WEBVTT

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So I'm going to read two
poems from the section

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that I wrote during COVID.

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And I was reading the
book of Revelation a lot,

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thinking about apocalypse.

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And so this has some
references to that.

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These two poems do.

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And also, I wanted to do a
shout-out to my friend David

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John Robson, who--

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I asked him if I could--

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he wrote a great little
phrase in an email.

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And I said--

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I thought, well, either I'm
going to just steal it and not

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tell him, or I'm going to
tell him and then steal it.

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So I told him, and he
said I could steal it.

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The phrase is "the fabled
silicon mind meld."

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And so, if you write
poetry, you know

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that you're always
listening for great phrases

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that people say by accident.

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And they don't really need them.

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[LAUGHTER]

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You can just usually take them.

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But I thought, that
was in writing,

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and David was very generous.

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"A Ragged White Moth Passes By"

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So we all lived
through COVID and I

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was trying to get at an
experience of the moth that--

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the moth of history that flies.

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--"had no first
line and the epic

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was useless except
for one elderly moth

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flying through as the
spirit of history.

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The sickness was also flying
though it was not alive.

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When would they meet?

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And when

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we thought of the world soul,
how could distances apply?

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Past papered windows
of locked-up cafés,

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the quartz in the desert and
the fabled silicon mind meld,

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past the uninsured--

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Mosses on buildings
looked like themselves,

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crowded but separate, social
cell walls and stems--

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each with a certain
commitment to survive.

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I, a poet on the island of
a thought, with love nearby,

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lit a candle through spring.

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On and on

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the little beasts visited.

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No

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666 for them.

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The rat and bacteria and
sparrow's gold corona.

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The ragged white
moth of history flew

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over landfills and
anti-sorrow of the flat few,

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2 wings, 6 legs, or
4 wings depending,

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flew with the m of our
minds or the missing ones,

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its faraway moth-babies in
the drawers quietly eating

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the sweaters of our mothers.

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The jeweled threads
of the protein

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wove the sickness looking
like life or death,

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though truly it was neither

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And parallel to that,
in the green springing

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hills the grace-footed
dark-haired spirit

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of the will-not-end--"

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