WEBVTT

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Here's a poem that
takes as its title

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the very funny name that's
given to the pinball machine

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when you kind of bounce
it around too hard,

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and you think you're winning.

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And it's at that moment that
the little sign lights up,

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and you've lost the game.

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You've probably broken
the machine for a while.

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Tilt.

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I am on a peninsula 40
miles out in the Atlantic

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and have driven my
car to a mechanic

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to replace its ball joints.

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I left it in Wellfleet, and
now I'm walking every half mile

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and crying, and walking every
other the four miles out

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to the harbor.

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When I get there, I
intend to pace the pier

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and receive the appreciation
of the fishermen.

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This probably won't
happen, and not

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because I'm not good
looking, and tender in grief.

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In a way, the cry has become
more like a detonation--

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dry, brief.

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It's all right.

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I'm not doing this to forget.

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And I feel great
humor and communion,

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standing on this pier.

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Where my own two feet
had been on similar

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docks in Amsterdam,
Biarritz, Nice, Athens,

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I remember my mind wandered,
even then, from the two lovers

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I happened to have traveling
the sun to serve our ends.

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Tomorrow, why the hell on
Earth even bring it up?

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Like a tide, brackish,
effervescent, pink, familial,

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I'll be back in
town with my freedom

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to come and go geared to
the misconception I want to.

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I wrote a good friend
and fruit grower,

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Mary Fisher, a few weeks ago.

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Mary, I'm on a red bedspread in
the White Horse Inn in America.

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You're on the other
soiled coast, California.

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I'm talking broke, Mary,
and more beautiful than that

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day you saw me leaving my
husband many lovers back,

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feeling rummy.

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Christ, girls, art, money.

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I'm 33.

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This isn't TV.

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And there's a war on.

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Do you want to live forever?

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Or is that poetry?

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A wild iris I was sent
wasted at the White Horse,

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powerless to a fault,
and one for everyone.

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