P says I play an idiot in my head.
P could be several men I have loved, or a father, or the father.
P could be a pea.

S says it has always been a terrible moment.
S says something about Brecht, about that pink crowbar
we all hide under our hair, the utility of art.
S’s face is timeless—found gathering wildfire in the mountains,
dragging local legs through a swamp.
            It is my favorite sort of woman-face, S’s.

P too says something about writing. A nudge, he says.
And then a little bit of the present. Shake it all up.
I like how P thinks about a poem. Immortal(ized)
for a terrific moment—like a deep downy laugh.

But P is a dick.

S says the terrible moment could be the poem,
              the caustic and lettered body.
S turns her beautiful face down when talking, staring
supreme holes into the Platonian ground.
She, S, goes on and on and before we all know it
S has written a codex of poetica.
            Every sound illustrated with a shaped petal.

I research piston and perennial and tepals and coronate
and salverform and galeate and still
I can’t read S’s immaculate poem.

S says to use my other eyes.
P says good luck being born.
S says everything only to the great ground.
I says the making is over and nothing replaces that moment. Ever. 
I says the terrible moment is after the making.

Unless the terrible moment is P.
P is such a dick!

Unless S thinks the poem is trash.
Then we all burn ourselves for the art of it.