WEBVTT

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Well, leaving the
Midwest for a while,

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these next two poems take
place at opposite ends

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of the country--

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this first in beautiful
downtown Berkeley

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in San Francisco and the other
on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.

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Somehow, the mood
that I was in seemed

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to reflect newspaper articles
and TV shows that I saw.

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Perhaps this is always the case.

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But it seemed that way
during this particular year

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more than ever.

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Poem's called "Destiny."

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"I'm eating cold Chinese
in Joy's friend's flat.

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I have been trafficked
like a drug planted

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by a child in Oaxaca.

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Like the story, you
are happy without me.

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A lie I believe you believe.

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And I am traveled
like the mercies

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on Telegraph, the street
lamps burning down

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the throat of this thoroughfare
in Berkeley, where I lived in

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the '60s and now see
my book in a window

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and find its theme useless
in the act, where, had I not

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been so privileged then, I
might have had hope, well-humped

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for a quantity of uncut drugs.

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Out of the city on
Joy's cocaine where

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it's always the freeway
in the hour the bars

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close and no English spoken,
where men chain to each other

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as to an idea,
say, that prayer is

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as useful as a condom
against the current cancer.

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Here is the black Mercedes
of an acquaintance, top down.

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And with the stars tied
against my body like a drunk,

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I'm singing because
in a war you taught me

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your people flaunt
the joyous will.

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How is it fair?

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You have raised fairness
to an exquisite pitch which

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sounds like the wrong gear.

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To go on as the ever
present red light

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we run parts of its
mouth for a tongue,

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three queens high on Stevie
Wonder crying, "Where were you

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when I needed you last winter?"

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Now that it is summer
and the only person

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I know drives by in his cab, my
name on his red lips the sun,

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I call back every
minute the hour

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of the days of the
weeks of summer.

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Friend, not naming him,
remembering his name.

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And that's how it's been,
one with the universe,

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blanking out at the Art
Institute, an expensive drug,

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cleared to black and white like
a spaceship to another galaxy.

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MTV, while you are happy
with someone, somewhere,

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there is the same
crying and laughing.

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Two peasants.

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The one you are and
I become one day when

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we aren't dead to each other.

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I hear the story of a
stripper from her mother,

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how she'd studied with
the National Ballet.

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That when the lights go
on, you don't pretend.

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You're alone.

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I love you."

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