WEBVTT

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This next poem is
called "The Fort."

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I had this great time at
the Tucson High School

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the other day, and I was--

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I said, really,
well, ignorantly now,

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you know, well, I guess you
can't make a fort around here.

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And these guys-- anybody,
any of you guys here?

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These guys said-- there
you go-- yes, you can.

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Was it you?

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The hole?

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Right, there you go.

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He said-- you should do it--

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I said, how do you
make a fort here?

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And they go, you dig a hole, and
then, they said you dig a hole,

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and you put planks
over the top, right?

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Are you the guy who's there
six days or something?

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There's somebody though, right?

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Wasn't it several days?

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That's interesting-- a hole
in the ground for a fort,

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don't you think, gender-wise?

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[LAUGHTER]

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Anyway, this is kind of
a reverse hole, this one.

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This is called "The Fort."

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This is my brother Tommy again.

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"It was a kind of igloo made
from branches and weeds, a dome,

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with an above ground tunnel
entrance the boys crawled

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through on their knees, and
a campfire in the center

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because smoke came out
of a hole in the roof,

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and we couldn't go there.

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I don't even remember trying,
not inside, although I remember

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a deal we didn't keep--

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so many Dr. Peppers,
which nobody drank,

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and my brother standing
outside it like a chief,

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bare chested, weary
from labor, proud,

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dignified, and talking to us
as if we could never understand

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a thing he said because he had
made this thing and we had not,

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true knowledge and disdain
when he looked at us.

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For those weeks, the
boys didn't chase us.

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They busied themselves
with patching the fort

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and sweeping the dirt
outside the entrance--

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a village of boys who
had a house to clean,

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women and magazines,
cigarettes and soda,

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and the strange
self-contained voices

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they used to speak
to each other with.

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And we approached
the clearing, where

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their fort was,
like deer in winter,

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hungry for any small thing.

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What they had made without us--

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we wanted to watch
them live there."

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