Sometimes I Sit And Think... / Declan Langton

Sometimes I Sit And Think And Sometimes I Just Sit

Declan Langton

After and for Courtney Barnett

When the sun shines in Newport, it makes me nauseous.

Eighty-degree day, I’m thinking about guitar strokes.

I passed out watching the band of brothers —

two banjos on stage.

The manager brought me water.

“Redheads shouldn’t be out in the sun.”

My face flushed and my hair just barely red at the time

I accepted the bottle and sat with my back against the fence.

Men crooned on stage. L

ater, a woman donning guitar and two men behind her.

Drums flaring.

Instead of lyrics she screams poetry.

Brown bangs pasted sweaty to her forehead. She’s the kind of performer who jumps from ledges.

Courtney, I wanted to tell you about her.

In my more aging days I want to ramble like her. Each feeling is encased in place.

I think I spiral as she does.

With Courtney, I get to walk down roads we’ve all seen

and tell you about the strip malls that we all know.

The coffee shop on the corner where people like me go to romanticize ourselves.

There’s a radiator that clangs in the winter. In the summer, an air conditioner

that pushes through its grates poisoned, green air.

Follow the road and one day you’ll find my house.

There isn’t much to know, beyond

the ghost of a mother and child that wander the rooms.

From the stereo emerges words and worlds I used to know nothing about.

Muttering: crunching guitars.

These old thoughts grow strong through art and visions.

I sit with the ghosts on the couch:

We listen, carefully — Courtney,

I wanted to tell you that I like your voice.

They way it floats against the walls.

Running up them, a hand dancing over a fretboard —

like pulling a pair of too-tight shoes over socks with holes in the toes.

Courtney, you make me want to pull plants from their roots

and run down the street in the summer,

no matter how hot.

In Newport, those roads are narrow,

but I think they lead to places

where heat won’t make me faint.