By Button Poetry
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Michael Lee, performing at Park Square Theatre in Saint Paul, MN.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:01
if there is a perfect joy it is similar
00:05
to a fever and begin somewhere in the
00:07
jowls then wings out like a hand of
00:10
cards thrust outward across the table I
00:13
know it has come over me once in a silo
00:18
80 feet deep I was like a final breath
00:21
working at the bottom of a lung leveling
00:24
out hey dropped from the cloth sliding
00:27
back and forth along the rafters I
00:29
pitched my weight for 12 hours heaving
00:33
the wet grass I have seen some drunk men
00:36
played the accordion at night when they
00:38
forget they own anything at all and so
00:41
briefly they don’t not even the music
00:45
itself this work of the body is the work
00:49
of what not prayer that’s too simple
00:53
not dumb luck either no it’s more like
00:57
an invocation left unsaid when it swells
00:59
and kicks in the body like a frightened
01:01
horse and it nearly burns and we find
01:04
there are other ways to pray like
01:07
working the palms raw evening out a
01:09
whole shorn field in a dark tunnel
01:11
piling to the top until finally you
01:14
stand on some unknown tons of hay and
01:17
step from the lip of the silo like a
01:19
golden holy thing and fly among the
01:22
rafters and it is your exhaustion which
01:24
carries you which is for an instant the
01:27
single thing you own and takes on the
01:30
quality of the spirit which you are
01:32
surprised to find smells of wet grass
01:35
the cool rain outside the swallows
01:39
roosting and the grease of the
01:41
mechanical claw crying out working back
01:45
and forth a hard dark sea above you
01:53
you
01:54
[Applause]
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This post was previously published on YouTube.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video