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Shortchanged |
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People are told |
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all their lives what is good
for them who to vote for |
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where to go and what to do as
they march |
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to work and up and down the
streets buying things and yet |
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Dostoevsky |
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in 4 great huge novels barely
scratches the surface |
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of what it is to be a human
being. |
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People are told what to think |
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and what it all means and what |
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to give their lives for by
politicians |
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and bosses and bureaucrats and
experts and |
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teachers and traffic signals
and laws |
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and electric shocks and 30
days in County Jail and armies |
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that kill millions of people
and yet |
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Shakespeare |
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barely shines a few rays of
light |
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into the mystery of the human
soul. |
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People use up their lives |
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thinking they are worth
nothing as they follow other people's directions |
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while the genius of Tennessee
Williams |
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in dozens of plays moves our
understanding |
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of what is really inside us |
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one fraction of an inch
forward. |
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Winning |
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No reason |
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to get up each morning looking
and hoping for love |
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that you will never find no
reason |
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to spend your life wrenching
words out of your heart |
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writing novel after novel
after novel that will never get published, |
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no reason |
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to leave your heart wide open
to a child or parent or lover |
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who will never love you or to |
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enter that race and run it
over and over when |
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you will never win or to stare
up at the stars night after night |
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wondering |
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why we are here when |
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you will never get an answer
no reason |
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to keep trying to say
something in a poem |
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or painting or song that |
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can never be said, |
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except |
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for that thing inside of us
that must never stop trying. |
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Why I Will Never Stop
Writing |
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These words I write my poems
with |
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have picked up the broken
lives of thousands of men |
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on concrete factory floors |
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and my own broken life on
those concrete floors |
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in their hands and lifted them
up to some kind of light |
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and transformed them. |
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They have given me |
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a way to go, |
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the only |
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way I could ever have gone and
the only way |
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I will ever be able to go, the
way |
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I was born for and had to
bleed and vomit and weep and |
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moan and go crazy and want to
die for because I didn't |
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have it, |
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away |
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that can never fail me and
that is really worth so much more |
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than fame or money |
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or immortality. |
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Suicide |
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Every time |
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a homeless man walking a
sidewalk crazy with the pain inside him is passed |
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by us |
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driving our good cars with our
good jobs something dies |
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inside of us every time |
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we leave a homeless man
crumpled against some wall |
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on asphalt where he must try
to sleep in the cold and go home |
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to climb into our warm beds
something dies |
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inside of us every time |
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on some street corner because
he has failed to gather enough change |
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to eat again some man's |
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head falls as the last drop of
hope drains out of him |
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at age 40 something dies |
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inside of us as |
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all our cold cash in those
bank vaults |
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thrives. |
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Shrunken |
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Lives |
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that were once going to leap
tall buildings |
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and save the day |
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and kill all the bad guys
lives |
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that the universe once
revolved around when they were 6 |
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now |
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looking out of windows in
lonely bare apartments |
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with their 13th beer of the
day in their hands wondering |
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how they got trapped now |
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staring out of the high
plastic windows of steel mills |
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after 20 years under the
brutal eyes of foremen |
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stunned |
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as if they can't believe the
only life they will ever live |
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could have ended up there, |
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lives |
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that seem to know nothing
about how any of this has happened |
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except |
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that something |
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has gone terribly wrong. |
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Down But Not Out |
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Maybe the greatest thing about
our Sunday pickup softball game |
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was that |
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no matter how lonely |
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or poor |
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or hungover or strung out or |
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fresh out of a mental hospital |
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or jail or |
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hated by our parents or |
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stuck-on-a-nowhere-job-that-was-breaking-our-spirit-and-mind |
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any of us were or |
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no matter how ugly and small
and cockroach-infested of an |
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apartment |
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we lived in or |
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how many times we may have
tried to kill ourselves, |
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any one of us might still |
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step up to the plate |
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and hit a home run. |
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Anyone |
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who can hit a home run |
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still has a chance |
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to turn their life around. |
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Mysteries |
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Bikers |
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with soft spots in their
hearts |
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who would give the shirts off
their backs to helpless bums and respectable |
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computer geniuses in big
houses with 3 cars who |
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could walk by a man starving
to death in an alley and feel |
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nothing and fragile |
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little ladies who have broken
the spirits of their sons |
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for life and |
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a man who has never hurt
anyone in his life |
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suddenly murdering 8
co-workers with a gun and |
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politicians in immaculate
suits murdering thousands |
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and thousands with waves of
their pens and |
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a murderous gang member |
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become a poet |
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or painter and machinists |
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who have always acted like
they would step all over |
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anything throwing bread crumbs |
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to birds so they can take them
to their chicks |
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born up on machine shop
roofbeams people |
|
are never as simple as you
think |
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they are. |
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Broken |
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Laid off, |
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in a little trailer by a guard
gate the machinists |
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are stripped |
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of tools out of their
toolboxes |
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and photo i.d. badges |
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and company shirts, |
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stripped |
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of incomes, |
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stripped |
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of usefulness at 45 or 51 or
55 |
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stripped |
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and sent out the gate like
little boys, |
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little boys |
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with families |
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and mortgages |
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and lifetimes of pride |
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on the line |
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who must now beg |
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other companies for the right |
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to be adults. |
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Dealing With It |
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Put them away behind a wall
put away |
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the people down on their luck
the man |
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who begins tearing himself
apart whenever he cannot get a drink the man |
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who murdered someone in a rage
11 years ago the men |
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in those alleys and out on
those street corners the man |
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from out of state who cannot
find a job the woman |
|
whose husband beat and robbed
her for 8 years |
|
and then disappeared the
teenagers |
|
who have not found a reason
for anything |
|
but rage and violence the man |
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