The Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 719

2011-12-24T00:39:00.000-08:00

Nighttime, getting older

The coffee became less than lukewarm,
wagering the sacrifice of direction—
the illusion and force of freedom
falling off somewhere. The matinée
remains on the reels, with the changing
audience in the same seats.

Something gets caught between
the bee and the honey; I learn
to mute the curiosity and through
emptiness, wish the wisdom into nature.
On its back, biggest slot machine.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 718

2011-11-20T19:32:00.000-08:00

healthy

promising into space;
made nothing, unpeeling naked
simplification combustion. The
body does all the dancing it needs to,
no use in knowing
why one's hair will look like like sun escaping the horizon
in a striptease against the ocean;
or another, wild-fire mouth covered with youth and a future
of misplacing
store-bought cake mixes.

Round the edges, cover the corners;
cut the bulshit and sublimate illusions into infinity;
let's escape into the reality of otherness.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 717

2011-10-11T00:39:00.000-07:00

Autumn

Tripping and poor
excuses for kindling
fallen amuck everywhere,

I was caught—
the sensationalism;
the pop-rock, cracker-jack,
biff-bang-powing laid
empty and flat unseen in the
grass and nights when
mostly everyone sleeps.
The nervous talking of those
comfortable and fighting
nonflashlit psychological
bedsheets and stuffed voids.

The patience and
time in demanded, and ate—
relax into compassion,
the autumn leaves know how
and look at them.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 716

2011-10-02T01:47:00.000-07:00

Divinity

Alex looks hilarious and perfectly
radiant, as himself
playing with the cat as he retreats
up the stairs—
towards sleep;
the young girl from earlier
texting me, so cute and
scared (do I think of myself?)
apologizing for a comment made in drunken
honesty, I didn't care. and flirt
back. The night ends soon,
I can only laugh and wonder,
in happiness for the lovers imperfectly
perfect, loving somewhere.
and the patience I've acquired after years
of apathy and drunk sex because

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 715

2011-09-10T14:02:00.000-07:00

on a Saturday afternoon

Who's staying
under the sun
tonight; where

all the beautiful
scared friends,
blown heels spent
running past hills

into the brain-
fire escape. Who's
still and dancing
to old composure
sheets littered
with future nostalgia
bobby pins; architect

love eyelashes
to build out of
memories collapsing
in hurricanes of
time past between
health food aisles
and new jobs at old
factories.

Where do the movie-goers
play outside of the gelled
hair and drying streams;

Autumn promised nothing,
and the last of summer smiled
knowingly, through rich impossible blue
on a Saturday afternoon.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 714

2011-09-08T18:02:00.000-07:00

Streets at sunset sometime else

I was man, I wanted
pure freedom painted outward
onto streets and women like summer
sunshine, without thought of end.
I recalled the sensation of Europe,
standing somewhere in altered time
and space; to be forgotten and clean in
possibility. I hear church bells ring on every street,
and here
I see the young freelance photographers taking
pictures of the school library— I don't ever want to be
that; time trying to claw my back
back into bed. I could sprint with no
lungs to tire, thoughtless, I could erase
my skin and extend into everything, meditating
on the reverberation of airplanes always to somewhere
else; the burnt maps, and changing gusts. This sunset
could fuck off, I didn't want a drink, work was fun and predictable
and women everywhere. I was already dead and everything becoming
to express existence. I wanted to be the moon;
to elevate to the highest monuments and leap into the other
side of the world.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 713

2011-08-31T19:37:00.000-07:00

waves

it seemed tragic; cute, and wondrous
the way forever we all stood staring
up or into, similarly, one another
gaffing fruitlessly into ourselves
trying ceaselessly
to undress the heavens, the
eternal vastness of nothing and
escaping grandeur; only finding
how we could, at least for now
simply laugh with those
nearest over how the blending
of this sky into tomorrow and receding
things made yesterday could
turn into wonders or warm
nostalgia of lovers' smiles made somewhere.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 712

2011-08-31T19:31:00.000-07:00

cosmic and (finally) alone

love pools in the hidden corners
of our eyes; flooding
our small self-exhausting hearts,
bodies trying to push
out of themselves
only to exist
together in something
foreign but comfortable,
such peculiarity
in everything anew.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 711

2011-08-31T18:40:00.000-07:00

like feet on carpet in dreams

starting in
the insignificance of the soles of my feet
it happened,
nothing like a yesterday's light
or love boxes. Something
evaporated, I never knew was there.
The weather moved
subtly like remembered language.

everything molecular was wrong;
eyes exploded past excitement,
time walked away. The brain and
choirs of the body closed their
endless books. Childhood epiphanies
cascaded, and we didn't need
the nostalgia drugs or patchwork
rewards. Nothing and perfection.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 710

2011-08-31T16:55:00.000-07:00

to be written down

Holding up thumbs
to block the sunlight, if but briefly
we could remember the days accumuled
where we had all, as individuals might,
forgetten the names for colors
or how we all think the ends of days work/
how long it takes to run until you're out of breath,
in between pants, escaping
half-words melting
into questions of hidden desperation,
wonders dating forever—
how do
piano
keys
look out
of context;
where
is this
rushing
to,
and is
falling
into
newness
of a body
just
the memory
of nausea,
glowing
burial.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 709

2011-08-24T18:10:00.001-07:00

Old Uncovered Poem #2

making the time
again, I feel drawing
into the eternity, me
with the life dance
in my eyes—
gorgeous misteps
towards something,
that might be
good
again,

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 708

2011-08-24T18:08:00.000-07:00

Old Uncovered Poem #1

how—time manifesting,
oh sweetly moving nowhere
into someone, unbecoming
back to trust and not
thinking, bookburning
tower limbs—
be still, and only breathing
nothingness
takes you
to the church of yourself—
here.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 707

2011-08-21T21:18:00.000-07:00

Over

On the other side of the couch,
I am
politely and strategically ignoring you,
laughing at your poor jokes, I know
your brother
would be greatly hurt. And that may
not happen
to stop me, after I play
50 more songs for you,
or remind you how to feel young
and not
chased— terrible
at times
I know.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 706

2011-08-16T23:28:00.000-07:00

sure

I remember,
one of them—
I don't like
to think about it,
to distort it—
the holy way

we somehow knew
under all the stories,
opinions on commonalities, the times,
the bullshit, and small talk,
that we were
dying. so we did
what we could do—
surrendering, the
pushing
of our imperfect
sexy, young, insecure,
gorgeous whole bodies
as close

as possible,
in hopes
that we might
unite.
afterwards we returned
to it,
but we stayed around
awhile just to
hold one another
and see

what that part of it was
like.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 708

2011-08-12T21:07:00.001-07:00

a glimpse into 21-year-old male ego-death

Randomly I look at my arm and know that these tattoos will disappear, as will their creators in opposite directions Wednesday and Thursday and eventually from this earth, as will the stars which perhaps created these people. This too shall pass. And to me that is beautiful and calming, but I learn repeatedly that the perennial closing window it creates is also motivating and should not simply be watched as it closes. Just because death and ends are beautiful doesn't mean one shouldn't celebrate fully in the moment.

So y'know what, fuck it. Fear feels like an childhood t-shirt, two sizes too small. This Monday night after our busy masculine weekends of work and research. Wear one of your cute outfits (if you have something 1950's-themed all the better), don't stress too much about hair and make-up because frankly I don't think there's a single string in a single quark in a single atom of you that I don't find completely gorgeous, even the wrinkled ones I saw on an aged McKenna when soul-gazing. I have an idea for an amazing end to our summers here and I want to share it with you. All I ask is that you check your ego and any haunting worries from your past at the doorstep of your Santa Clara home. We may not see each other ever again, this is always a possibility, but if we're both here and alive Monday night that is still a million moments that can be fully lived and I'd be a fool to do anything other than that. You can come if you want, if not no worries. This is me stepping into my third stage masculine true being, it's uncomfortable, exciting, and vulnerable but feels like the free and fearless self I started ignoring years ago when I got caught up in being young. All we have to lose are our egos, pride, and second-guesses. If that's too much, I understand and think no less of you.

Though if you want to wave goodbye to these pretentious things for the night and have a great time RSVP 'absurd firearm' to my secretary's number in the next 24 hours.

PS think I may have something to help with the music problem...
PPS Full moon tonight which you can probably catch during the day, and if you escape the city and the epic sold-out after parties, meteor shower hits its zenith tonight.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 707

2011-08-12T17:40:00.000-07:00

For muse known in numbered years of poor remembering

fucking apocolyptic, in the gorgeous way that only a man would be able to tell you about.
black tea eyes with the long-await
open devastating rains
best known to only those who've rested
in the great wisdom of the tropical islands
with names unpronounceable or in tongues dying out in funny youth.
always
unfolding like the fields of sunflowers
in the Southern Italy summer I stole child's curious looks at through train window less than a year ago.
and to each time, I turn her
shoulder around—great shock and amaze-
(the blackness of summer sky, stars appearing in new places)
as the time I did so to the girl at the Jr. High dance to show my buddies
that I could go
up to any girl in the room and get her to dance;
she will be every woman and little girl in the room. And everything will dance—
commend the city trees in hallucinatory rumbas,
the moon into her ceaseless waltz over the hills and trees anywhere,
our eyes into familiar foxtrots,
ceaseless death freedom and beauty to the cha cha, the laughing dance macabre
intoxicated on the wine of our years— now but sweet jet-streams and inside jokes.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 706

2011-08-10T22:27:00.000-07:00

the origins of

Supposing
time had always been
and it grew
conscious of this, anxious
and knowing, we
tried the best we knew
to push it off, in the darkness.
something resembling
falling stars, or tidal waves at night
happened and it all came back,
the speed, the stuck. coming
undone off of seats, stances, arms'
lengths in mysterious fluctuations,
the seasons could sing of this
hymns that no one knows
the origins of.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 705

2011-08-10T18:03:00.001-07:00

over the hills

I was a monkey-wrench
I had broken lips, eyes
cutting through the bullshit and fog
of this city; somewhere in the alley
or a sewer— that's where
the next part of this small galaxy was
expanding into clouds with an unknown due date
fat prisms waiting to explode into everyones
sacred media, their nighttime homes and disproportionate
meals of nights always coming. Ceaseless at the part
of day when you knew you were supposed to feel funny or think
about a thought escaped. The sun may
rise tomorrow and soon after

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 704

2011-08-10T18:01:00.000-07:00

who knew

We ran for somewhere in the east
there was close to an ocean that we'd have
to cross, but there was trust
to think closely, and overcome
when things arrive momentarily.

The coyotes were hushing themselves
to hear our jokes,
the stars showed up one by one
when they heard we were out here again
there was a lot to be said, and
silence in front of the big nothing
said it best, "who knew"

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 703

2011-08-08T00:47:00.000-07:00

sitting

Fuck, I used to
worry if I lost
keys or phone numbers

in between matchbooks
or iced coffees. There were
many times where
it seemed

as if
someone had left
the faucet dripping
single
drops throughout the night,

or that I skipped pages to
see if anything happened
in the end, it always was
a big joke
between myself,
and maybe an audience—
I'll tell you about it
some other time,

just wait.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 702

2011-08-08T00:44:00.001-07:00

carefree

Now I don't usually
open my eyes
when kissing but

the way she'd smile
in between kisses

made me want to
write dictionaries
filled with words like

bliss, silly, strange,
perfect, carefree, birthday,
galaxy, summer, sunset,
wonder, thoughtless, present.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 701

2011-08-08T00:28:00.000-07:00

nicknames

moving towards it we
thought it looked like
something we misperceived
as children, like starfish or darkness;

you can see it,
how it moves at times
of sound sleep and contemplation—
having tried to name it for years
we settled on a couple nicknames
like will, fun, and dreams
in case it stopped moving one day
or if we were to die before it;
who knew?

Every time the sky turned to marmalade
or the sea's waves played in their women's indecision
I asked where it could be
going after us

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 700

2011-08-04T18:03:00.000-07:00

what I might write on popsicle sticks

I wanted more
than anything
else to ask
every set of lovers no matter
how ephemeral,
shy, or undefined
what the story they were
writing is called, and how it began.
There had so recently
turned something so charmingly
silly, futile, and beautifully captivating
about them. I thought of the way I would

be dancing around the sprinkler
in my grandmother's back yard, as a child
the part of me that everyone seemed to
smile back into me wanted to put on tacky music
and do something ridiculous in my underwear and farmer's tanned belly
for anyone or no one to see at all— sweetness
of youth never moving.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 699

2011-08-04T17:25:00.000-07:00

Moving

The newspaper might get picked up before night holds it,
there are many haircuts I've never seen before around here,
it made me almost feel apologetic for the cute girl at the
mediterranean restaurant with a smile like an unstepped on beach
in morning, I wasn't moved to tell her about the captivating joke
I'd pretend my friend just told me. Many of the cars I know
are easily a few hundred miles south of here by now, and
the baseball game wouldn't be over it I tried to race it. I was giving
everyone an extra 10% for showing up; about the same amount down
in morale at the horse races once or twice a week. The neighbors
didn't complain about anything in the mornings and the peculiar feeling
of something else escaping looked so much more devastatingly
gorgeous outside of the academic oil paintings of autumn in her
antiquity and pondering falls.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 698

2011-08-04T17:19:00.000-07:00

of course, of course

the wind was hurrying through this street into a backyard or through the teenagers' car windows
maybe a couple miles off; the sun remained untouchable and you could tell in the way the children
were licking off the heads of ice cream cones like the blind starving for truth or to see how picture
postcards of places with names like Bora Bora and Corsica might look. All the streetside umbrellas
knew the music and I saw how they wanted to tell it to everyone that walked by them. There were
many new people in some sort of direction here and the time would come to amaze them and show
them something behind the scenes in this theater we all've worked out for so long. We wanted to allude
the stars to something like old popcorn spilt or stuck between the seats. Tell me if you've heard this
one before!

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 697

2011-08-04T17:10:00.000-07:00

Empty chairs

All of these chairs
came from nowheresville, she told
me, as if it were somewhere I'd lived
and take pride in; I did
look at the chairs differently after
people would enter and exit. Things
remained the same for no longer than
minutes measured in goldfish memory
and past radio plays. When all of it
stopped and cleaning equipment got taken
out, I just watched at the tenderness as she
pushed each chair in the fashion
that she might go home to tuck her children in;
I wondered
if anyone ever misses a chair, or can get unstuck
on the thought of where it too would go.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 696

2011-08-03T16:07:00.000-07:00

what it may be, into

withdrawing the assumptive
proofs like bad horse bets
the men sat down to think,
well what do we do from here.
we can undress more and sit
in the ocean, where we might adjust
to the water, where it's much harder to lie.
If we listen to more music and blow up
the wheelbarrows, I think too,
that nerve endings might be finally nurtured
into trees, and we may not need anything-
the squinting in daylight, the searching
under stars or absence. Perhaps that
will be blooming out of the skin. Youth
might be nothing more than what had
been paddled back to like dogs; float
on your back, shutting up until you feel it.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 695

2011-08-03T15:39:00.000-07:00

Moon man

The man in the bright blue hawaiian shirt and his bruised calfs reading the books on the war felt so very correct.
Half of the pastries were all ready eaten from the café's counter. I didn't know how many more 15 minute breaks
the men behind the counter had, joking under the cover of the radio playing old favorite songs of rock and being
stoned years ago; I remembered how perfectly a journey home might stretch regardless of where it was from or
what had arrived into your day and mind. The world's theater was still free and some of the crazy men who took
the wrong kind of drugs still danced on the streets nearby. A woman well aged pushed her shopping cart stolen
or borrowed from goodwill off somewhere she may call home, passing a younger girl with calves and sunglasses
matching in reflective showmanship and understood desire. I could tell by the way she was looking at a certain
angle on the horizon what she wanted to walk towards and forget about at that very moment. I went backwards
into myself, counting seconds it took to remember all the animals I have seen moving peculiarly in the circus of
a lifetime. Who knew how to jump on these roofs, and have they slept their with their backs towards where the
day would rise, hoping the moon might take over and magically kill the sun one evening, to say, "No one has to
know anything about it. In fact, you can sleep and we'll discuss it when you wake up to a reality made new."

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 694

2011-08-03T15:32:00.000-07:00

intentional

this huge light the sun
reminded me, begged
impetuously how much-
how much the asphalt and
what it took from the shoes,
the tires, how much
the churning secrets
in the mill temples of
the mind, the managers
didn't even know, how much
the cost of the important accidents
gripping pulses into well-formed
shapes we can only
misperceive how much
a day stretches
like the tunnel of wind
outward through jokes
revisited- how much
is the wildlife remembering,
the ocean carrying,
the breeze passing
into ears, how much
makes it through questions

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 693

2011-08-03T15:25:00.000-07:00

with drawing

what in the great
privacy of our neighborhood
architects decides,
as if
to say, "Windows would be
beautiful here,"
with a known eye
squinting in the sun at what would come
for a good amount of time. Blinds
come in later, with the occasional flies;
the sweating foreheads and big crazy
nights to go back home
to and figure out. Something
not of cement or detail was perpetually coming
outward, being big and matter-of-factly
observable.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 692

2011-08-03T15:18:00.000-07:00

free affogato; melting in difference

opening my eyes,
something in me folded
the blanket, and ran
two fingers over the dusted
side of my car like
a kind dirty dog.
we left and our short term
memory was beautiful
and radiating everything,
everyone glimmered driving
somewhere, anywhere besides
us. the coffee shop nearby served
free affogatos that day; it was
something amazing and new
of course; and I saw the way
the bush and the trees by
the dry cleaners across the street
moved in a fashion I had never
once noticed. what a fortunate lot!
the sky looked blue to me and somehow
a plane moved like a white hockey puck
into some distant net of waiting families,
lovers, business, and great comedy.
the lonely men with baseball caps
got movies from next door and I watched
contently as they would
get into their cars and go somewhere themselves.
The barista mistook me for a friend of his,
he said I replied in the expected
manner of his friend. I smiled funnily
and wondered the etymology of barista
or if it mattered in difference.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 691

2011-08-03T08:23:00.000-07:00

naked warrior

Having no idea where it, itself, had started, the story picked up from here. The universe, upon one day again awaking and forgetting its dreams, its dmt, its symbols, walked. It walked on two awkward human legs into the washing chamber in nudity. Looking into the mirror it went pleasantly mad as it often does. It stared deeper and deeper in vast peculiarity until at last it saw in its left eye written: "In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight."
His lens readjusted, and its focus changed the words; "The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back." The universe wrote these words in great fervor; it heard itself called Ram Dass. The universe in this body grew excited and faint in ecstasy. It moved.

The universe awakens again in a human body, the taste of dmt, dreamscapes, and symbolic desires evaporating like stars into morning light. He looks in the mirror astonished in alien familiarity- a face of an alleged 21-year-old young man. The universe again reads his words from Ram Dass. And he recognizes and surrenders.
The young man forgets the games, he forgets the occupying sex, the tricks, the attraction, the seduction. He forgets that summer has endings, he forgets death, he forgets shame and care. This pleases him, it terrifies him pleasantly the way existing, or not being able to shine a flashlight on a night sky might.
The boy meditates and reflects. In moments of days passed he will have felt cognitive dissonance; he will teeter-totter on past pragmatics vs. surrendering the mind and fear to the heart and celebration of momenthood.
A thought to come replayed is this-
through the young man the universe saw itself ever starkly days before; part of this was understood, part of it was nothing, part of it was joy and the two tried and pushed as desperate as their mortal limitations would though remained separate to the foolishness of a human eye. The universe, having been with self and acknowledging such peculiarity laughed a laughter of desire and fear's turning cyclone into wind and silence made eventual. "Well this is silly," he placed outward to the universe next to him; to himself, to herself, to itself. He spoke and thought to himself as the universe does.
Why was this familiar universe attractive to him. He thought of funny stories:
there was a story called psychology and you love someone out of ego desire, parental displacement, needs for acceptance and appreciation.
there was a story called biology and you love someone out of need to reproduce and shared cocktails of brain chemicals.
there was a story of spirituality and you love someone because you are love, all is love, and love is natural.
there was a story of probability and you love someone because they are a former you or a path which you want to join along on for some sort half-realized desired change in self.
All the stories were the same from the same universe playful and imagined in different times and parts of itself.
He laughed, he had no idea. He never did and this like all other situations of laughter was for him pleasantly terrifying and desirably absurd; or nothing at all. How silly…
Stories replayed because they were entertaining and funny with advertising posters everywhere in the mind. The mind latched on and proceeded to think.
The heart ran out in joyous exhibition, jumping, flipping off the consequences, dancing in the gracious disregard of a child. The mind hesitated in advancement. It was comfortable where it was. It would be fine maintaining the games, the young women juggling, the explaining of what snake (change, knowledge, faith, sexuality) and eagle (pride, messenger, important news between conscious and subconscious, prophecy) dreams likely were and were not; that would all be fine, but the heart rationed- these things could be played with the pieces of the universe less-familiar as they always have been. This was opportunity to push into the beautiful unknown of expansion made found through the present. The universe laughed at itself because it remembered it's the only one it may laugh with. The universe decided to go on a walk into itself because that's the only place to walk. He walked outdoors and it appeared to be night here in the human body. He looked at the stars and knew them as freckles which they may very well be on this human body. He ran fingers against chain-linked fences and pines, oaks, cedars reaching out to him. He walked through secret parts of silence, saw the thin moon hung like an ornament of a god's lost pinky nail clipping shining in radiance; he came within 30 yards of a buck which stared at him then galloped away. The universe followed itself in the buck through this human body and these words all started falling into him one after the other. He got home and begin to write this all down; he would throw it towards the part of universe seemingly strangely familiar to verify what it was perhaps, or to see if it was another short season as a lot of the people, places, ideas, and formations seem to be in this time of the human being life; no, he would throw it towards the part of the universe seemingly strangely familiar because he could, because it was not fear, because one must try to know thyself, and for the universe to know thyself meant to surrender and jump in blindly like a human child into a pool.
Summer was infinite, love was not a coming or going and the universe did not want to give or receive the things the modern humans mistook it for in their rationalism; thought dissipated and all simply was. He was love and he enjoyed being love next to the strangely familiar universe just as much as he enjoyed being love alone.
Though these words are just the humor, the entertainment of it all; all actuality is not said and perhaps may not be, save through stars and between eyes in intimacy. Removing the last of it's costume which of course gets irritating and outgrown, the universe laid down naked as it had come. It enjoyed the light breeze upon it and wondered what it was. It would go to the dreamscapes, the dmt, the funny desires and messages it would play with in baby mental systems come morning. It would throw this out to the peculiar piece of itself already realized a million times over. Then back to sleep for one last dream, awake to meditate into itself, coffee, and to the golf course to play with the sameness that the humans had funnily enough tried dividing into things called gravity, time, chance, movement, speed, and escape. The universe will ask itself, as it perhaps always has and always will, 'do you get it?' The blonde highlights of stars in the strangely familiar universe were signs of intelligence a cajoling dark sage once told her, so it suspected that it would indeed comprehend. He had a box of henna at his feet and a headful of ideas awaiting to explode into action.
And so it went without stop or ending—

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 690

2011-08-02T23:43:00.000-07:00

to the core

my guitar couldn't breathe
the phone lost her eyes
words shed like dead skin
bodies nude had covered
something tropical or
secret and yet seen
was pushing hot
gusts to explode
like the birds over
skyscrapers, the
fishermen's morning.
my shoes were okay
and finished by time
before, so I filled
them with my feet
anxious for anything
having to do with
the night and stark
solitude of newness.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 689

2011-08-02T23:23:00.000-07:00

all at once

the way thoughts
hid behind eyes,
dreams undiscovered
and vulnerability of
death remembered-
engines hummed off,
deserts of foreign
butterflies moved
in their sleep somewhere
and the local
police force was
in privacy with their
tiredness and ideas.
everything happened
for times realized
thought millions.
no one was hurt
big explosions were
everywhere becoming
and it felt like
sleeping and reproducing.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 688

2011-08-02T23:06:00.000-07:00

leaving waves

I could count your
checkers, match up
lemonades, recite
former poetry, blush
the cameras, move
mouths opening, delay
lights changing, slow
roads speeding. But
I would much rather
take off shoes, and
run into the woods
to dance naked with
you, unlike
others, and the same.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 687

2011-08-02T22:48:00.000-07:00

going

combing my feet like morning parades
over the dark grassblades kissing me
to stay longer, I can't and I would like
to very much, I have
something to do, I know
how the wind seduces ears
persistently, thoughts swirl
and waltz in and out
of wartime, and brightness
vanishing into things otherwise.
here it was,
the moment but
where arose that which
births forever
eternally,
so I can see.
with my eyes closed,
as they thankfully
often are,
I caught crumbs from
the table, and being
joked with me in
reminiscence of childhood.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 686

2011-08-02T22:34:00.000-07:00

how the moon appeared before

the cats are somewhere
playing quietly or
wondering forever
upon
how the moon
appeared before them.

clouds were elsewhere, whirring
apologetically. Silent tanks
to teach, to beg like zealots
on the windows of all the homes
all the cars, in the strange faces-
please get quiet and listen to me.

the children in last spurts
of energy in this night, jumping
taller into the sounds of
the adult conversations and
costume-checks. Their
eyes in passing, reminded me
somehow of movie endings
and standing in florist shops.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 685

2011-08-02T22:18:00.000-07:00

arrivals

The way it moved
somehow, like how it felt to fall into love
or a warm ocean,
echoed into black holes
unknown, shooting
back into us
from eyes of those unmet.
Sleepy and warmer
than third glasses of drinks
and dimming lights over
dates in the fall, being
in the evening when
the sun sets holy
never repeating-
romance,
lovers or
outer-
growth
—created, held, dispersed
in morning vanish,
respected and admired
into the stardust of which
we came.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 684

2011-08-02T22:10:00.000-07:00

like milk

No one was looking
so I ran my fingers out
through the hill's
tired grain like the hair
of a lover after her
long days.

Nothing
was there to creep
up, and all
changed subtly like
everything and shoe sizes
or the way
eyes moved.

I could hardly
hear
the cars, the confused
movements of neighborhood
roads in the distance.
The kindness of rest
from oughts and wants.

I don't know
if the wind caught
the secret
between the stillness
and me.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 683

2011-07-26T15:51:00.000-07:00

An evenings feelings in haikus

With a new haircut
humbled under stars like fleas
I was immortal.

Stood under the stars
bodies like warm salt water
where will they go next?

Midnight skies above
Californian hills, I felt
like a horse or dust.

The suburban streets-
the night's quiet tundra and
we- bears hunting stars.

All the cars and streets
shutting up to hear us, there
in the hills singing.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 682

2011-07-18T20:42:00.000-07:00

Lights elsewhere

If the crowing trees begging really did personify the moon
and the girls saw how skinny they were before
they turned into photos
I believe the heels would relax into grasses
and summers spent scared, bored, and young again;
This color of sky might stay forever and yawning,
how unnecessary, would disappear with the bugs
and larger beasts falling out of the whole picture of it
all.

Eyeshadow would be colossal burnt coffee
stains, lateness would be forgiven, forearms
easing into terminals under trees, brows,
or t-shirts for back-scratching.

The grand trapeze act over nets, hungry abysses,
and hands outstretched in age would too explode
before the actors for once.
A goodbye ceremony to the jest of big style, aching throat
glorification, bad dancing, and drinks not stirred for evening.

What happened to losing your shoes, letting lashes bat themselves,
and princesses marrying ninjas

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 681

2011-06-26T13:19:00.000-07:00

what else you got

How's your dog with the brown dementia eyes, the
bermuda triangle nose wetting the sky or low paws in june.

I could have counted the day's worth of clouds on my fingers
bending new in this altitude, I stood on top of everything

watching the black foreign Swiss butterflies, dodging and flirting
with my tired timber-line walk, I wondered if they recognized my accent.

The way you pull your steps mechanically and wondrously up a mountain's
softening face sometimes, it looks like you'll turn into the illusory

insignificance of the swallowed sun's blue- sometimes there's more
behind it. I once found myself close, though exhausted

telling myself I'll get to it next time I'm here
I wander off the trail or towards the most recent check-point and seeing

the way a sharp piece of rock lies familiarly, or how a waterfall almost falls
into nothing, I heard the bell on a cow swatting at all the flies by her eyes
nearby- I laughed and I smiled at the tiring of my legs full of new blood, again.

Spontaneous Writings Of Matt Brand 680

2011-06-26T13:12:00.000-07:00

pace of a hot day back home in summer, I imagine somehow

run the gas out,
leave it on the street and
run for somewhere unfamiliar
in this shrinking warmth of
barbecue haze and dust drying
painfully plainly against your skin.

let the radio guitars and the wedding
smiling ghost dog-walking
face lovers
kiss you to a daydream of easter-colored smiles,
airplane written sheepishness.
walk back and pause at a doorstep.
breathe this lazy free cotton candy twilight
while you can, water's warm and everyone
waits with their pathetically cute
aprons and saved up gas money.
let the beer go flat.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 679

2011-06-24T15:39:00.000-07:00

How to make eggs perfectly

How to make eggs perfectly
is this:
take the morning for a hidden rock
for skipping- measure it
in two fingers, knowingly against the sun-
no one needs to see this.
cast it aside for coming back
to this point, wake up the cats,
wherever they may be- nothing for
a movement to the store or a new home,
just put on a cheap album and
dance enough to make them stare through
you like the coagulating whites of eggs
made perfectly and slowly by yourself or
piss luck, do it in the night. Until you stain
your shirt and forget yourself
to shower, you are nothing for moments.

It's summer, there will be the competition of the cricket
dicks who don't know what 'shut the hell up you scared sack'
means so late. Take ten to twelve years back out
of your car, ignore the simple arithmetic or the panel of judges;
toss them like the sun's ashes of dried flower bookmarks,
or sand off of a good towel, the nice kind you don't take out all that often-
toss them with your iron-pressed regard and the hurried coffees.
they'll sparkle quickly like mists of gasoline
in between your changing eyes and the quiet city.
unfold fingers like perfected paper airplane designs-
breathe hard baked dirt mixed with the moon's grain whisking
into the seducing foreign waltz of wind whispering
into their thirsting roots the secrets of dying goddesses somewhere.
run away, the dying will follow and everything will make you
make love. hearing the widening eyes in the lunar halo
making peace with the thoughts of poison oak, mountain lions,
the red valley boredom rising. Dream of engagements
and forget your navel's running hairs by the last showing at dawn.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 678

2011-06-24T02:19:00.000-07:00

might range

reading and playing
the age old game-
I answered with my eyes closed
holding something behind my back in one hand
or the either (I won't switch it, swearing and honest)
black, even mane that's longer in the winter-
bold with a diet of crazy things fond under red rocks,
honey skies bitter and true over mint tea soaked
alone for days, made crazy and breath-taking
without the gods, so beautiful, true to no trails
known by word, I've seen her twice stealing sips and
looking out of one eye in my direction. Still uneven,
wrecked like the piercing mountains, beat orange
marble flesh broken and ignited in summers starved
hidden. always elusive and smarter than a man aging-
the west before
the towns got ghosted to me overseas.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 677

2011-06-24T02:05:00.000-07:00

it dances

we haven't drunk anything and
I, arrogant and young, could taste
and pick out a few things from your
eyes

unreal and devastating, sweet
mineral and hidden bouquets
underneath uncertain and chilled
presentation- two aged grapes
of pino, soft aging pitless
stirred and temperamental.

the thousands of houses turning on
and off so lately from the mountains
holding us closer, may in fact be a farce
majestic and demanding of more thought-
something we could laugh about down
the road. The coffee cakes at Alice's are
cheaper and correct at this time, around
the bikers' mouths exploding on fire in love
and inspired aloneness, speeds of comets by us
similar folk- mesmerized in slow marinades
of sugar and the can't yet put your tongue on feeling-
lychee or don't forget musk (strawberries kept wild)-
due graciously to forgetting,
time spent shared, free, and ignored
back into california nights- redwoods promise
they will turn them into sap, but the emptiness
of homes you can't shine with corner-store flashlights-
I haven't heard a word. Let's keep quiet, in our looks stolen
let us rush the mountains at vantage
of their sleeping backs, I haven't got enough to hold
us unknown in possibility ready to open.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 676

2011-06-24T01:46:00.000-07:00

decidedly

Entertaining, what I don't want
arms bent back so as to protect mine,
wading time in waters dark though unlike
the pleasure of night's soliloquy; someone
who in fact rejects the palm outstretched
in ether, gaseous unknown eternity,
being anything more I could laugh
and tease someone more knowingly
in youthful grasses with the tall weeds
lifting us, the bugs dancing and clinging on
to leg hairs and the stark nakedness of tanned arms' middles.

Rather,
looking into the things
that make the very centers of imperfect eyes frustrating
and demanding of worship in deserts
and feasts on breathes exhausted
dancing for the moon-
no reason at all. Needless
of locking doors, hiding footprints
from the rain, from tomorrow.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 675

2011-06-24T01:37:00.000-07:00

dust in the morning light here

the dust can feel
me watching it, quiet and behaved-
pieces of me letting go, as
if magnetized to teaching
or poorly written lessons keeping
me guessing, as over fortune cookies.

in the revelation of the sun
I see them- dud fireworks,
microscopic and horseback going nowhere,
confused knots of goosefeather or skin
stuck in between a sunlight window
like dead histories in sweet amber
inescapable, in gusts I can't yet see
levitating ballrooms, colossal fountains
of stars and driving outwards towards
the mountains- to become more.

the door is locked, and I won't move
for at least half an hour; I don't need
to count the clock or daydream too
out the window, to learn
how weightless we came
into being
outside
of ourselves. Vicious twirls,
constant lifts, departure kisses
before more flights; the lingering
and looking at everyone, small
distance
relativity.
It's only morning.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 674

2011-06-24T01:14:00.001-07:00

stretch

the sand, like a daydream held balanced
in a hammock- distant and perfect,
is just that: misnoted and relaxed like
backs of knees folding and unfolding
on a bed, careless at small work
when all day, like a newborn's weekends or teenage-
summers are somewhere close.
scents of local elderflower perfumes,
truffle dishes, and the dried sweat of labor past
swifts by you in these thin mountain streets
by the lake; by the quiet stones like pictures of corrected teeth,
perfect, everywhere and soft like the small of backs
in cold air with two creme-spoons full of moonlight
dripped and evened over, I can let wind use my body
to change form or pattern. Imagining
the lovers as quantities of clouds
close, illuminated, disappearing
(never downpouring except when necessary,
of course) I feel the smallness of my feet
which stopped growing four years ago,
their humble power, having been
intoxicated in the painful releasing
of the ghostly parts from
here to there, just the thought
making them stretch.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 673

2011-06-23T14:16:00.001-07:00

The artist

The artist
in a necessary break

relieves himself in the restroom; his dying young body pushing itself outwards
like a tube of paint ending, he sees this and cries
wanting to rue his work. He of course must
continue to paint, for a beautiful immortality imagined,
and that is all.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 672

2011-06-21T14:38:00.000-07:00

id moves

Did I regress
standing on the beach
looking into where I couldn't
stand- wanting to eat every
sunset like a child trying
the flavors of a house.
Did the seagulls ever realize
how we all told them to
fuck off at times, or did they
stick around for their own needs,
to spite us, laughing obnoxiously;
I think I'd like that more. You get
to thinking a good or entertaining
thought, like how the clouds'
underbellies could make perfect
candles for a homemade birthday gift
later down the road when age allows
things like us to be cute again;
and then as if to keep us on our
toes in the sinking sand's irony against
us- a pattern of playful waves become
out-shown by one of greater size,
and the thoughts must vanish or erode,
or get pulled out with it. The emotions always
tugged like that; I remembered my shark
dreams, or the way it's blue forever when looking away
from the shore underwater. I wondered
what the world would taste like,
or better- look like, aging
if it were completely underwater,
I can only ask-

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 671

2011-06-21T14:05:00.000-07:00

walks back

I forget my age
when I chewed the yellow-flowered
weeds (or suburban wildflowers),
the ones the adults warned
us, were pissed on by the neighborhood
dogs. I knew how to go crazy and
be smart or in the house at the right time;

I forgot most of the adventures
into this moment, except
for the one where my best friend and I
got ice cream listening to our punk rock
on CDs, how I gave the girl with the good taste
in music, the book on writing
because she cut herself, I didn't understand it,
and I wanted to kiss her the way one does when it still
seems something marvelous in jr. high.
I remember the smell of middle class barbecues for 4 or 5
at the time where the sunset went behind the San Andreas
and the stars started appearing like little futures, or hints
about what my parents do, what it felt like to plan.

My scooter never rusted, and that still amazes me.
The streets there are still silent, and I've never seen
the dogs, pissing as rumored
on the yellow flowers everywhere,
I guess I never knew how many their could be,
or what happens when I'm napping or remembering.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 670

2011-06-21T02:03:00.000-07:00

modern man's choir

The good boys here
were off themselves shouting
nearby over the football, the women,
the alcohol was never too expensive
and tomorrow had a trustworthy forecast.

All the churches in every corner couldn't
mean much of anything, these days
with the privatized women and their
womanized privates. With the
beautiful shining cows, the boots on the thrones,
the six arms to do as one wished them.

The poor mighty
drunkards, ever-knowning
amongst the starving
flies and sunburns on top
of sunburns, the toll of the beautiful
carefree and wet escapes.
They had hearts wrapped
in butcher's poetry, ink running
from the demanding tormenting Sun,
it's heat bleeding the lines into their
blood, splashing it like rotten diamonds
out of their mouth to give the tourists,
the rich, the young what they need
though sadly they sail past in the cocooned vessels.
The sensualists and romantics equal
in their failures, leave the body to rot-
never enough with the coming
and going of liquids, skins,
hair they grow out to remember
something, I force myself to forget it
and couldn't tell you the difference.

The cops don't let you lean up by the churches
here. So many people look up at the blue
forecasted skies or turn to eyes of sleep
as if they had the choice.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 669

2011-06-19T01:19:00.000-07:00

Having noticed

Having noticed the time of day
and here, I
saw it all ever
matter of fact like
a trick candle planted
in your birthday, a mesmerizing farce
a waltz
grasping your surrender
with ease.
The footsteps of the dancing women
leaving melting manna residue of melting poetry amongst the overpriced
imported cigarettes in between
the tired
cobblestones of sunset.
The town tries on types of light and
noises oscillating,
like a collection of cheap wedding dresses.
The thin legs, and such vulnerability under the stone
walls where blood moves like warm comets
or escaping electricity
beneath the summer's first suns.

A thought of you unknowingly
after time past arrives subtly between
glasses of wine as a discrete salmon back up stream.
Where have you been, while the people
eat their meals and leave
over here-
sleeping I presume, or dreaming
I received your butterfly movement in the
generous summer breeze, relieving.
Farniente and wise self-interest
battle me from going back to the china doll
shops back in California. Your skin reappears
on the women of Italy, slivers of
past and the future nostalgia recalibrates.
I pay for another glass of wine
and let the sun do as it will for now.
My car is thousands of miles away.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 668

2011-06-19T01:18:00.000-07:00

Station in Milan

I expect
in moments,
harmless and playful to see
you
amongst the arriving
european women with
still young and lively breasts
galloping in their hurrying pace
like puppies or future children
happy to see me; with
your face aglow like a lite-brite
board in front of my grown young eyes.
the caffeine feels good in me,
the symbols settle away into the low
train tracks, the mysterious sacks
of so many festering, fascinating, strangers
going nowhere quickly. I want to
yell harshly, to bite your neck,
to escape death and its illusive byproducts
cloaked as our purposes in this quickening
ephemeral play. The pigeons fly
around near my feet, how they
too got here is beyond me. I rise
make eyes with those
young and in line. I board
a train south
willingly.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 667

2011-06-02T13:46:00.000-07:00

Moment

I entered the cinema with a scratchy throat and fatigue;
the movie was half decent, I exit- you can only exit out the back entrance,
walking down the alley I feel amazing. I am here, and each hand-laid brick in the road
is its own moment. I approach the carousel after the fountain. A little boy
rides a stationary motorcycle, his young mother talks to him smiling.
A young girl on a fake horse. Me on the bench; the world tilting,
I have time to breathe and it all makes much sense again,
being away and watching.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 666

2011-06-02T13:38:00.000-07:00

after dinner walking back to the apartment

the french
girls in passing
clouds of unknown
perfumes and 3€ rosés

for once I
don't
even look,
and my
young man's
dick rests
comfortably
asleep in my jeans,
having found
sweet makeshift contentment.

streets continuing
with or without
me walking, looking-
the loud mouths
trying to prove,
the nervous girls
magically balancing
purses like boys
in the folds of their arms

the men, broad
or clueless
with women,
who need
one more
drink.

the old retiring from
meals, finishing their
cups of coffee,
folding hands over one
another's. peace in
residencies away
from down town
where youth goes.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 665

2011-05-25T13:09:00.000-07:00

moving shoes

moving shoes
around the places
I stay at when I'm not
wearing them or anything
sometimes, it'd be
best barefoot, the immediacy
escaping sweet overripe truth
or tied responsibility.
Thinning soles,
old traded for new,
money emptied somewhere
in the big factory since
evolved; haven't tripped
much since I was younger.
It's more so in the look,
feeling arrives much more
over time, with the dust,
the wear, the surrender just
because.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 664

2011-05-25T13:04:00.000-07:00

perspire

fuck it;
bellies of wine, cakes, unknown fats
pulsing through sleep, moments
of sweet orgasms spent all day in bed
because we can at this age, like
babies in the wombs of old apartment
buildings sitting in the noise of
the city like an overgrown park.
the men below play pétanque without stop.
All the girls on the bridge walking, alone
or giving me new looks.
our hands sweat in the hot summer sun
rising, leaving too soon
I said fuck it-
one more before
it's over.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 663

2011-05-25T12:59:00.001-07:00

careless

the way she brought lazy afternoon
me on the bed
a spoonful of frosting,
so sweet and
reminding me of being young,
willing to do such things ipso facto.
I could have cared less about the chocolate stain
she accidentally left on my white shirt,
with her blushing childish glare of guilt
afterwards. lingering;
night falls hours later,
I type and the last of sunlight
holds like a stain, a liquor, or a blush
of day's secrets against the Fouvrière.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 662

2011-05-24T08:07:00.000-07:00

Lyon

i could drink
the Rhône and all
Lyon's past-bedtime lights
dancing drunkenly in her
waters, her flowing digeo of
forever. had I not be watching
from the balcony; love-making
to be had behind me over
and over. The city lives and I
am found again, nothing though
humbling musing fraction released
amongst it
all.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 661

2011-04-25T13:34:00.000-07:00

sweetly, cute and ugly

sweetly, cute and ugly
the sweating alcohol,
most visibly in your dirty
blonde hair sticking together
as us,
in migration patterns
for mating and moving
to nature's jazz,
(balkan and dance)
music. old familiarity
of songs, and returns
for high-eyed-closing
to save something in time;
our young egos
awhirl as oil and
lacking water
until they separate in time,
into dehydration by morning.

out-of-tune
drunken singing never sounded

so innocent and memorable
so late, chasing the moon away.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 660

2011-04-18T14:41:00.000-07:00

park

tattoo ideas
undreamed things;
get me out of the pool,
I'm going to run
up the trees, the mountains,
I've eaten this night, speechless
and starved. falling into the void
as everyone positioned perfectly
for new tans,
otherwise words likes shower water
move like sperm down their bodies,
their hair

shining nowhere we'd know
had it not arrived as it does.
no fucking idea what moves.
I bowed

into impossibility.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 659

2011-04-17T13:38:00.000-07:00

5

I was
in the moment, and nearly
accidentally forever- in life
something growing towards
maybe infinity;
the opposite of snow
in the city; the explosion
in symphony breaking defines.

arriving
words like ripe fleas,
uncalculated springtimes,
romance incidences,
freckles landmined by
(eternity if time existed.)

Everything waited for me,
naked sprawl under crisp
covers past time when the world
slept. It was intoxicating and
the rest of my life.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 658

2011-04-17T11:16:00.000-07:00

Separate

caramelizing separate
from others, it was
me and the car in the sun
moving around the world so fast, in these french mountains.

villages undressed my dreams for the world,
embarrassing me of the future, the intimacy.
trees on every side of the roads staring at me, as back
in California, with nothing but acknowledging
the current they know soon to repeat.
years until, what a grand machine,
springs and screws lost to me
younger becoming anything
but fooled, the sun made
my eyes call back the lost
moments in foolishness

such a dance, having done nothing
it was erotic with myself and with time,
the rush of becoming
away.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 657

2011-04-17T11:10:00.000-07:00

I know

I know
I drank
the wine, alone
with the park,
the night,
the city laughed
and tried sweetly,
admirably to understand myself
so late, like the usual drunk
at the bar.

Not tonight,
the flower shops were closed,
the grocery stores with their familiar cashier girls
too. New streets wanted me,
I wrote my name everywhere-
I could have cared less-
cars became sparse and motionless
as the infesting stars.
The gutters and others
lost soon before bed,
all of it too beautiful
and obtained like the rest,
too bad.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 656

2011-04-16T16:39:00.000-07:00

big loon bigger

I might have
been seen,
in passing under
the bridge over
the french rivers-
far too frigid to
step toe into-
I was there
to find bats;

not knowing
if such things are indigenous,
artforms, wives tales
for the future,
after flights.

luck wasn't a topic
I talked about,
leaving it with times of
churches, daydream afternoons-

getting lost and new roads behind
cold, erotic, nevermind buildings,
dark anythings, and maybe bats
were the new times that
slowed me down they way you get
sober in the night with just
wind's movement and thoughts
moving.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 655

2011-04-14T11:59:00.000-07:00

the smell of meat

the smell of meat
cooking, the caffeine
leaves me soon
like a proper young
lover from the field
taken unknown,
maybe in the night or
under the moon when
all the butcher is alone
and crying; accordion
pleas echo between
cities like drunken cats
fighting, crickets drooling,
or the moon conducting.

flocking, lining up,
noisy, sad, bowls of milk
half-drunk and left for
washing by morning;
sad fun so-what kind of
unsatisfiable hunger

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 654

2011-04-11T15:53:00.000-07:00

inappropriately springtime

too,
the sound of my urine free-falling
at the constant of the same familiar
gravity into but one of hundreds of my
used toilets in
the world sounded
out of time.
the water's eternal acceptance
and silent awaiting since
the exciting dawn of childhood
when I could first stand,
it rests. but
the light and the hours have changed a bit,
it's inappropriately springtime
and I had to turn the clock I've been
using on my cell phone,
backwards.
I'd prefer it the other way, but sometimes
the trigger of nature brings you to the young-
shrug of surrender.

One and a half months left in the
unfortunately grown familiar,
newness. the freedom burdens
at the unripe age of recent
becoming unto myself.

the usual sleep awaits,
it is too late in the night
and I want to wake earlier lately.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 653

2011-04-05T15:26:00.001-07:00

get at me

Get at me with the wine,
meet at the base of the mountain
and let's hike for the morning
(some find it the best time, though
I find you've had nothing until afternoon
is shared) get drunk sweet and simply
like the sparse clouds, the way spring begins
matter of factly, just when you stop complaining
about the weather; this was perfect,
mouthfuls of yesterdays spent thousands of
miles below and elsewhere, you and I
who the fuck knows anyways.
This will disappear soon enough,
empty bottles in the mind's rich fermenting
dump seeping into days of relaxation, pleasure,
and wondering where more we could have hiked afterwards.
not everyone believes in erosion, you know
for most a few steps are enough;
but I say forget the trails
let's get lost while there's still enough
light to feel secretly safe, away from it all
and the rest of time.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 652

2011-04-03T14:54:00.000-07:00

Half-time

Soccer highlights, this
late in the night; who
would make it into the last
emission? Who's play
in the silly shoes,
or after taking off their shirts
in the shadows of glory
and erupting excitement
would not compare to all
other highlights here on out.
Will things diversify in the next
ten or twenties years of play
before retirement?
With no referees or
publicity the star is
condemned to determine.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 651

2011-04-03T14:50:00.000-07:00

patting

Today, how great
it became from the late
waking up, trust me I didn't
want it that badly; all the women
and men alike, pregnant
and sweating with hot blistered
smiles over their faces, kissing
ferociously like the summertime
or children playing sports. hands
enveloped, coffees made perfectly,
new books started, old ideas and
the world was winning hard and
obvious.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 650

2011-04-03T14:40:00.000-07:00

pushing

I wish there was a desert
somewhere closer to here.

It's no matter
of quietness or scenery;

the symbolism has that
need to simply be

stark and blending in
with surroundings though

rudely naked; a bad haircut,
a better knowledge of foreign laws

for the breaking and
fun of being terrified and new.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 649

2011-04-03T14:34:00.000-07:00

power

Eyes into mouths have lately
be competed by broadband;
once...twice...
(sometimes, not often in France or other countries
with the face and unevolved social congruencies) a third time...
spaced out by glances away, reposturing, the ceaseless
pretending to have something of more importance
than the purpose
on one's mind-
time distorted,

it's too bad.
connection lost in the cafe,
the train, the storefront.
new times.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 648

2011-04-03T14:30:00.000-07:00

a minute

nervous in the covered wagons,
the women and the children-men
waited for weekend's moonshine

to arise into conversation
or not have
wonder what they can
or cannot receive
out of a conversation
irrelevant to survival.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 647

2011-04-03T14:26:00.000-07:00

shift

Trying to avoid
the rain forced my hood
over my hardly styled hair, a woman

well fifty yeared more than
I was that day, looking up
as she raked the leaves
in the rain herself, to smile

at me, as not many of the locals
do let alone with each other.

the walk grew shorter,
and I wasn't much of a personal
meteorologist any longer.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 646

2011-04-03T14:18:00.002-07:00

tell me about it

In between sips of the beer
growing flat in the late afternoon

like us, I remarked
'no one ever cares

to ask where the sun-
drunk cars tiredly disappear to

at this hour.' whoever I'm with
might respond as we always easily do,

looking at someone walking by us or
they might think about it

which we find easy to do in rarer days
of comfort or authentic

excitement, like in a classroom:
'Well everyone's got a dinner
to make or think about around this time;

there's only so much gasoline
on a weekend y'know?'

the weekend too came to an end
with beers and the poor

conversation as ambiguous as the world could be.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 645

2011-04-03T14:18:00.001-07:00

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 645
sunstream

running through
the streets with the
squirt-gun generation
naked and desperately
remembering the feeling
of fear and other peoples;

all the big ugly noisy people in love
lost in other places and walking by
me in mine. the books leaking coffee,
years moving into foundations
of a personality of a woman,
into the toenails and split ends of a house;

careful not to keep my cellphone in my pocket
as of late, been searching for the map
I buried in my childhood backyard as
an naïvely and honorable sign of parting;
and I hear not being mindful of it
can kill off your future children
in one way or another- who knows in this zig-zag
towered circle of lights and addiction, for

this world, the running out of things
to manage one's worries, it's supposed
to be better if you're the better sap
stuck behind
winter glasses they say.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 644

2011-04-02T17:51:00.000-07:00

timing

cut in half sun-
setting slow pink
burning lips parting
ways into
never ever again
goodbyes, and
tastes you'll never
have outside
each country

unless
something
vague
unthought
and always
was/is
shot
before the night
arrises

and continues the dancing.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 643

2011-04-02T17:46:00.000-07:00

clearer grasp

A new book, the ink
fucked up somewhere
and there's that trick with patience
I've yet to finish outlining.

Needs for a cover
persist, the pushing
writer's block on the
tram, daily walking
by all the beautiful
and nervous, equally
women and young women
alike; harder to tell where the relation
is to the plot lately.

Eventually everyone wants the chapter
where they can swear
the secrets backwards laughing,
catch the details of personal
relation; dance with the universal
truths moving from their closing
eyes into reflection and somewhere deeper
that's beyond the birds.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 642

2011-03-31T16:20:00.001-07:00

of course

things that leave,
through either the feet or the penis.
directions of forward and outward-
but nothing to grab,
and that is often good.

Hands
lately feeling
better for letting go,
forgetting
touch, though needs
reminding from the
social side of the animal;
if that is what
we are.

The way music sounds
makes the lostness break
more like a sunset, or bottle
of champagne lightly under
pressure of night, alone
perhaps, though waxing
the future dives up into
the air the mind breathes;
a swan or a cloud, both solidify
but lifespans are things of more difficult placement,
admittedly.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 641

2011-03-28T16:11:00.000-07:00

no settlements abroad

Wipe my whiskey
lips off of last week end's
dense rock; I'm not
the hungry rabbit type
so take your vegetables
to your room, unless
you're starving
too (I know)

I've got better
tomorrows telling me
to get to sleep. Habitualize
the future
romanticizing before
the dreams blossom;
smiling middle fingers for everyone,
sweetest blessing- muscle
quake alone and out of the rooms.
Exercise without the world
and be wholesome with it again.
Iron, meat, breath; bpm virtuosos.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 640

2011-03-25T18:25:00.001-07:00

Wellness

And oh
all the women
I have fucked,
refused to
or even made love to

either sad and alone
or fucking relentlessly

what dichotomy,
the beautiful boredom
of everything I have seen
or undressed afterwards,

The way they all take so long
to put on their make-up
or try to delay love
the morning after-
so poorly acted
and amateur,
the girls

who do not know
that it is not the having
of sex which makes
a woman
after a woman.
But the space,
the placement,
the lostness otherwise.

Poor girls.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 639

2011-03-18T03:32:00.000-07:00

Swimmer's Guide

Catch us
barefoot
alone with
no other responsibility stock holders;
the government's asleep with belly's
full of their rich dumb scotches.
the cities all follow, but we tell them like house pets,
hushed and apologetic, they can't tail-end
us here.
the air and playback of time has some
dancing to do, while we get the beautiful distraction
into a möbius loop
of touch, solipsists' disproof, and to be
seen over and over at very close proximities-
nearly inexistent, or more so
than all times prior.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 638

2011-03-12T14:50:00.000-08:00

waiting for drowsiness

It's growing silent
close to midnight, though
only if you are
close to the center of the room-
otherwise the drunks, the youth
invade through the window cracks
and the moaning old walls of this town.
I wonder how quiet is across the river,
in the mountains where the trees have
just themselves, their romantic discipline.
I wonder to tell in time myself
why pants are plural
how best we got lost
and other old tales that grow
before we fall asleep.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 637

2011-03-08T00:24:00.000-08:00

what must happen

forgetting

and allowing

all the time to

explode as it

lay, and fair

nothing. is

what will

be remembered.

forgetting

and allowing

all the time too.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 636

2011-03-06T16:35:00.000-08:00

Afternoon; written on a short tram-ride

babysitting all day–

the mind

like a stubborn

homesick child

trying

to run back to

this morning with you;

ways to relieve,

the night's worries rising on the horizon

to push the sun jejunely away,

I need not.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 635

2011-03-04T17:24:00.000-08:00

to carry

breathe and let

go, about all the

neo-buddhist had

and needed

to give

if anyone else/

having desired,

because we all know- he didn't.

€100 is equivalent

to $140, the amount it costs to carry

the sustenance.

6 bottles of sustenance, 3 for me

3 to pay forward without empty pockets.

two times the perfection, pouring by the human

mouthful from that mistook for imperfection.

One may reduce the fuel

for the modern quality of memories in one

location for a month

in order to improve

their longevity afterwards.

The taste remains either way,

introduction contre amplitude;

the mind remains,

though the hands of the tongue,

the feet-

juggling watches for

time wasting, to be sure.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 634

2011-02-25T15:48:00.000-08:00

obtenir; or clichés

A buddy told me,
he feels too young to call himself an adult,
and yet can't recognize with any yesterdays.
Evident bulshit, I assured myself.

I'll have to give up my 'youthful enough to die young' card soon,
I got a letter in the mail about it recently-
ignored it. Like all those clichés that thousands
of lunches with grandparents, pep-talks with elementary school basketball coaches,
and façades of the strange glowing media have planted
so carefree

in my head years
and years ago,
only to blossom
now; several a year.
The age of progressive
calming, of exciting
strife to boredom
of exploding
into the afterglow.

It doesn't matter how many people don't get it. It matters how many people do.
I want a range life, if I could settle down. If I could settle down, then I would settle down. or the grass is always greener.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 633

2011-02-22T12:50:00.001-08:00

ends of butterfly wings

time no longer

was something,

but that which we could

play with,

delicately like hypothetic rice-paper

wishing itself into nothing, as before

birth, until it is just us.

sometimes it watches, tucked

in between the other dimensions

of the blinds; where dust gathers.

Easy to forget or lose, like the one

sock we couldn't find, into playful infinities

with our words and recollections; the stories

too will leave.

skin erases perfectly,

breaths enchant, and

the soft mountains of noses,

breasts, magmatic lips-

baptize more sweetly into ends of butterfly wings;

escaped light-

nowhere.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 632

2011-02-22T09:23:00.000-08:00

enjoy yourself,

the big calm

of nothing;

vanishing, cadabraing

out of the stadium, and oh

the the colossal cheer of nervousness, echoing nailbites.

I found old shoes in the gutter, having fallen

from the telephone wires (collapsed)

for myself again; the excitement

of always having a place to go; ignoring clouds,

the birds; their gawk or encircling in the evening-

watch their shiver, it's not so foreign to the aging eye.

wave away the queens,

the crawling battlefield jesters;

pissing on the side of the towers, with grinning

against the woods- pen-palling

long nights; the laces you need not

tell anyone.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 631

2011-02-21T11:06:00.000-08:00

leave with me; the night

with a full tank of gas

and no where to go,

I felt

we were infinite.

so deciding to finally

(what relief!)

act naturally,

the night took

us into the great dance,

we fell slower

into something outside of town-

the silence seemed dream-esque

and the unplanned-for-fog like a secret oak kept our secrets to age

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 630

2011-02-19T09:27:00.000-08:00

langue

opening her mouth

speechless something

I told her how nothing is more

sexy to me

right now

than the different ways

mouths from thousands

of miles undreamed- here

move; constant surprised

delicacies, folding, purposefully

tumbling, weaving, undressing

my past twenty years of anything.

the kind of thing that makes any song sound different;

a dream machine,

the hidden siren;

the local undiscovered-

present acquaintance.

the french tongue.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 629

2011-02-19T07:26:00.000-08:00

Boredom Eraser

not needing

any drugs, or more

than a few hours around

dusk- now

it feels

I could move you into

a desert to make love,

but be quiet;

shut up everything but

the stars from this height

are no one else; nothing known.

Time, naked and bashful, sits still around our

unraveling plans stood strange in two bodies.

The city looks forever

below. I can reveal you

something about the overwhelm

of emotions to disappear moment's space

later. And there's an 80% chance

I'd be telling the truth,

anything else has become boring by this age;

remain this restless desire

to do something with the moon.

and leave, of course

but maybe not.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 628

2011-02-19T07:23:00.000-08:00

late

having

dranken enough last night,

the couch felt too comfortable

and the afternoon missed me

bad. music evaporated in

the apartment seeping through the walls

to catch the end of the sun.

flip the beds upside down

ignore the bathroom

and make a run

for anywhere west.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 627

2011-02-18T09:13:00.000-08:00

playing with hair

playing with hair

in tattooed tombs,

maybe soon towards

gambit parlors or holy

rooms to forget;

bitches' feasts-

I've oscillated.

look,

everyone's lips move differently

pushing divine noise

like breakfast crumbs

for savoring or brushing.

make sick all over

or asking for seconds

alone

by the end of nights'

ends.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 626

2011-02-16T16:36:00.000-08:00

new ears lost

Perhaps most of all

it was Love's

Forever Changes

playing in the cheap french automobile;

the playful seduction of darkness on night's autoroute;

the speeds unknown from the comfortably sardined backseat;

the coincidental full moon like a lost family photo found in a spring cleaning;

the being

nowhere

the feeling

of everything all

at once;

it was the familiar

and new horn

in Love's

Forever Changes,

short and observed,

tucked away in a back seat.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 625

2011-02-08T15:02:00.001-08:00

cork

time difference
minutes away;
waiting to uncork
new ideas,
tricks to undo
you into intimacy.
daydreams
of blissful laziness.
15€ bottle of bordeaux
comme confiture, people and time
into that and this,

a nice cheese,
maybe a flower for fuck's or life's sake;
a pack of your favored Lucky Strikes.
You're French,
I'm trying
and nowhere felt
so good
as this maybe soon
or never,
before time turns.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 624

2011-02-08T10:08:00.000-08:00

tutoyer

step-counting before
new shoes wear in, I was
told, is something best
left untouched. Hard particles,
melt fond(ly) over
time; one follows the other,
vice versa;
and comfort is reached

though too
the two
disintegrate past comfort;
feet outgrow though
need to be taken

out for a stroll, regardless.

Spontaneous Writings of Matt Brand 623

2011-01-25T08:54:00.000-08:00

rappel

-Many the poor mind had compared lovers to opposing magnets; if that were the case, one of us was flipped upside down after the liaison laid to rest. And now we find ourselves in that awkward afterwards in which there is no pulling force, just two magnets try desperately to resist the other as the need for sex forces us together against the majority of our will like the stumbling hands of some curious plump boy in the back row of a jr. high science class.