Poems.
Focus Lost
i spent the day in margins, trapped!
where words can't go on fear of death
like being pushed off the edge of the linear world
and the daring interjected thoughts that try
risk certain peril at perforations and holes.
instead of noting the way to conjugate the past participle
of george washington's wooden teeth he lost
in the parabolic war of 6.02 x 1028
and other such pressing matters of wordly concern
words collide and make way, scribbled down lines apart
and on slants so as not to impede the artist
as he draws curled blackblue seahorses with
suspension bridge dorsal fins down their backs
the artist writes his own name, over and over,
until it becomes lost in the abstract.
then he moves on to other innocuous words,
innocent passers-by of his vocabulary.
savagely stripping them of meaning
mouthfuls of symbols at a time,
in fatal stabs!
sidewise scrawls!
sloppy circular evisceration!
and so the author expends
his humble bic on unmaking the world
-----
the morning news
�Hello! Good morning! And wake up, New York!
Welcome and thank you and how nice of you to join us,
with sleep still gluing your tongue to your jaw and your eyes to their lids!�
�First we'll show you fields of color, swooping eager across
farm and city, traipsing over imaginary lines and into the
same patterns God or Coriolis decided when Earth was new.�
�Next we see the tallest brothel built to date,
another glorious show of American pluck and ingenuity!
Its roof wreathed in clouds, with an observation deck
and funnel at the very top, all the better to spit in the eyes
of the world below.�
�And with us now is some politician,
scowling and grinning at all the right moments.
Isn't his jacket well-pressed! Aren't his teeth
opalescent and even, you scum hunched over sticky oatmeal!�
�Don�t be cross, here�re schoolchildren all in a row!
Here�s an aerial view of arterial overpasses,
already clogged with industrious rats in the race!
Here is a picture of a whirling blue sky adjusted to fit your screen!
Don't bother looking out your window. We'll show you from above.�
-----
The Submariner
i am atlas pinned under at least a ton of atmosphere
it's here i see that air weighs more in the densest sigh
than twenty thousand leagues below where i'm a happy
minnow contented in endless currents drawn across
globes and the palms of my hands where a thousand
comets trace trajectories around tranquil space beside
crescent moons in my thumbnails that wax or wane
when bitten in thought or chewed while i sleep and dream
and turn to face the darkest space the room allows me.
-----
Heavy Industry
some people live their whole lives with a mouthful of soot
from licking clean the exhaust pipes in back of their head
where dreams deferred are sent, and the secret inevitable
things that become clear while you sneeze, and numbers
i hear in math too go tumbling down my neck, trailing off
almost harmlessly, leaving nothing but a residue of near
understanding and the place i fit in the pattern, and how
the world tesselates into itself to make room for us all.
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-home
--writing
all content (c)2006 seth matthew.