Assorted Poetry And Prose

Assorted Poetry and Prose By

Matthew p Holbert atrick

An Armageddon Assurance

We dreamt of sapphire dreams and kept them open To the notions that lay between them. There were no tantrums that would carry to a din, No weights that could betray our whim Nor where whistles blowing for the silence of our sin. We sat and wondered sleepily, how could the stars be growing? We men have said: “their hats would get lighter still, And she would a-sunder.”

1

Commune-ication

From the living moors of change that—

from the living light not shining through, to the living air that carries thick— from my senses bare and tender still, have brought my heart to beat its fill; the living mores of heavens sill have given life, my living will. Purposed sarcastically to shed light upon the fault of the conformism of peoples into cultures, traditions or philosophies of little merit. **************

2

Circles ever dying

Sea bells ring, the dawns not ready To signal shapes from shadows fell. The sacred source of ravens blood; Gulls left crying, feeding, sighing. New waves are ever churning steady; Old sounds are new, each time to swell. Tell fire gavels: the chance is good A new beast brooding, laying, dying. ************************************

Phoenix Child Give yourself a thought or thrice, For the life you had was paradise: Your youth, whence lies were but notions sin, And sin was but a notions din. Be not the years you’d lived before, Stead be ye whose heart is bore Of the day and the night whence dreams are forged. Be the phoenix from such ashen, gorged. I say: live your life, yet be not your child-self adorned, For life’s-color may be scarlet-beauty, scorned. Entangled so, let thoughts untwine All memories of pain and pine. For love will come on the whispering mire Whose call is lost to the listening liar. ************************ 3

Spelling bee Champion Me and the other riff raff of seventh grade spelling bee and chess champions Hitched a ride to the eighth grad dance where wallflowers weren’t welcome. I saw the girl I knew in sixth making out with the kid I knew in shop, I saw a girl who looked like a pregnant mother in ten years alone, dancing. I saw a gay boy talking to girls about how much he wanted to love them. I saw my shoes going far into the dance floor of parable decadence, Into the folding chairs that I knew only to mean diligent listening of bullshit teaching. Mr. Doesn’t-care was watching while my friends groped their partners And he watched as our futures were spent either doing junk or smoking dope. We, the seventh grade wallflowers were given our chance for glory. Spent it on a pack of cigarettes and an eighth of reefer from the future quarterback. I saw the eight-grade queen giving herself an abortion in the bathroom in ninth-grade study hall. Given a handshake an a promise of a kick ass party over at French’s, Given the love of people unbeknownst to me and unbeknownst to themselves, Given the boredom on a Sunday night that doesn’t end until tomorrow, I was happy to get them when I saw the face of my fellow laureate lover-girl. Hands firmly groping her white skin that makes me goopy on the inside, Nervous on the outside, and stupid on the conversation-side, but she doesn’t care. Her eyes make me want to confess all my dreams, and all my bad habits, All my secrets and all my falseness. I want to be naked with her and her only forever. I spent a whole Thursday wishing that it could be that way. Then I spent a whole Friday knowing that it couldn’t. I hugged her good by on a Wednesday, but didn’t want to let go. My chess games will never be the same. Pointing to the sky that burned like a cherry in the back alleys between hobo fingers, Where the eight-grade seems so small then big when we remember it; After hours and days that flow slowly into the next until you’re all grown up With no life, but the job you have, no personality, but the clothes you wear, Absent a place to go to drink like when it was illegal, smoke like when you were young, And missing the community of friendship on wasted weekends. Tired and alone, but still moving on, like the children of the lost generations, Lost culture, lost by the heads that talk, but don’t listen And lost to the mothers and fathers of a time, unknown and not cared about, But I don’t care about them because they don’t understand me I don’t give a shit if you were a kid once; you weren’t me when you were one. We are bliss on the highway. Road signs that show girls being ravaged in backseats, They look, but don’t see, I see, but don’t partake while the sun is setting faster. I remember the time my brother got me high in the back yard at three in the mornin’ When the blackness of the night, when the shining of the moon, glittered, silver-foil. All over again in a heartbeat as my lungs are caving in. I am every moment,

4

Every kiss in the front seat, every teacher in the second grade, every visit to the white – room hospitals that accept only those with money, and those with everything to lose, The times I felt love for someone, and the times I didn’t. The times I was loved And the times I wasn’t. I am every dream, every forgotten thought and word, The forgotten moments that die after happening. “Shoes that don’t fit will eventually, only when you’re little And love should be given to you until you can give it back, only when you’re young. Life is spent figuring out the mystery, only when you’re thoughtful, Though, time will be wasted, only when you’re living, But living can’t be wasted, unless you’ve spent it without giving.” (Something my mother told me when I was young. She was unconcerned with me for the father who was gay and unconcerned with his own children, until my sophomore year, which helped a lot, but not as much as if he had been strait, and not as much as if he had been a father from the time of my birth to the time I was a man, and on. But so it goes, and it goes farther than the horizon, past the sun until you reach either nothing or more than you could ever hope for.) In the post war, post hippy, post post, post etc., my heart dwindles at the thought that my life is unoriginal. But it wasn’t the alcohol, it wasn’t the dope, and it wasn’t the pot that slain my incandescent Summersville attitude, it was the silence of dreamers, the death of love, the death of poetry, the death of my brothers that were left on the embankment-side of life; I saw them crying in depressions, eating out of garbage pails in search of clarity, killing their love for a few dimes—made costly by their wonton: competition—I have seen children dead to the eyes of creativity, and numb to the touch of beauty and blind to her face, I have seen homeless men and women who carry a warmth in their sick hearts, greater than any CEO, or John Ashcroft, or Walker Bush could ever attain. Belittled by the cold rush of hot ash, my lungs beg me to give her one more drag and I deliver the embers sound to her beloved, afflicted, dying flesh—I cant stand to feel her pining—and as she cries blood-tar in ecstatic pleasure, she says, “Your death will be my release.” I saw through the glass of the windows, of the dance, of the children of the ancient peoples that bogard her limitless love, I knew that I could never go back, and that my hopeless nature as the loser of the bunch was sealed, I had no lover anymore, I had no secrets that needed telling anymore, and I had no money to get myself back through the doors, so it was. To the other floor, the floor of infinite possibilities, the floor that looks cracked by time, but it’s just cracked by over-use. But I didn’t care then, because I knew that I could find somewhere where the cracks weren’t so big, maybe not even there at all.

************************

5

Kill the mood sweet whisky Trysts of beached and branchless relationships have led my mind to call the tides insecurity for truth, but this old jug of liquid fire is melting glass so I think my craw needs a-wait f’r a-asking for. When I get the slur off my tongue, the day will be done And what happens tonight’s gonna kick my ass ‘til Tuesday. Goodbye worries; I hope to see you in hell on Wednesday. Let me sleep, or my dreams will explode into reality. Please.

6

************************** Untitled (We’re All Just Machines) We’re all just machines, bound for the train station that’ll hightail us out and over To the junkyard where we never sleep and the foundry melts us down to make room For the new undead, but non-living, to starve for what their computers say they need. But when you smile, your eyes show me that you have a soul inside that’s beautiful, And it proves my heart is something more than what the factory had made it for, That my love means something more than a series of chemical reactions in my brain, That the mornings and the nights we spent were worth more than we ever knew, And that you are someone more special to me than I have ever known. So, as we fly down the track of grayest metals and coldest weather, into the north country To God knows where to as the sun is at dawn and dusk at the same time; Remember that your heart doesn’t need to be held like coal, that your eyes are soulful, That someone somewhere thinks you’re more than a piece of electric meat, That I think you’re worth more than my life, —my holy hunk of steel—but don’t let that Get to your head missy. And that when we’re laid upon the cutting board To be scraped and melted down, I want to be laid there next to you To kiss you one more time, while I look into your eyes, searchingly.

7