Peter Bogart Johnson

from The new hang out condition

The bed is in the ocean

the bed is returned to the repository of beds

the bed heaven

I’m exhausted

where do you go when you live in your escape

we drive around trying to recreate the perfect loop

and that’s our city

the need to fill a field, a bed

unghosting your arms into the basket

 

 

A forklift heap of the New Future.

How when we sync the wire pops like a cartoon idea.

The part of breathing after the legit breathing.

Everything that used to end late now ends early

and acts like it’s always been like that

but it hasn’t and you know it.

You hold on to your dark Wisconsin

and I take a bat to the mind palace.

 

 

For lack of experience I cultivate nonchalance

whether there’s a wolf in me or a bear or a series of armies

the night sweat in the corner photo

the cocktail of redemptions

the magnet the size of my body that floats along and just tugs

what gets me hard

if that’s your hair in the picture

if we passed under the river

the first cold day we pulled the ripcords in our hoods

and said what is this thing this can’t be right this will not last

 

 

Listen the gun drop on the way to the library isn’t real

the bus on the bridge isn’t real

the mag you busted a nut over in the back seat

back and forth for corn nuts and dried noodles

and your manhood laid bare in the decomposed granite field

and the clouds burning off by noon

and the fist that nurses on the run to the bathroom

and walking four-square lines in the five minutes you’d wrap hands around

and press to the edge of the bloody lockers

and bungalows you’d burn

and the planetarium where you loved her

isn’t real

 

 

The 16 square feet you move in is already filled with people,

and it holds you: the target; the protean binding site.

We both bang our rings on the wood, and I’m obsessed.

Getting the bar lady to give you a low-five.

How we pass each other.

I’m a gauntlet of love and the world is different.

The allegiance of my body is dirty and unassuming.

All the people I think I’ve met, they’re dissolving.

 

 

We can be anything we want.

It’s not that serious.

Keep your faith and someone will do your work.

Keep your faith and there’s no need to explain.

Everything is bendable with the right metal.

What we allow in nature is different from what we see on the street.

Staring at the two story window,

waiting for the forest to walk out of it.