traffic
Speaking about it, the subject changes.
– Gil Ott
actual patience with the weather
and monster movies
awake the bright half of the night
the bright half, a storm with a name
beasty feelings about a named storm
beasty aftermath
this one’s just windy
tiny branches come down
noise coming from you from everywhere
and I orient to try to make it sound
he was a poet’s poet means he was
a hugger, invited them to stay
in his living room
stay here in the poem a long time
stay driving: from here
to Kansas City
stay hanging out in the vehicle with me
visit with Kansas City in Brandon’s poem
getting to Brandon’s ethical chapel
of hanging out with him in his sentences
hang out with Brandon on May 2nd
or a week from it three years out of four
in two states and three cities
one mostly a town
it being night and watching
a monster movie with you for class
being too small in a monster movie
having class near a practice room
and hearing a monster movie’s music
making of myself a monster movie
then taking Brandon out with me
to fill in my shadow
it’s the shadow that makes Ellen stop
in Nosferatu when his claw-outline
gets serious about her heart
being at work
thinking of Brandon at work, flossing
his tie over his shoulder, spitting blood
thinking of Nosferatu at work
Orlok sucking blood on the night shift
composing them both into the edges
hanging out in the edges like a pie
crimping its crust with you with a fork
and taking it to a reading
making a peach pie with you
and turning it like a dial
ideal whip cream
driving with you to Kansas City
and you taking an interstate’s turns
spinning a combination lock on a bag
terns: those birds a poem likes
poems love this shit in movies:
expressionist weather
a right time piccolo
a night one, an evening one
a bird one that no one is sure of
bird or instrument
cake or death
noses or Ronald Reagan
Richard Nixon or Mr. Potato Head
Herbert Hoover Middle School
or Matthew Henson postmark
Matthew Henson sesquicentennial
behind us by a couple of weeks
records of light at the pointiest
parts of the world
orient the evening with you so that its
points face out like a star
eight sided: awake half the time
what are we going to do
with all of this fruit
rounding up the fruit in the night
holding an aspect of you
and rounding up your parts
your hurt hand reading
your square daytime 45 degree gaze
any list I’d make is swimming
after you, it’s your rigorous
standing and sitting
in the frame everyday
you’d make a list and I’d
make one like it
Julia made up a song for the baby
and never heard it in Gil’s poem
a poem’s poem, one you and I
could hang out in for a while
this document, this one, can’t help
but toward the sound of you
in a poem I turn us open
halfway, try to orient the line
on the page to you and your
face and resonance
the way I get to circulate in you
big and in stripes like an airplane
like spreading a thing on toast halves
halves like wolves like to go by twos
breeding pairs, list of famous
individual wolves
my eyes go high up the wall
like a sneeze
when I see you looking
my ears go and their shadow tilts
above them even better
union of me and my ears
my ears and I go sit on a lawn
the monstrous behavior of teenagers
having been one, units of two like interstate
and interstate
you and me
and me and teenage me
him seeing you and pleased as from
across a lawn
it shakes up our planes to drive by it all
to go between here and Kansas City
with only you in the car, driving grips
us into this time
your parents in a pair
and going to see them in Kansas City
and driving and it all working in together
where did you get used to it, to putting
a palm on me: how did your palm
come to be there: my interest in you
driving: my interest in you
maybe you’ll visit with me today
there’s a structure for it
a way our weeks go, in and out
of them and going to
work the next morning
but maybe you’ll visit with me
anyway, driving or wherever we are
I could never write from your being enough
after Alice Notley
a part we once had
the last ones in a building
with the stairs that rise and fall
dogs we were of breathing’s detail
in your office I was
pig of the year eating a carrot
in my apartment I was
depth eating a sandwich all night
and turning the street on me
so unto the room
I lie me out alone as we might
as I would you
at night the ignition of nothing above us
night busy in its wrists
I share walls with neighbors
being exempt from them
ideas of my other bodies
at other times like public
at night I dream a liquid into
a plasma a solid to a hole
plot in the hole a next step
with lenses, a periscope
that playground joke: your
epidermis is showing
we’d better go catch it
imprint it on one another
while we have the years
thirteen moons and the
thirteenth has a month that
never happens
I want a calendar to play
descant to the calendar
so I can take our time
let’s find a way to sit down
a bench is a public myth everyone
wants to rest on
a street in the progress of at night
I see it as we may
a wish under stars that aren’t
some bodies are too public
to ever be anonymous
sometimes I’m just a guy
I have no say in it
or in my age or in my lips all wet
with talking with taking
them in — come see
some day my kite will
slot itself in power lines
I live understanding this
one natural boy adapting his hands
this is the this we visit
this occupation: a sentence
that’s an act unto its own
as I now pronounce you
the act in it is all there is
I hereby declare that I
can’t speak for walking
some day I’ll slide off
too greased from the internet
and wishing to be able to read poems
come sit in this swing with me
it had to be us: one at a time
breathing splits us up
from being two piles of meat
put your voice in this
here’s where to put your air
it won’t be so long
I walk for you and strangers
hoping to see or hear
your voice in them
set me up here it’s okay
I’ll look out from wherever I am
breathing elects me
otherwise I hinge I sit
