WEBVTT

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"Old News"

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I'm more at home in The Past,

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want though I may

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To live in this lonesome place
called The Present Moment.

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I share a stack of
magazines with somebody

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Who reads the new
ones from the top.

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The bottom,

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Salted with gilded
ephemera, outspent ads

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And failing or faded
fads, is just my meat.

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Praying that I don't just
blind myself to horrors

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I study the Times online
to behold the face

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Of fascism and its
disregarding hand.

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I keep on thinking
about it as I retreat

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To scan a home screen
of my high school class,

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Our postage shades of
mortal veins and marrows.

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The conversation floats
down tunnels of fortune

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To the ninth grade,
Joe Cittadino expelled

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For setting a fire in the
Chattle Building attic.

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Joe died a while ago,
did people know it?

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Instead of hiding, as
always before in silent

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Anonymity, I allow
myself the homely

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Civic pleasure of
having something to say,

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Posting: Joe told me
back then it wasn't him,

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He took the blame to
impress a girl, her brother

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Was Frankie Quinn who
really set the fire.

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And thank you, Junior
Genovese, for writing:

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You are right Robert,
it was Mickey Quinn.

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[LAUGHTER]

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[APPLAUSE]

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I anticipate people wondering
what the beginning of that poem

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has to do with the end.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And in my mind, it
has to do with truth.

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Now, the truth is
always there and always

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hard to get to
and never perfect.

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