WEBVTT

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One last from the
new collection.

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It's always nice
for me to read these

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out loud because then I realize
where I need more vision.

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But it's nice.

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So thank you for being my
Guinea pigs for these poems.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Thank you for reminding me.

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All right.

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This one's called "Good Boy."

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"Wasn't I a good boy once?

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Wasn't I once stripped
of body hair and knuckle,

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a laugh so clean it
stretched like a white sheet

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on the clothesline?

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Was it my voice
once, the contagious

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notes of a two finger bell?

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The rest in my throat now coats
those high pitched sounds.

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If there is a child in me he
hides behind the dull flint

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of my hip.

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Not alive, not dead.

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But lost in the stomach to
dissolve like any other color.

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Old photographs
don't persuade me

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that I could have grown
into a man who could love

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other men with self-restraint.

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Who would not ask a man to sleep
on the sharp blades of the bed

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without complaints.

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Surely my anger had
always been squatting on--

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surely my anger had
always been squatting

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on its claws eager to tear its
way out of my 10-year-old ribs.

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And how do you explain
this strange ability

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to inflict pain?

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I must have ingested
hatred through the spoons

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of my childhood.

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I must have been the
changeling matured now longing

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for things that
blister and boil.

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Whatever you place
in my hand I want

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to puncture out of mischief.

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Or perhaps, the intentional
act of [? unspooling ?] comfort

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is to get at its irritated
heart and confirm that even

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the purest odor stings.

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Lover, when I drive the
nails to your chest,

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your mouth opens white
and pasty like a moon.

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Do you see me waving
back 20 years ago

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from the distant
planets of my eyes?"

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