By Button Poetry
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Michael Lee, performing at Icehouse in Minneapolis.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:02
I’ve stared out a second-story window all day,
00:05
through the soft falling of snow
00:07
and the intermittent rumble of truck engines
00:09
outside the granary.
00:11
I’ve sat alone on the stage of an empty theater at midnight,
00:15
and played the piano poorly, for no one at all.
00:19
I sat in the last row and watched the stage lights,
00:23
the dust hovering beneath them,
00:26
and the musty curtains do nothing at all for no one.
00:29
I’ve turned on the lights of the marquee in a small Minnesota town,
00:33
standing before the empty theater above which I briefly lived
00:37
until a single bulb flickered out like a firefly in rain.
00:41
I walked the river and the steel bridge at night.
00:44
I rested beside the dam and felt as insignificant as its mist,
00:48
and in this way briefly free.
00:50
What was each brick in that town
00:52
if not indifferent to my wandering in its dim light?
00:56
And what is indifference, if not a kind of violence
00:58
we must each survive, but won’t?
01:02
The indifference of crows and water.
01:05
The indifference of bluffs and deer crossing the highway at night.
01:08
The indifference of cities and of clocks.
01:11
The indifference of our own blood, whirring like a mill wheel inside us,
01:15
where death is always monotonous.
01:17
The heart stops, and that’s the end of it.
01:21
(applause)
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This post was previously published on YouTube and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video
