I don’t know how it goes.
What I had was humming
a little bit. That almost
feeling. I suspected those
days, I was always talking
about the same thing,
and I intended to change
the subject, even
though there were some
people I didn’t like
around. This was when
the weather, I’d often
notice, had been
approaching. It was
like coming to at
a party. Or several.
Always with the feeling
I should’ve rather
ended up out in
their backyard ably
breaking something like
stairs. Folks
trigger the light
sensor, came to smoke,
weaved in and out
of my time there. I mean
I was tired. All this
trying to stay
up was putting me to
sleep. Outdoors
in the rain. Noticing
I left some notebook
open, except I didn’t
use a notebook. Also,
I was sitting there,
writing how it’s more
humming. Now
you hum with me. We
can do the middle
of the road, a car
idling by a curb,
a paper bag caught
under a tire, someone
parked on the wrong
side, left their door
open. In there, they’ve got
songs on, finally—
what everything was
screaming for. I don’t
know what time is
here. I mean I don’t
keep time. Kindness,
I notice, when you like
didn’t want to hum
with me, do anyway,
would still. I appreciate
enough. How a good
thing doesn’t exactly
have to happen.
We’re moving that way.
We argue so that ashy shadows range
around in waves, as after footprints weighed
the talk they’re over with. A scuffle played.
Set to this patch of earth, our feet exchange.
Forget it. Watch the everyday arrange:
like one may say the flames are frayed, yet fade,
they’ll claim, is not ambiguous with shade.
The frequency I think of this is strange.
That’s what I do. I figure myself out.
Not rightly, often, meaning lately more:
like how I’ll say I see less what you said
than what you said it for. We know about.
We knew. It shifts like now when where said or
said when are where we see our fear instead.
I found myself again—because I tried—
in supermarket windows, mirrored glass
reflecting me and evening after class,
around the time I lose track of or hide
an hour. Fold it under. Place aside.
Now look, my legs are overgrown with grass.
I don’t know why. Perhaps the hours never pass,
but wait outside our sight, unsatisfied.
Like watching rows of mimes play telephone—
I find the closer that I keep my eye
on when, the more I notice, further, mind
the many eyes on time beside my own.
They drive me out of my own head is why—
like cleaners racks keep reeling from behind.
