WEBVTT

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OK.

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This last poem I'm going to read
before I share this essay with

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you is called "Maybe."

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I finally came down
to that's the answer.

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Are we going to survive?

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Maybe.

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Are we going to get
through this time period?

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Maybe.

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There's a mention of a coleus,
which is a very beautiful house

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plant and it comes in
many different forms.

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But the one I'm thinking
about has these wild like ace

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of spades shaped leaves that
have this red in the middle

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and then green around.

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It's very beautiful.

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So the coleus is my
friend in this poem.

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Maybe was about all
that I could muster,

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on the question of
whether this world, which

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I prefer to think of in the
past tense, will flourish.

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Though the first of the last
fires hasn't even started yet.

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Has it?

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Maybe the past tense
because it implies survival,

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back then plus but now, as if
the future had already happened

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and you, you had made it
out alive into midday living

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room peace, into 2 o'clock April
light, you and a trailing coleus

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survivor too.

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Each leaf like a
dab of dried blood

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on a scalloped pad of green.

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Sirens in the distance fading.

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Sirens in the distance
above a wreck of ships

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perched where literature
starts with war and lost men,

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heroes enticed to death by birds
with the heads of girls myth

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opening its blood
drenched wings.

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Maybe it wasn't future death
hounding me, but past ends.

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Not popular apocalypse
but cracked Atlantis,

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golem Ozymandias.

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All the millions, millions
really dead in ruined

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capitals gone to ash and dream.

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Maybe it was my mother's
mother's scapegoat trauma blood

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keening.

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And suddenly I could see them.

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Every empire that
ever rose and fell

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spread out on discs across an
infinite plane called Absolute

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Now, like records spinning,
all playing the same song

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track by track, ruin by
better tech, ruin by hubris,

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ruin by appetite Amok.

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And from this vantage
history looks like a choice.

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And I have to ask now
in the present tense,

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why choose the
past as the future?

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Why?

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Don't do it.

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Don't use the past
as the future.

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Don't.

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