Collected thoughts from this year so far. This is not a poem. Time is not a factor.

...

My first thought in the morning is always about someone else, and I think
I got this from you. It is okay. I want to tell you
Everyone's names. The names I can't tell you. 
The you changes. The I changes. The changes. I want to tell you
To continue to try, but I won't. I don't want to find God. I want to walk
Into post-blizzard summertime and find the fireflies still impossibly alive. I want the streetlights
To burn orange holes into the blue night. I want the poets to be safe. I don't want

...

I sat in the human prayer. The weather dripping from it. 
I sat melting and refreezing and melting and refreezing 
Until I wasn't snow anymore. The dead things began to make 
Sentences faster than I could find
The words for my absence, advising me, Tab to improve.
Make concise. I want to write a line so long it exits this plane. Linebreak. This grid of light. Could you
do exactly as you were told, full-throat exactly the correct language, and how 
long until you begin writing poetry when no one is watching. While somewhere in the world is already the rug that will hear my young father's guitar song, if not fully made, the half of it, if not the half of it, the thread, if not the thread, the great dream of it
In some machine's head. Or in the dreams of stars as M says—
Somewhere in memory, or already, the house on fire. 

...

All I have are these photos, and I don’t believe in photos anymore. I’m believing in God this year, the way I believe in poetry when it’s read aloud by someone to another and sitting in the sun. I saw that you saw that video too, and I wonder if we ever sat in the sun at the same time, and if even under the same sun, we felt it differently in our bodies. When I was fifteen the social worker asked my father how many times I’ve set fire to something. I wonder how many times I’ve sat in the sun at the same time as someone else and felt it in my body the way they feel in their body. 

…

In a world where no one believes in photos or videos, what is left but stories. Last year I would have written: In a world where no one believes in photos or videos, there are only stories, but I’m trying to reject the empire’s incurious certainty. I’m trying things for the second time. I’m still fighting with my parents. In this case "still" means I am now fighting with my parents. Not now. I have so many books to read, and I’ll write that I want to read them instead. I want to read them. I want to be able to love without getting bored. 

...

Today I met someone who was four months old; they were very pleasant to talk to. Today it wasn't January. Today there are too many words, but I don't want to share them with you.

...

Or the truth is, I have nothing to say. I have so many words, but. Listen. Sentence. Simile. Mill. Minute. Sinner. Eager. Awning. Anteroom. Snapshot. Too far. Rhetoric. Orbit. When the placard says this is a blue painting but is orange; who is the authority? The traffic lights are green to go but there's someone sitting in the street with their arms up. What good. I can give you directives. Get up. Stop this. Open your mouth. Open. Open. What if I wrote something sure and then the material world changed. What if I wrote and I wrote FACT FACT FACT FACT and then everyone and everything changed faster than our smallest value of measuring time. Is narrative the changing or the stringing together of each changed moment or the translation of the moments by people. Other people. Perfect translation. What time is it where you are.

…

The sun is a triangular lighthat: the authorities tell me
the sky is blue and ceilinged. What do you know.

In-
formation 

is easy, this is blue. This is how 
we treat each other.

...

I would have always left and be leaving that place. 

…

What I'm trying to say is that once you look at enough photos of random objects against a white background, you begin to see the people the objects belong(ed) to, and the rusted edge of the tub that the objects are being photographed in, and the soft blur of a hand in an innocuous corner. Does that make sense? People are so easy to love. What I'm trying to say is I've met you and that's okay.

...

Let's not speak. Listen. Look at me. What are you certain you see?

…

I am placing something real here so I do not pick it up again. Do not need to. 
Dear Something Real, live here under the winged angels
And flightless angels clicking moon-teeth, speaking 
With trellised intonations that rise before
Falling like someone you've met from the roof of the party.
This is a cautionary tale on battery. On handles
Of doors. On home and other things we all walk towards.
Walk with me in a perfect circle— I know. I keep demanding impossible things like a child.

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