WEBVTT

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I'll read just one
more poem here.

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I want to say it's a real honor
to be reading with Paul as

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well.

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We had to come all
the way from San Diego

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to meet each other finally.

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We both live there, but I'm sure
we're going to hang out more.

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This next poem is called
"Pyrrhic Symphony,"

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and it's the tentative title
for the new collection.

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And it was inspired, one, by
one of my earliest memories

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of living in Tucson,
which I won't spoil.

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I hate it when poets do that.

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They tell you the
whole poem beforehand.

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They give you the thing and
then they read the poem,

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and you're like, could've
just read the poem, pal.

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But it also deals with,
during the pandemic--

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I'm a teacher, and so
during the pandemic

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I was teaching remotely.

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And my daughters
were home with me.

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And the only way we
had of staying sane

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was going on these drives.

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And we would drive down
to Coronado in San Diego.

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And you would see these cruise
ships anchored miles off

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of the coast.

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And if you looked
really closely,

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you could see the workers of
these cruise ships still stuck

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on there.

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That was one of the interesting
things about the cruise ships,

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was that the passengers
were rescued.

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The employees were not,
and they were basically

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condemned to this life,
not unlike if you've

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seen George Romero's
Dawn of the Dead

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where the zombies are
in the shopping mall.

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It's kind of like that.

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They would just be
wandering the decks.

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And admittedly-- I don't
know if you're like me--

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I view cruise ships as
giant floating septic tanks.

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But you may have different
feelings, and that's OK.

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But it struck me as such a
terrible metaphor in many ways

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for the kind of
existence we had,

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where you had these
kind of prisoners

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of a luxury they could never--

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that they were
employed to deliver.

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And there was no one
to deliver that to,

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and so they just kind of
wandered the ship like ghosts.

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That's the theme.

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"Pyrrhic Symphony."

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Nine months now of
news that is not news.

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There has been weather
and there has been food.

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On the horizon,
cruise ships still

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crewed, their white
dream of hospitality

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gone silent as the sun.

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Nothing to do.

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Nothing to do.

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I sit patient as a
panther in its zoo,

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my brain blinkered
in a box of want.

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Here on the wholesale Pacific,
the wind wills ill against us.

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The electronic doors
of electronic stores

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go untroubled while
supermarkets are full of people

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hoarding frozen pizza.

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The freeways are quiet.

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Birds are on the move.

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The sky is a color the sky
hasn't been in a century.

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Still, we long to
get back to business,

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to buzz and branch
out, to beat any price,

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honor any coupon, all while
the kids, jeremiad on gigs,

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fetch us supper, swooping
like bats from business

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to home and back.

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Nurse, will you think less
of me if I tell you I hurt?

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That fear pulls through me like
a needle drawn by a magnet?

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That my blood is haunted
by the memory of rain?

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That when I was a
child, I watched

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a house burn down without
thought of the people inside?

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That while they were being
refugeed in a country where

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car crashes promise not only
neck brace but windfall,

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I thought only of a
cup of ice cold milk.

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I will never know
what happened to them,

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and they will never know I
write this 35 years later, still

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warm with the memory of
their home's immolation.

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Fire bright against
the blackening frame,

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the desert reverent around it.

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So quiet you could hear the sand
crackle as it turned to glass.

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I recall a light rain tapping
on the temperance of my skull

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as between the fire and
my five-year-old self

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a warm hand of wind
ran its fingers

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over the entire state of Arizona
to ask, how are you doing?

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And then, before anyone could
answer, hey, have a nice day.

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Thank you very much.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Appreciate it.

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