WEBVTT

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I'm going to start by reading
the title poem of my most recent

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poetry collection, "The
World Keeps Ending,

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and the World Goes On."

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I wrote it in a time when
I was, sort of like now,

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kind of waiting, sort of
neck-deep in despair, when

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I was looking forward
into the future

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and could not imagine anything
except for the certainty

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that we were barreling toward
doom, that the world was ending.

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And when I told this
to this really cool guy

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that I was just starting
to date at the time--

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who was really well
read and had gone

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to graduate school and stuff--

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he quoted a line from an
essay about Afrofuturism

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and said something like, the
apocalypse happened a long time

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ago, and we have long
been surviving it,

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and our people have
long been surviving it.

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And I think it says something,
maybe a little morbid, about me

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that I found that
very comforting.

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[CHUCKLES] But I did.

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So thank you, Cameron, for
leading me to this poem,

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which is called "The World Keeps
Ending, and the World Goes On."

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"Before the apocalypse, there
was the apocalypse of boats--

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boats of prisoners, boats
cracking under sky-iron,

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boats making corpses

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bloom like algae on the shore.

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Before the apocalypse,
there was the apocalypse

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of the bombed mosque.

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There was the apocalypse
of the taxi driver warped

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by flame.

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There was the apocalypse of the
leaving, and the having left--

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of my mother unsticking
herself from her mother's grave

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as the plane

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barreled down the runway.

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Before the apocalypse,
there was the apocalypse

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of planes.

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There was the apocalypse of
pipelines legislating their way

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through sacred water, and
the apocalypse of the dogs.

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Before which was

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the apocalypse of the
dogs and the hoses.

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Before which, the apocalypse

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of dogs and slave catchers whose
faces glowed by lantern-light.

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Before the apocalypse,
the apocalypse of bees.

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The apocalypse of buses.

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Border fence apocalypse.

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Coat hanger apocalypse.

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Apocalypse in

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the textbooks'
selective silences.

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There was the apocalypse
of the settlement

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and the soda machine; the
apocalypse of the settlement and

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the jars of scalps; there was
the bedlam of the cannery;

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the radioactive rain;

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the chairless martyr
demanding a name.

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I was born from an apocalypse

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and have come to tell
you what I know-- which

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is that the apocalypse began

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when Columbus praised God
and lowered his anchor.

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It began when a continent

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was drawn into cutlets.

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It began when Kublai
Khan told Marco, 'Begin

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at the beginning.'

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By the time the apocalypse
began, the world had already

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ended.

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It ended every day
for a century or two.

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It ended, and another ending

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world spun in its place.

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It ended, and we woke up
and ordered Greek coffees,

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drew the hot liquid through
our teeth, as everywhere,

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the apocalypse rumbled,

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the apocalypse remembered,
our dear, beloved apocalypse--

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it drifted

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slowly from the
trees all around us,

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so loud we finally
stopped hearing it."

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[APPLAUSE]

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