WEBVTT

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This is a poem Alison alluded
to in her introduction.

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It's called "The Orders."

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One spring night, at the end of
my street God was lying in wait.

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A friend and I were
sitting in his new sedan

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like a couple of
cops on surveillance,

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shooting the breeze to pass the
time, chatting up the daydreams,

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the raw deals, all the
woulda-coulda-shoulda's,

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the latest can you believe that?

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As well as the little strokes
of luck, the so-called triumphs,

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small and unforeseen, that
kept us from cashing it all in.

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And God, who's famous for
working in mysterious ways

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and capable of anything, took
the form of a woman and a man,

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each dressed in dark
clothes and desperate enough

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to walk up to the car
and open the doors.

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And God put a gun to
the head of my friend--

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right against the brainstem,
where the orders go out

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not only to the
heart and the lungs

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but to consciousness itself--

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a cold muzzle aimed at
where the oldest urges

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still have their
day: the one that

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says eat whatever is at hand,
the one that wants only to fuck,

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the one that will
kill if it has to.

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And God said not to
look at him or he'd

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blow us straight
to kingdom come,

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and God told us to keep our
hands to ourselves, as if she

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weren't that kind of girl.

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Suddenly time was nothing,
our lives were cheap,

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the light in the car cold,
light from a hospital,

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light from a morgue.

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And the moments that followed--
if that's what they were--

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arrived with a nearly
unbearable weight,

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until we had acquired
a center of gravity

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as great as the planet itself.

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My friend could hardly speak--

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he was too busy
trying not to die--

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which made me chatter all
the more, as if words,

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even the most ordinary
ones, had the power

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to return us to our lives.

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And behind my ad-libbed
incantation, my counterspell

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to fear, the orders
still went out:

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keep beating, keep breathing,
you are not permitted

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to disappear, even
as one half of God

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kept bitching to the other
half that we didn't have hardly

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no money at all, and
the other half barked,

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I'm telling you to
shut your mouth.

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And went on rummaging
through the back seat.

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And no one at all
looking out their window,

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no one coming home or going out.

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Until two tell neighbors
came walking toward us

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like unsuspecting saviors.

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And God grabbed the
little we'd been

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given, the little we
still had, and hustled on

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to the next dark street.