(Annual Greenfield Word Festival 2016)

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What is new to me now, (don’t bother me with cell phones, legalized weed),

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What is new to me now is constant war with no intervals of peace,

What is new to me is the eradication of the illusion that intervals of peace existed between wars;

What is new to me is the eradication of the illusion that racial justice was within sight,

What is new to me now is the necessity of Black Lives Matter;

What is new is the eradication of night sky and of silence;

New to me is the realization of how much work it takes to make fleeting gains,

And how fleeting those gains can be.

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What is new to me?  the death of unions, global warming, fracking, intelligent design (whatever the hell that is).

What is not new to me is how little great speeches mean;

What is not new to me is how much poetry means to some of us;

What is not new to me is how much poetry is disparaged;

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What is new to me is the sound of my voice reading poetry.

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