Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 507

dreaming ahead

Tonight, I look forward 

to dreaming- free and instant vehicle 

to the heart; a third of my life

revisiting hopes

and funny familiarity

drifting clumsily 

like fishfood snowflakes

eaten by morning

and bubbling thoughts

of you 

and east to west goes

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 506

noumenal children

forgetting of birth,

of me

being here, I echoed

with the burning stars

in the feeling; collapsing

into an explosion

of you in presence;

death cried and we danced

in each others eyes, the 

universe told us about forever

and it was a secret untold

between us, giggling souls.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 505

autumn evening

looking at the stars;

you and i, we were

beautiful. your lips

tasting of summer,

where the air, in fact

inhaled us deeply

to savor our time

like a forgotten perfume.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 504

telling

may the moon come

down with her right ear's crater

to my lips whispering your name;

that she may,

return to the heavens and gossip

amongst the clouds; that they

might, rain you down amongst

the dying churches, the breathing eucalyptus.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 504

laugh

laughing and drunk,

two unfinished poems

where astral jazz

forgets itself for a half

beat's rest; time evades

to plant in the future

desire or thoughts

of how many beds other

than my own I've slept in.

silhouettes of the window's

raindrops aging  at slow alarming rates

run delicately and deliberately

like fingertips over our impeccable skin;

we could ask questions to the ceiling

and fumble toes into one another

under cool morning covers, but

afternoon always finds a way of

coming too soon on saturdays.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 503

I'll be honest with you

Yesterday, swimming in me

like summer came back to fall

in love again, I looked myself

in the eye like it was the center

drop of the milky way telling

me something I forget when born-

a thousand miles is a long way

when you haven't yet told someone

you love them madly;

time drags me slowly like a cigarette

on sunday, and I recall the sanskrit

of her grin like new rings in a redwood

that I could tell how they'd age; how of

the warmth behind teeth; something stirs

and it sings you into it deeply to kiss

wind, how naked and unknown

dizzying with a glacier of lips slipping

through time to me thankful;

in moments away do you wait

at home, where my dress-socked feet

can breathe as I teach my children to

play guitar?

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 502

scratch lotto

the clowns are drunk again, I can hear them fucking

and think of every lover; how each is doing, who's treating her

wrong of me to think, this late at night- no song

keeps you company and I can smell the jitterbugs nervous

a few blocks away, about as far as my adventure seems to reach

on weekday nights, I'll look a new one straight in the eye

and so in spite of the days splintering like forgotten rope, aflame in youth still maybe

despite the minding stars holding us together for a few lucky moments,

breaths of fog or coffee trying to get somewhere to escape this world

and frightfully as animals disappear like childhood towards the wrinkled moon who begs me so

here I am, without the microphone; just for winter or fall

what do you make of this, what keeps you up tonight after a short hug or belated text message;

thanks I had a great time- with the disappointment

of little answers and boredom of settling myself

hurrying back to dorm rooms putting it into

wow she never thought of it that way; she doesn't think about that kind of stuff often

Going home I've got myself to be honest with:

I'm a year and seventy miles short of being a thousand away from where I'd like to be,

High standards at an age of sexual desperation and settling slips me into a bed with nothing but accidental penmarks, lonely toes, big waiting cellphone, trick-candle thoughts, and trains echoing forevers away;

parented on my own with a pillow named relief and a refusal to settle,

it gets tiring and you can never find the right balance between window and heating vent

though hair follicles, I'm told, can hold things like measurements of happiness,

your family's best intentions, and the beginning of what a future might look like

indifferent, I can fall asleep; happy to be a part of the cosmic mess. to be young.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 501

Sleep

As night cooks-

us inside by the heater like a slow rising cake

conversations are the growing oak

aged in store-bought wine; in my eyes, beautifully

the reflection of your answering

questions of travel, how did the divorce go,

have you seen the movie

where inside the rain's museum

coming up with things to talk about

or making a girl smile, find me attractive

kind and mature the way a puddle smiles

back a few days later, not too easy but there,

thinking in actuality

you are beautiful and I would love to tally

my future in iced coffees and hours

(I would love to hide our hearts, sweetly safely

like fireflies in the unblossomed petals of my bed,

of yours; fragrant soft growing home) so that I to you

may find a sum of the human naïvety, to bring

us the wonder of love, her parents

chaos, and uncertainty kissing our tickling

toes and growing eyelash ends into place

in time ascending. 

and perhaps forgetting the movement of speech

and patient pace, becoming lays in the wind-

slipping through our exchanging mouths.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 500

Peut être

Perhaps, you might

in the thinned walls

with your own sex,

release

the excitement like a gull

into the overcast morn' dappled

with the boredom of young women's ears.

Perhaps, it is

that the time left us in the city

and youth got caught

in its reflection; replaced by storefront

airbrush daydreams. Maybe,

lotteries, meteorites, and day lilies

daring.

Perhaps, nothing

but the rain;

of close-quartered intentions

hopeful and corked

for weekends and returns

like a flashlight held to the lips

revealing the abundance of longing

in the cheeks,

waiting to perhaps escape-

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 499

Synonym for dream


under soft-nippled stars
my sister, the city,
sailing sideways half-sleeping
and one-eye opened, daydreamed
why the moon, condescending,
licks her rooftops for problems,
why families walk quickly backwards
from her parks to their cars—
why the sunset can’t be an hour longer.

airplaning thoughts, never resting—
her bright eyes always
close one by one. And silently she
snores sirens and whispers clues
to her dreams from the dark leaves
dancing in the decades passing like
REM-time. Then the

loud torturous morning, with
materialized tears puddle all over town
I sit her down, singing of the
sun tucked in her back pocket and
humbly I ask her to put down her coffee
her cigarettes and her lipstick;
a man offers a cat’s whistle
from across the street and in debt
to her I pull myself to walk away as she grows up
and I do too with her, though briefly
prior to bedtime I try to teach her
of what I learned; but humbly escaping me
are a few moths, and fireflies imitating
the stars.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 498

well, whaddya know?

teases, the universe

makes time and kinks

in her invisible hair, coincidences

and highs of love; wonder

where I am

dancing into the next part

of me is skepticism of itself licking

the world to the core; beautiful

how thoughts become, dreams

how they project onto dark eyelids,

as if magic- thoughts of what we call

the future; possibilities- -

terrible delicious everything.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 497

daydream

-the night and

I agreed to take

a break; my breath

meeting the window, my eyes

pushing to get through to the city, to

the air, polluted with others lives, sings

quietly and too far, I wish to snake away with

it, alive. And the mind is impregnated by it,

filling loftily with dreams and hundreds of miles

away.

I exhale and get back

to work...

a collective sigh, alone.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 496

alone in harmony

alone in harmony, I

feeling the no more

than four or five silkworms

of wine, quietly down my esophagus

the beautifully alone,

cold radio-tower and

a second radio-tower;

replicated eye of the universe

blinking all-knowingly, mysterious

to me alone, through the black

sky dampened by night's thick blankets,

lonely bed; but tonight

I sleep in harmony,

nothing is

alone in the universe;

always.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 495

And if I thought

that effect hadn't a cause

and time- a tea cup

steaming- without having known

a drop- where would we

have been seen

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 494

Taught

And here we were

taught days

divided like paper

where ends of matters

and line breaks

signified separation

or starting over

and here we were

knowing much more

than words or forty ounce bottles could contain.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 493

waste

thinking the wind and water

our shit drops in

speaking to us

yet displacing

syllables like understanding

I can see

that we are intervening,

premature noon.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 492

in a city who's

in a city who's

to speak with

a sunlight, thought universal

but here

I can't speak

to it with

everyone here whose

having at least a lover

can't listen to favorite albums

in spring time

last year when it was sunny and

on top in a different way.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 491

a ball

dancing like drunken

stars we were

as shining in magnificent

curvature of youth through space

being traced and grasped by

fingertips of eventuality

bringing to the lips of eternity

like a peach

quickly before the sag.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 490

We

How I have

forgotten to remember how

the first breast since my mother's did

bare to me with shivers

of pleasure and fear

that I may, like her,

the body at most feeling

possessed with acceptance and time

we were

all growing.