two from Wear You to the Ball
entered out of sun spectrum to entubed sight
“the fashion-plates need to get off at Powell Street”
me I’m staying on this train not so far as
its terminus but to where the ball of sun its
display comes laced with particulate matter
off ocean’s englobing water and sound system
why humans’d even try to approximate
to something called music unless it’s to fall in
as volunteers for the birds on vacation
who go out not so unlike a candle does
not conspicuously burning at both ends
more vacancies in the aviary lately
pouring back a black tea laced with white milk
keeping watch over the phenomenal exhibits
I don’t know if there are any words to this
“where do all the little birdies go” number
we should ask our representative of the verse
if anyone can reach that supposed person’s
words the wick inside the candle of the melody
“we have a caller on the line pushed up against it”
talking out of an internal polylogue
a local call, very local, placed inside me
one can hardly bear to lift your swift speech
and if “I had in mind to see it as a picture”
I had to erase back in some of what got said
the wiring inside me was such that I’d bent
over backward in anticipation of what
can’t ever be satisfied getting its ashes hauled
down to the riverbank, when we’re not even sure
which direction the river is from where we are
planted in this overgrown village, village life
that cannot quite recommend itself enough
pouring in from all quarters in the language
where ashes can’t be delivered they sound like
the word for hashish “black specks drift aimlessly”
nobody’s sleep having fogged over the canvas
even when they’re words the sounds remain sounds
can that sentence you spoke afford a question mark
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Steve Dickison is the director of The Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives at San Francisco State University, where he curates an extensive public reading series and directs a collection of circa 3,000 original recordings of poets and writers (1954-present). He is editor and publisher of the poetry press Listening Chamber, and with David Meltzer co-edits SHUFFLE BOIL, an occasional music magazine with poet, artist and musician contributors. He organized the exhibition POETRY AND ITS ARTS: BAY AREA INTERACTIONS 1954-2004 at the California Historical Society in 2005, and also the book exhibition RECENT VISITORS: POETS AND PUBLISHERS ON THE BOLINAS SCENE IN THE SEVENTIES. DISPOSED, a book of poetry, was published by the Post-Apollo Press in 2007. WEAR YOU TO THE BALL, a live poetry-sound collaboration with composer Bill Dietz, was performed in May 2009 in London and Berlin. Author photo by Tim Peterson (Trace).