WEBVTT

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Oh, the next poem
I'm going to read

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is called the
Grease is the Word,

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and it requires just
a bit of explaining

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since it's a little bit of an
alphabet soup, that is to say,

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there are lots of detached
letters floating around

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through the poem.

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The genesis of
the poem, I guess,

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was listening to the radio
and hearing the song Grease is

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the Word, realizing that I'd had
a girlfriend in the 1950s, when

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I was about eight, whose first
name began with the letter J.

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And that left the letters H
and I in the middle between G

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for grease and J
for my girlfriend,

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and it seemed like a kind
of auspicious possibility.

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I should also say, that R and S,
who turn up later in the poem,

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in the wrong order,
were also real people,

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so it's an autobiographical
poem, in a sense.

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And, for those of
you who don't know,

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the Teddy Bears were a
fairly mediocre women's Rock

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and Roll group in the mid-1950s.

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So.

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"Grease is the word which
begins with the letter G which

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begins the poem, but J was first
in your heart and mind in 1958.

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Between them is
the word Hi, waving

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in the slowed down breeze like
a very old pennant shaming

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the spanking new
mystery of the flagpole,

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shining militarily in the
dully gleaming air of today.

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Air of August, 1958 swarmed
with bees resolutely attacking

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the pomade defended hair,
which stood in attentive alarm,

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a dark brown green.

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Reflexive hands descended
like the gritted swatters

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of judgment.

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The bees were stunned and
dropped like snowflakes

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into the oven trimmed grass of
the athletic field then wobbled

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off like drunks
toward third base.

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They played by different rules.

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Miraculous not a single hair
of a single head was harmed,

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the mystery of the
scalp remained intact.

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Then the friend imitating
Elvis Presley was much prized,

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and he who could parade his
mother to the drugstore to be

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treated to a soda became a man.

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1958 had a father too and
time to learn all the words

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to all the songs.

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Oh why was I born too late,
thus mourned the Teddy Bears.

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It wasn't all that bad.

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The pennant droops pleasurably
relaxing attestation.

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In those days, 1958, was
young though and just about

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asking for it.

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It said, if you didn't
feel what I felt out

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on the bridge you don't feel
about me like I feel about you.

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The other end hung up.

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Time fixed it.

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After a while it learned
its lesson and settled down.

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It sits quietly now
raising its hand

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when it wants to be called on.

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Others were squirming and
roiling up against confines

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of their wooden seats.

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Glued roistering toward
the becalmed curriculum

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where the catamaran lounged
sulkily through Canandaigua

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in a silky breeze of
the decade's avatars.

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This may be written
having acquired its art.

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Young ones were busily
splashing their powers

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laboring toward the
statement which emerged

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in the murmured undertow.

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1968, moans mother.

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1975, whimpers father feeling
orphaned in the big classroom

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where windy light will be
best for them after all.

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As we know, 1958
was rambunctious too

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in its day and frisk the gambles
for which that decade is not

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unjustly famed.

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It was later, things let
themselves be disheveled,

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mixed up, and one
day unaccountably R

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appeared after S and
punctured the sibilance

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of a proper reading
with its growls.

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Then 1975 was in love with
percussion, syncopated effects,

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and jumped in and out of
bed with no one becalmed

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in the fidgets to call it
Procrustean intent on tickling

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each other pink.

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Through the sheet-like grid much
would be filtered and expunged

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and forms would appear looking
pleased in the solution.

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More would be
there to say, bevel

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toward an arrangement which
felt like waking inhaling

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deeply the newly inverted air.

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But now you were asking,
why I have told you this.

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The afternoon would
be bent on making

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it clearer, fantastic
accretion sliding

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across your hand, enlarged
in the blurred projections,

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swarming the landscaped skin
heading home to the vanishing

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point, annunciated firmly.

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Then the hand reached
out for the contents,

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the rummaged container
of everything needful

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for moving on into
the next moment.

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And it is good to remember
how each one emptied

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into its brother, and
constituted a quantity of it

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which remained constant.

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After, there came the buzz
of soothed down excitement.

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Reaching Z it was
time for the nap.

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Sleep slowly rolling
sounds in which

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the years lay down their
heads on their desks

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and dreamed of letters
blending in the recitation.

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1958 would begin to
dream of itself, as well.

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The nightmares of '68
and '75, feeling better

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for having been moved through
the larger than life-like

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choreography.

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Though the school
yard was empty,

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the pennant beat
time to the wind.

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The vibrating flagpole
slowly twanged.

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We seem to be those who knew
the afternoon lesson would take

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place, as outside trees
glided dimly away,

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erased, and regathered
beneath the somnambulant hand

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of the dark."

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