WEBVTT

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I'll read two more poems.

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Thank you very much.

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I also want to thank my dear
friend and former teacher, Steve

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Orlen, who taught me
everything I know.

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I lived in Berkeley,
California for a while,

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and there was a moment
when I realized that it

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wasn't the right place for me.

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I was talking to a woman who
had a job-- she had two jobs.

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She was a media
handler, which meant

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she handled visiting
artists and writers,

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and took them around
to their engagements,

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and back and forth
from their hotel.

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And then she was also
a dream consultant.

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She had a card for
both those functions.

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God bless her.

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Incidentally, she was
handling a friend of mine,

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and she asked me how I liked the
Bay Area, and I said, it's OK.

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And quick as a whip, she
said, if you don't love it,

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you have to leave.

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So, OK.

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And so that's and that's
what this poem is about.

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It's called Here In Berkeley,
and the title is the first line.

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Here in Berkeley, the jogger
in the Rastafarian sweats

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runs past the mechanic
reading Marx on lunch break,

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with a sprout sandwich
for a bookmark

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as the sunlight through
a bottle of Perrier

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wobbles little
rainbows on his knee.

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On the corner, someone
wearing I Ching earrings

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is talking about personal
space, how she just

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can't take it anymore, the
way that Marcia's codependency

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defeats her own empowerment.

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The whole seminar is such
a cheap shot, isn't it?

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It's so easy.

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The whole seminar
is out of whack,

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she says, slapping a
bouquet against her leg.

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Close your eyes, swing
a baguette horizontally,

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you'll hit someone with
a PhD in sensitivity,

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who if not a therapist
himself, will offer you

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the number of his therapist,
which, it may take you years

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to figure out, is a
hostile act on his part,

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disguised as charity, designed
to send you on a wild goose

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chase through the orchard
of your childhood,

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to fetch the tarnished
apple of your mother's love.

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And if you don't
like it, there might

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be something wrong with you.

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You might be so
reincarnationally headed

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in the wrong direction that you
can't hear the music hovering

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above this zone of crystal
salesman and holy mountaineers.

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Now the traffic lights
harmonically converge.

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The traffic flows past the
bakeries and bookstores,

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past the cappuccino depot
and the acupuncture center.

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No matter how you
feel, you have to act

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like you were very
popular with yourself,

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very relaxed and
purposeful, very unconfused,

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and not like you are
walking through the sunshine

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singing in chains.

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