WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.410 align:middle line:90% 00:00:02.410 --> 00:00:07.210 align:middle line:84% This poem takes as its title the name of a now defunct rock 00:00:07.210 --> 00:00:09.490 align:middle line:90% group in San Francisco. 00:00:09.490 --> 00:00:13.120 align:middle line:84% It's in sections that have little black dots between them, 00:00:13.120 --> 00:00:16.690 align:middle line:84% and I'll just pause in between the sections. 00:00:16.690 --> 00:00:17.650 align:middle line:90% "Romeo Void." 00:00:17.650 --> 00:00:21.700 align:middle line:90% 00:00:21.700 --> 00:00:28.000 align:middle line:84% I ask her, it's supposed to be an easy answer, will you stay? 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:32.049 align:middle line:84% And the pale overnight, there's no difference between our first 00:00:32.049 --> 00:00:36.190 align:middle line:84% and last day together, soon we'll tell each other so. 00:00:36.190 --> 00:00:39.190 align:middle line:84% We untapped in what I call my bed, 00:00:39.190 --> 00:00:44.950 align:middle line:84% although I've never slept in it, already light and sound. 00:00:44.950 --> 00:00:48.100 align:middle line:84% Mostly I'm healthy and I run, and what if I only 00:00:48.100 --> 00:00:50.230 align:middle line:90% find moonlight? 00:00:50.230 --> 00:00:53.530 align:middle line:84% Insane for a year, and never even looked it up 00:00:53.530 --> 00:00:55.930 align:middle line:90% to see what it meant. 00:00:55.930 --> 00:00:59.770 align:middle line:84% Months listening, as the waves determined to be in motion 00:00:59.770 --> 00:01:02.240 align:middle line:90% and not weeping. 00:01:02.240 --> 00:01:05.379 align:middle line:84% I don't know if I save a moth or kill it, 00:01:05.379 --> 00:01:08.170 align:middle line:90% lifting it from the water. 00:01:08.170 --> 00:01:12.280 align:middle line:84% I go like a satellite, so close I can almost 00:01:12.280 --> 00:01:14.440 align:middle line:90% say what you mean to me. 00:01:14.440 --> 00:01:18.040 align:middle line:90% How else but in another's arms? 00:01:18.040 --> 00:01:22.270 align:middle line:84% Are you thinking of me by the river, as I begin again? 00:01:22.270 --> 00:01:25.420 align:middle line:84% Near is the light with my back to it. 00:01:25.420 --> 00:01:30.650 align:middle line:90% 00:01:30.650 --> 00:01:33.830 align:middle line:84% His idea of fun was belting his wife. 00:01:33.830 --> 00:01:36.470 align:middle line:84% I'm telling this to my friend and her husband, 00:01:36.470 --> 00:01:40.190 align:middle line:84% about a total loser I overheard in a restaurant. 00:01:40.190 --> 00:01:43.700 align:middle line:84% I have never married, and have no taste for it. 00:01:43.700 --> 00:01:46.940 align:middle line:84% This body that I'm in this time, I 00:01:46.940 --> 00:01:51.560 align:middle line:84% love you and only accept death from the inside like a woman, 00:01:51.560 --> 00:01:55.610 align:middle line:84% like music, just outside what I can imagine. 00:01:55.610 --> 00:01:58.610 align:middle line:84% This has been written by a different person. 00:01:58.610 --> 00:02:01.730 align:middle line:84% This is better written by a different person. 00:02:01.730 --> 00:02:05.570 align:middle line:84% As in Poland, my grandfather, a young man 00:02:05.570 --> 00:02:09.530 align:middle line:84% makes a decision to leave his country like someone 00:02:09.530 --> 00:02:11.450 align:middle line:90% biting a man's nipple. 00:02:11.450 --> 00:02:16.490 align:middle line:84% And forces me over here like a bed, shoved from the wall 00:02:16.490 --> 00:02:17.315 align:middle line:90% with one leg. 00:02:17.315 --> 00:02:21.630 align:middle line:90% 00:02:21.630 --> 00:02:26.160 align:middle line:84% Marigolds, eyebright, rye, saffron, 00:02:26.160 --> 00:02:30.180 align:middle line:84% goldenrod, permission to write about anything 00:02:30.180 --> 00:02:31.950 align:middle line:90% and mention any place. 00:02:31.950 --> 00:02:37.320 align:middle line:84% The extremes of ordinary, where betrayal doesn't exist. 00:02:37.320 --> 00:02:41.070 align:middle line:84% Depending on the way that you feel, you live. 00:02:41.070 --> 00:02:45.150 align:middle line:84% Each difficulty so close to dream. 00:02:45.150 --> 00:02:49.290 align:middle line:84% You are more beautiful than human to me sometimes. 00:02:49.290 --> 00:02:53.520 align:middle line:84% God forgive me, everything seems pretty good, all right. 00:02:53.520 --> 00:02:57.330 align:middle line:90% 00:02:57.330 --> 00:03:01.170 align:middle line:84% I'll have to return with a sprig of lilac, but I'll be back. 00:03:01.170 --> 00:03:04.260 align:middle line:84% I'll have to return with white blossoms, I'm gone. 00:03:04.260 --> 00:03:08.100 align:middle line:84% I've left shore as I left childhood like a bed 00:03:08.100 --> 00:03:10.830 align:middle line:84% shoved from the wall with one leg, 00:03:10.830 --> 00:03:14.040 align:middle line:84% for hot humid days and humid nights, 00:03:14.040 --> 00:03:16.740 align:middle line:84% wondering whether I'm to have children. 00:03:16.740 --> 00:03:20.130 align:middle line:84% Disregarding how a person gets antsy, 00:03:20.130 --> 00:03:24.120 align:middle line:84% and then desperate for the internal life. 00:03:24.120 --> 00:03:29.235 align:middle line:84% So does it me, so I'm not you, all right, all right. 00:03:29.235 --> 00:03:33.650 align:middle line:90% 00:03:33.650 --> 00:03:37.610 align:middle line:84% How quickly the little wooden flute fills with my heat, 00:03:37.610 --> 00:03:39.830 align:middle line:84% blowing across it, the black ink that 00:03:39.830 --> 00:03:44.300 align:middle line:84% spells out the latest rage, an art out of a list of things 00:03:44.300 --> 00:03:45.590 align:middle line:90% loved. 00:03:45.590 --> 00:03:49.010 align:middle line:84% I have to return without wondering how others do it. 00:03:49.010 --> 00:03:52.520 align:middle line:84% I have to return without carrying rain to a desert. 00:03:52.520 --> 00:03:55.610 align:middle line:84% I have to return without wondering about the family 00:03:55.610 --> 00:04:00.200 align:middle line:84% name, the half light of sleep on the apples in Poland. 00:04:00.200 --> 00:04:04.790 align:middle line:84% The electrical short in the heart, as the rain lets up, 00:04:04.790 --> 00:04:08.600 align:middle line:84% the slightest birds set off in the air. 00:04:08.600 --> 00:04:13.070 align:middle line:84% Tide, fog, white decks, gulls, as you 00:04:13.070 --> 00:04:15.260 align:middle line:90% can see from your window. 00:04:15.260 --> 00:04:20.510 align:middle line:84% I move by the line, moral imperatives are physical. 00:04:20.510 --> 00:04:23.990 align:middle line:84% You on a train, eating someone else's food. 00:04:23.990 --> 00:04:25.430 align:middle line:90% Is it all right? 00:04:25.430 --> 00:04:28.160 align:middle line:90% I'm taking so long to leave you. 00:04:28.160 --> 00:04:33.560 align:middle line:84% Happy in myself without gender, forced to move on memory, 00:04:33.560 --> 00:04:34.460 align:middle line:90% I love you. 00:04:34.460 --> 00:04:37.610 align:middle line:84% Even if it's left over from some dirge, 00:04:37.610 --> 00:04:41.360 align:middle line:84% the planets drifting like albumen. 00:04:41.360 --> 00:04:44.660 align:middle line:84% I'm delighted this time not thinking about being 00:04:44.660 --> 00:04:46.430 align:middle line:90% one with the universe. 00:04:46.430 --> 00:04:50.360 align:middle line:84% I didn't even notice I had bent and mended it. 00:04:50.360 --> 00:04:52.880 align:middle line:84% This body that I'm in this time, I 00:04:52.880 --> 00:04:54.950 align:middle line:90% love you as a beautiful woman. 00:04:54.950 --> 00:04:59.060 align:middle line:84% Even as a man might think of me by the river, 00:04:59.060 --> 00:05:00.785 align:middle line:90% I'll think of you by the sea. 00:05:00.785 --> 00:05:09.830 align:middle line:90% 00:05:09.830 --> 00:05:15.020 align:middle line:84% Eternal morning from La Fiesta Hotel, three or four Mexicans 00:05:15.020 --> 00:05:17.700 align:middle line:90% blurt out a fight below. 00:05:17.700 --> 00:05:21.210 align:middle line:84% I remember you showing silver with your teeth, 00:05:21.210 --> 00:05:24.000 align:middle line:84% and now it is summer in December. 00:05:24.000 --> 00:05:28.170 align:middle line:84% Like a soul coming from the shower, headless, a towel 00:05:28.170 --> 00:05:30.520 align:middle line:90% around its waist. 00:05:30.520 --> 00:05:32.790 align:middle line:84% I don't really have to wear this lipstick, 00:05:32.790 --> 00:05:36.910 align:middle line:84% but to prove I'm alive I like the color. 00:05:36.910 --> 00:05:40.190 align:middle line:84% A maid waits on me in some skewed reality, 00:05:40.190 --> 00:05:44.120 align:middle line:84% and I ask myself how I'm going to think. 00:05:44.120 --> 00:05:49.310 align:middle line:84% This was my belief, to oppose something solid on the basis 00:05:49.310 --> 00:05:52.880 align:middle line:90% of night, on the basis of fog. 00:05:52.880 --> 00:05:55.010 align:middle line:84% Now in the distance, my attention 00:05:55.010 --> 00:05:57.830 align:middle line:90% is broken off like a bus horn. 00:05:57.830 --> 00:06:01.870 align:middle line:84% Like every hour I have to die, for fear I will lose you. 00:06:01.870 --> 00:06:07.670 align:middle line:84% You know the feeling, it comes to you eventually, to you. 00:06:07.670 --> 00:06:13.330 align:middle line:84% Mass that has no friend, months that punishes Earth. 00:06:13.330 --> 00:06:14.840 align:middle line:90% Oh, why are you weeping? 00:06:14.840 --> 00:06:18.930 align:middle line:84% Oh, why are you unfortunately in the world? 00:06:18.930 --> 00:06:23.990 align:middle line:84% Unfortunately in the world, pain is the weapon everyone gets. 00:06:23.990 --> 00:06:27.965 align:middle line:84% Missing the northern migration, no excuses please. 00:06:27.965 --> 00:06:35.520 align:middle line:84% [AUDIO OUT] Things we carry to their extreme will meet again. 00:06:35.520 --> 00:06:40.590 align:middle line:84% The senses may be elevated to sacred, why live in principle 00:06:40.590 --> 00:06:42.690 align:middle line:90% and die in facts? 00:06:42.690 --> 00:06:46.410 align:middle line:84% Clinging in English, on the roof of mother's land, 00:06:46.410 --> 00:06:50.450 align:middle line:84% on the basis of night to prove you're alive.