A POEM IN PARTS

i.

I farm the most minutes between
holding everything in and held.
I break the season with this:
a limited number of days and the odd ones
cached for stimulation. Truck, truck.
Signaling for a deposit, here, and friendly.
It is now I’m asking for something: ask,
ask as a temporary immobility, a tattoo
affixed. As in a fixed-on gaze, bumbling. Bulbs
perennially. And here is where it begins
to be over: lift, lift. Am missing you soon.

ii.

I truck in parts for the floorshow.
Two parts with an axle-wagon in between,
A flat part for the feather-waggles.
I saw my grandmother lighting up.
Went far out of the way and sprayed her
with the objective lens. The Turning Leaf.
Never claimed to lie for her. Never wanted
her refund, her simulated motor skills.
Even when we tried to hand-me down,
Something went awry, something static
went along with the main bulk and shivered
everyone along the, just the backs of their knees.

iii.

Not the second time shin-leaning
and disc-like. Can slice through bone
to leave it roomier. I felt it was in the proper tone:
caveat as subtle as honey is a real meal. Just enough
yet hadn’t seen just her in days and mindful
a certain entreaty slipping through me.
Cannot answer for everyone; hadn’t yet
asked myself and now this crisp white
is a good half-way gone hints of grapefruit
and still the exact same relation to gall.
If you felt it there, then so did I feel it erring. Not
every single night we get to redouble the optics.

iv.

Doubled, doubled, and like a frond let
Down slowly on the flouncing. He was limbed
orangu, orange and tan and marked
Very peculiar around the ears. If it took
seven sets of termites, seven days to build
up the ruins, so might he look, constrained.
What I said to him might as well have never
It was undesirable, that urge toward aggression,
Not a real sense of anger you know, only next
The next thing I was going to and how it put me
Patterned, helical, never make it out.

v.

Fondly at first and finally a full rotation
beyond patience. Things done with firm intentions
and then undone all in the negative think-loop.
He desires the roundest things and she
has desires of multi-tubing all things a direct line
to her receiving station. It won’t sustain in this way
won’t. And it will make us all tired. I pitched this
way plus that that I might see it through. I left small bits
around the room that look and feel loving. I leave
and always near come back. Fresh for the next next.

(BJM odds, AF evens)