash

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in Dantescan and gloom, like
artisans in an antimatter

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Salisbury or Chartres.

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They'll wreathe their
labor in a concrete dome

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that's seven miles across,
mausoleum of shattered atoms.

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The lead-robed worker turns
to us, descends a stair.

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The camera hisses
as the film rewinds.

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Last section, seal
six, After the Funeral.

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Inside the Bible on his bedside
table, an address decades gone.

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ALBEE, SD, And
PROPERTY RC Wojahn,

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PFC. The 12 steps of
AA, expect a miracle

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embossed in Gothic lettering.

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The O2 tanks and tubes, a
Kleenex box, his watches,

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bookmark at Revelation,
verses scored with X's.

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Now the trumpet blast, now the
lamb breaks the seventh seal,

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and now the Wormwood
Star, like unto a torch,

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comes thundering from the
sky beside his marginalia.

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Prophecy, with triple
exclamation points.

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Father, where art
thou as I call?

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Upon what journey did thee
embark that such signs

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could point thy way?"

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