WEBVTT

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This is a poem.

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This is another one
of those poems that

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is an analogy for a generation
that has already probably

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been written too much about--

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'60s, '70s.

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And this poem makes
reference to the fact

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that I'm hard of hearing.

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I make my living by teaching,
and I'm hard of hearing.

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So it's often I
have to cup my hand

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behind my ear in classroom, in
order to tell who is talking

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and to hear what they're saying.

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It's sort of hard to
triangulate on where

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the voice is coming from.

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And this poem is
speculation about how

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I might have lost my hearing.

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It's imaginary rock concert
in the past, and it's called,

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The Teacher Listens To The Past.

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Somewhere, someone
is asking a question.

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And I stand, squinting
at the classroom

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with one hand cupped
behind my ear,

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trying to figure out where
that voice is coming from.

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I might be already an
old man, attempting

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to recall the night his
hearing got misplaced.

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Front row, center, at a
battle of the bands, where

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a lot of leather-clad
second-rate musicians,

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amped up to dinosaur
proportion, test

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drove their equipment
through our ears.

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Each time the drummer threw a
tantrum, the guitarist whirled

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and sprayed us with
machine gun riffs,

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as if they wished that
they could knock us,

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quite literally, dead.

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We called that fun
in 1970, when we

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weren't sure our lives
were worth surviving.

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I'm here to tell
you that they were.

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And many of us did,
despite ourselves,

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though the road
from there to here

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is paved with dead brain cells.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Parents shocked to
silence and squad cars

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painting the whole
neighborhood, the quaking tint

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and texture of red jelly.

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Friends, we should have
post-marks on our foreheads

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to show where we have been.

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We should have pointed
ears or polka-dotted skin

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to show what we
were thinking when

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we hot-rodded over God's front
lawn and death kept blinking.

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But here I stand, an
average-looking man,

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staring at a room where
someone blond, in braids,

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with a beautiful
belief in answers

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is still asking questions.

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Through the silence
in my dead ear,

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I can hear the future
whisper to the past.

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It says that this is not a
test and everybody passes.

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[APPLAUSE]

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All the people who are
clapping have fringed vests

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in the closet at home, right?

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[LAUGHTER]

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