I dreamt that on the day I was to die
I was in South America,
passing a new subway kiosk,
where an agent of the government,
known to rule by fear and terror,
but trying to attract tourists
claimed patrons could get a trolley
all the way to New York City.

I strode by bravely, wearing a new white hat
but carrying its brim. I stopped
at an expensive and sinister café
and stood in line for chocolate
and Don Pedro brandy
but in the end did not buy.

On the sundrenched steps of the bookstore
next door, I read the house copy of Lorca.
The steps were crowded with men.
I was laughing as I read.
An old man, the owner, sat next to me.
Don't I know you? he asked.
I don't think so, I said. I was only here
a few times, many years ago when I was young
and thought I was a poet.
Were you? he asked.
No, I said. I was just a boy
undone by words.

6/25/03

Ears

The ears of hair roots in 1964.
The exhumed left ear of Van Gogh interviewed by the right.
he ears of the Bachinale, of Love Me Tender
at the drive-in at two a.m.
The ears of oil, listening in the Gulf of Tonkin.
The ears of Robert Kennedy, Jr. and Kim Agnew.
The ears of Mt. Tamalpais
cocked towards the Himalayas.
The various ears of God, if any.

The ears of slander and deceit.
The ears of elastic, bending time into the tentative image of sound.
The ears of "Scoop," the official magazine of Brighams Ice Cream,
a subsidiary of the Jewel Tea Company.
The ears of a boiled pitchpipe. The ears of solipsism and
the ears of repetition.
The ear of the sky blown by the nose of the wind.

The ear of Picasso's fingers.
The ears of John the Baptist, Percival Goodman, Edmund Carpenter.
The ears of Mary Magdalen and Jacqueline Kennedy.
The catastrophic ears of A.T. & T.
The sighing ears of the president's commission on anything.
The ears of clocks.

The ears of Tanganyika.
The ear of the first anti-pollution valve planned for obsolescence.
The circumspect ears of beer cans filled with kool aid for a
movie made for television.
My lost third ear.

The burning ears of Mamie Eisenhower and General Westmoreland.
The ears of the caves that Paul Klee remembered.
The ears of oars, ores and ors, or either ear of each.
The ears of games. I imagine one of them is always bored.
The bored ears of Shakespeare's ghost.
The coy ear of the lame waterboy. The left ear's unqualified
opinion of the right.
The taxidermist's favorite teddybear's ear.
The light bulb's sneaky ear.
The first ear to demand an earlid.

A brick's ear in Galesburg, Illinois.
The ear for tragedy which must be returned
before it's too late.
The opaque ear of dawn. The insidious ear of draft boards.
The Cornish cartoonist's inky ear.

The round yellow ears of the meadow.
The thin black ear of the desert night.
The ears of a unicorn.
A photograph of Gregor Samsa's ears the night before.
Arthur Godfrey's freeze-dried ears.

The sad ears of the Appalachians. A fragment of Lake Erie's
ear is among her relics.
The protruding ears of archangels (This is how they are
identified in their earthly forms.)
The ear of the pig we refuse to do anything in.

The ear of the sea listening to the moon.
The astronaut's ear listening to himself on the radio.
The impregnable ear of money.
The ears of Viet Cong, a million dollar bounty for each set.

The temptations of warm ears on summer nights.
The sophomore's overstated ears.
The deaf ears of law and order.
The progressively insane ears of adaptation.
The ears of the exorcist.
My father's ears, deaf to mine.
My dream's ear, carefully watching my grandparents'
abandoned house.
The ears of energy. Look at them.
The ears of breasts listening for DDT. The ear of the Pill.
The ears of forests and closets and locations of other
sounds disputed by empiricists.

Midnight's trembling ear.
The ear once painted by Salvador Dali, still dripping and
still listening.
Going deaf are the ears of kids who listen to loud rock but
are mercifully unaffected by the decibels of city traffic, diesel trucks, bulldozers, teachers and jet planes.
The moronic ears of the sane.
The ears of onions clutching the earth.
My camera's ear when it has no film.
The candle's ear when the lights are on.
The parrot's ear when its learned all the words it wants to.
The ears of fossil bubblegum as it is unearthed by the first farmer
of the sixty-first century.
The ears of secretaries knees at noon, near the fountain
in Mellon Square, Pittsburgh.
The ears of red shifted quasars.
The ears of holographs.
The compulsive ears of earthquakes.
The dark ears of managers. The split ears of bishops.
The ears Beethoven would not trade for his eyes.
The positive ear of the south pole. The negative ear of the north.

The inundated ears of stomachs subjected to our incredible
American crud.
The dumb old ear. The happy new ear.
The watchful ears of porpoises.
The inscrutable ears of cockroaches.
The taxed ears.
The ears in the boardroom of American Motors when George
Romney first said, "Chevrolet."
The penultimate ear of James Joyce.
The ears of science fiction writers.
The ears of talk shows as they go to sleep.
The ears of beaches twisted with the sun's broken sidecar.
The bleeding ears of the moon.
The aching ears of subway pornographers.
The ears of trees.
The wise ears of urinals.

The ears of repossessed cars.
The ear of the national debt.
The city's inarticulate ear.
The Indian's ear, next to the earth's ear.
My lover's ear, who also speaks to me.

(1969-70)

moral clarity

warm sun, an unseen woman hums
the green plaza enacts the arcane
word: mellow

streets in America are reduced to thoughts
ears are pinned back like samovars
reefed moments oblige us to cringe
we’ve eaten all the candy
dust is settling

every summer the explosions come back
alighting on the forked spasm of foam
the rhythm of the silence waits
for this purple storm to pass
will that be us, or just our worst invention:
the idea of kings.

6/10/03