WEBVTT

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I was set upon by a woman
a few years ago in Ohio

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after a poetry reading.

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A dog trainer who talked
to me for hours in her car.

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It was one of those
meetings of the soul, where

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one meets a person that one
feels immediately close to.

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And the other person
feels much like stone.

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Not so close to
the other person.

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I was the stone person.

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The van smelled of dogs.

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And more and more I
felt for the person,

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and I felt for myself
at the same time

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as I heard of the pedigrees
of each of the dogs

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that, at some point,
she told me about,

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homeless people in
Springfield, Ohio,

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and how a bus came from
Dayton to pick them up

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and to take them to a
homeless shelter there.

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And I began to feel good about
myself just hearing that.

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And she mentioned
St. Vincent de Paul.

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And I thought that's the
club St. Vincent de Paul.

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I know that's absurd.

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But I think I've romanticized
the poor all my life

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as many people have.

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Not when I was poor myself.

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But at other times,
I feel good thinking

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about starving people,
poor people, all people who

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are weaker than me.

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It's just natural to me.

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I always liked hanging around
people who were uglier than me.

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And occasionally,
I'd walk around,

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I'd see myself in the
windows with certain people.

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And I'd realize I'm kind
of a sturdy looking guy.

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I'd better start hanging
out with some uglier people.

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So this is about the
romanticization of the poor.

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It's called The
Romance of the Poor.

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The poor people in
Springfield go to Dayton

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to be miserable in style.

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They can hug themselves
when they lie side

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by side on the iron cots.

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They can luxuriate in one red
bean held under the tongue.

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For them, a discarded
refrigerator crate

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tipped on its side and
lined with plastic bags

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is the green shore of an island,
and a palace's velvet halls.

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Every morning, they check out
of the club St. Vincent de Paul,

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and they clump in the warm gusts
that scowl up from the sewers.

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They can strip the
aluminum from gutters

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as their mothers harvested
eggs from boxes of straw.

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Against that snow
that is all edge,

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they can wobble and
careen from bumper

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to light pole dancing
with a parking meter

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before diving into the
hydrant under the fire escape.

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Deliriously happy, they lift
the sweetest and heaviest wine

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and sink down
where the muddle is

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warm across from the cafeteria

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and that other richest trough,
kingdom of heaven on Earth,

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emerald dumpster
of the pizzeria.

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What does it matter
if I heap treasure

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from the stick people, far
off and helpless, fluttering

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of brown coats?

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Their lives are not my life.

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I come as a tourist
to their woe.

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But I remember how quickly
dark fell 20 years ago thumbing

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from Greensboro to Boulder.

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I carried one change
of clothes, a notebook,

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and a little more than $7.

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And I thought I could live
by the grace of hippies

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and priests, or
failing that, prey

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on park squirrels and the
ducks from municipal ponds.

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I did not have to go that way.

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I could have gone on wrestling
those big sacks of fertilizer

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from the co-op storage bins
to the beds of pickup trucks,

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or bludgeoning ice from the
front steps of the Coliseum.

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But I had to get it straight
from the flat road and the mouth

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of the blue norther.

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There is a high ledge under
every overpass where you can

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sleep if it is not too cold.

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One morning, I woke there
beside a short man, a carny,

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and ex-con reared in the
Tennessee Industrial School

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and a dozen foster homes.

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We talked a stupid
dream of burglary.

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We committed the
crime of brotherhood.

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Then, hungry and stiff,
we trudged up the ramp

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to a truck stop, where
he meant to convince

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me to knife a man for
$300 locked in a drawer.

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He said, we could get away.

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We could take any of
those semis idling

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outside that place
like great buffaloes

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blowing clouds and
clearing their throats.

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But I've taken nothing.

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I've gotten away
clean to Illinois.

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Tonight, the stakes frown up at
me through the odor of blood.

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And the poor need no help from
poems to lump down the alley

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and up into the van.

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They glide to Dayton.

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They check into the club
St. Vincent de Paul.

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Whatever it is, it is
not much that makes

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a man more than a scrap of
paper torn out of a notebook

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and thrown from the
window of a bus.

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But it is more than nothing.

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If he holds himself
straight up and does not

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take the life next to his
own, give him that much.

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Leave him his joy.

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Another really cheery poem
now that I think of it.

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