WEBVTT

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I don't think I'm
going to do this one.

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I'm going to pull one up
for my phone, actually.

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The next poem that I'm going to
read is called White Star Woman.

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And this is after the painting
American Progress by John Gast.

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I think in this past year
it was reposted by the DHS,

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and that really annoyed me.

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So I was like, I'm
going to write about it.

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And this is that poem.

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If you don't know
what that poem is,

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it's basically manifest
destiny in a painting.

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And this person in the
center is this woman

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who's very beautiful, kind
of like a biblical figure,

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and she looks gorgeous.

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And the things that are
happening beneath her

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are very much not that.

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And so I wanted to think a
little bit more about that.

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White Star Woman.

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I'm swanning above muskets.

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I'm an east door entrance.

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Witness.

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My invasion is the light.

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The state encroaches
on what is understated.

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It's those dark muscles moving,
flexed, and strained red.

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The figures are
fleeing westward.

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Locomotive like my
imagination billows

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then buckles its fangs
like the prairie plow.

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I do my daily syllabic scalping.

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And hang their story
skulls on telegraph wires.

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Then breeze them dry
with my duster dreams

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because I dream only of day.

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And I think it
will be a good day.

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The day I will suckle
on buffalo milk

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and get to slaughter the herd.

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Because it is not
the cow spilling out

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white, and white, and white.

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Here come my good American men.

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Raising their arms
in prayer for me,

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because the barrel is
my second metal mouth.

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Does my talking and
soft lead syntax

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on days when my
shrapnel semantics look

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to shoot the new world
through someone's sockets.

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I want to stun them
with a sacred vision.

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A holy derangement.

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A solar hole through the head.

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My heaven will live
righteous without the maggots

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in the margins.

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[APPLAUSE]

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