WEBVTT

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What can I say to
introduce this?

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I lived in a place in Phoenix.

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It was an apartment complex that
really should have been a motel.

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And had a lot of
the motel elements,

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there was a little C shaped
thing around the swimming pool.

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And as I was living
there, I thought,

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I have to write a
poem about this place.

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And I took notes
on everyone there.

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And was not able actually
to gather it together

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while I lived there.

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But later on, and when I moved
to another, a little house,

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I put the fragments I'd
written on the wall.

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And I convinced myself
that someday they

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would coalesce into a poem.

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And actually, what
happened was that I stopped

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drinking coffee for a while.

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And then one night I went
to dinner with a poet

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by the name of Pamela Stewart.

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And I decided to
have a cup of coffee.

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And then I had
another cup of coffee.

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And I was telling her,
this is great stuff,

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do you want a cup of coffee?

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Mind if I have a cup
of coffee while I'm

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waiting for you to answer?

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And when I got home it was
like 2:00 in the morning.

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I was still up.

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And I looked at the
stuff on my wall.

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And I thought, well, you don't
have to do anything to this.

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Just take this
down and this down

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and this down and type it
all up and it's a poem.

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So this is the--

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and near the place where
I lived was a disco,

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it billed itself as, called
the Incognito Lounge.

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And so, these are the fragments
which finally convinced me

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that they had coalesced,
although they appear exactly

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as they were written when
they were only fragments.

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"The Incognito Lounge."

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"The manager lady of
this apartment dwelling

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has a face like a
baseball with glasses

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and pathetically
repeats herself.

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The man next door has a
dog with a face that talks

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of stupidity to the night.

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The swimming pool has
an empty, empty face.

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My neighbor has his
underwear on tonight,

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standing among the
parking spaces,

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advising his friend never to
show his face around here again.

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I go everywhere with my eyes
closed and two eyeballs painted

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on my face.

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There is a woman across the
court with no face at all.

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They're perfectly
visible this evening.

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About as unobtrusive
as a storm of meteors,

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these questions of happiness
plaguing the world.

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My neighbor has sent
his child to Utah,

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to be raised by the
relatives of friends.

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He's out on the
generous lawn again,

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looking like he's made
out of phosphorous.

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The manager lady
has just returned

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from the nearby graveyard,
the last ceremony

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for a crushed paramedic.

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All day, news helicopters
cruised aloft, going what, what.

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She pours me some
boiled coffee that

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tastes like noise, warning
me, once and for all,

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to pack up my troubles
in an old kit bag

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and weep until the
stones float away.

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How will I ever be able
to turn from the window

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and feel love for her?

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To see her and stop
seeing this neighborhood,

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the towns of Earth, these tables
at which the saints sit down

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to the meal of temptations?

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And so on.

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Nap.

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Soup.

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Window.

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Say a few words
into the telephone,

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smaller and smaller words.

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Some TV, or maybe, I
don't know, a brisk rubber

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with cards, nobody knows
how many there are of.

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A couple of miserable
gerbils in a tiny white cage,

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hysterical friends
rodomontading about goals,

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as if having them
liquefied death.

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Maybe invite the
lady with no face

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over here to explain
all these elections.

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Life, liberty, pursuit.

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Maybe invite the lady with no
face over here to read my palm,

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sit out on the porch here in
Arizona while she touches me.

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Last night, some kind of
alarm went off up the street

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that nobody responded to.

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Small darling, it rang for you.

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Everything suffers invisibly.

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Nothing is possible
in your face.

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The center of the
world is closed.

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The beehive, the eight ball,
the yo-yo, the granite,

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and the lightning
and the melody.

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Only the Incognito
Lounge is open.

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My neighbor arrives.

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They have the television on.

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It's a show about my neighbor
in a loneliness, a light,

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walking the hour when
every bed is a mouth.

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Alleys of dark trash, exhaustion
shaped into residences.

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And what are the
dogs so sure of that

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they shout like citizens, driven
from their minds in a stadium?

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In his fist he holds a note
in his own handwriting,

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the same message everyone
carries from place

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to place in the
secret night, the one

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that nobody asks you
for when you finally

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arrive and the faces turn to
you playing the National Anthem

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and go blank.

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That's what the show is about.

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That message.

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I was raised up
from tiny childhood

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in those purple hills, right
slam on the brink of language.

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And I claim it's just as
if you can't do anything

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to this moment.

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That's how
indistinguishable it all is.

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Sunset Arizona,
everybody waiting to get

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arrested, all very much
an honor, I assure you.

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Maybe invite the
lady with no face

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to plead my cause, to
get me off the hook,

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or name me one good reason.

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The air is full of
megawatts and the megawatts

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are full of silence.

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She reaches to the
radio like St Teresa.

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Here at the center of the
world, each wonderful store

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cherishes in its mind
unflappable mannequins

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in a pale electric light.

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The parking lot
is full, everyone

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having the same
dream of shopping

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and shopping through
an afternoon that

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changes like a face.

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But these shoppers of
America, carrying their hearts

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toward the bluffs
of the counters

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like thoughtless purchases,
walking home under the sea,

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standing in a dark
house at midnight

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before the open refrigerator,
completely transformed

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in the light.

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Every bus ride is like this one.

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In the back, the same
two uniformed boy

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scouts depantsing a little girl.

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Up front, the
woman whose mission

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is to tell the driver
over and over to shut up.

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Maybe you permit yourself to
find it beautiful on this bus,

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as it wasps like a
dirigible toward suburbia,

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over a continent of saloons,
over the robot desert that

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now turns purple and comes
slowly through the dust.

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This is the moment you'll
seek the words for,

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over the imitation and actual
wood of successive tabletops

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indefatigable.

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When you watched
a baby child catch

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a bee against the
tinted glass and were

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married to a deep
comprehension and terror."

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