And I'll read two more.
There's this thing that happens in this book where
over and over again, all of the poems are just like, oh, maybe
I do want to be alive.
So I do know they all end the same way.
[LAUGHTER]
And I'll read two of those.
This one is hard to read.
It's called, It Was the Best of Times.
It Was the Worst of Times.
It was the best of times.
It was the worst of times.
When walls were raised, we swore we'd
be, we swore we'd be a raft, inside,
a raft inside the whale that we, the whale that we
were sovereign of.
We sovereigns of, though everyone, yes, everyone
was party to, was party to the angel of,
the angel of the pending storm.
The rising storm, our little raft,
our sprawling raft inside its eye,
where everything,
where everything was calm.
Oh, calm against the brackish wall, the bracing wall that
was the world, the world that was somehow ablaze, somehow
ablaze with hyacinth.
With hyacinth inside the whale, inside the walls,
we lived our lives.
We lived our lives of mowing grass, of shearing grass,
despite the times, despite the times,
the children gone, the children gone to future war,
the future war of what we made, of what
we made our money and our money and our rage against our rage
against the hyacinth, the hyacinth, the children,
the children who were made to die,
were made to die in futures I, for futures I could not abide,
will not abide.
I say inside, I stay inside the whale, and the whale and I,
we cut our grass.
We cut the grass or fail to.
So we failed to, and our little plot, our little plot of life,
a raft, our little plot grown wild, a facsimile of wildness,
a wilderness conditioned by, conditioned by the boundaries,
the boundaries of property.
Propriety the lines drawn in, the lines drawn in the wild,
in grass.
The leaves of grass divided from divided from what's not by law.
What's not by law, the whale, the kids, the hyacinth, oh,
violet fire, war of life against its end.
Against its end, we built a raft.
We built a raft, we thought, and now we thought, and now we what?
We want, and now we watch.
We wait, we watch.
We hang up shelves.
We paint our rooms.
We dance around.
We dance around each other slow.
We hear the news.
We memorize.
We memorize the names, the names,
the names we say or don't.
Or don't the lost love, don't the lost already know,
already know what's rising love?
We rise.
We pace.
We make.
We weather on inside the whale.
I've got the story wrong.
But love I want so much, it's selfish.
Yes, it's selfish.
But I hope we get to live like this.
I hope it isn't how we die.
OK.
[APPLAUSE]