Patterns

Patterns of Reconciliation
Matt Mauldin
Copyright ©1993-2017 by Matt Mauldin
All rights reserved
Art by Robert ‘Bob Rob’ Medina
Layout and design by Sonny Kay
ISBN - 978-1-5323-5488-5
Published by Robot Enemy Publications

Part One
Status Interruptus
3

Introduction from the Prism of Past
I cut my teeth to attention deficit
impulses, and anxious shifts
To the tension soundtrack of hardcore
punk and manic thrash – all caustic assessments
Under the specter of Cold War arms races,
movies about the day after,
kids taking up arms,
or harboring aliens
Images of horror crudely circumscribed
in a cynical understanding of the future
void. Bomb threats were a supplement
to recess
Coming of age when the Berlin Wall toppled,
and slow currents of social justice swelled
and smoldered,
slow but steady like drought-ravaged green
in the Olympics’ basins,
so close to the sea
Informed and administered through a shift
toward unfiltered introspection
Carving out existence from a foundry
of conventional wisdom. I joined in around
the table to gain approval through osmosis
and relevant topics
Taking oaths in the cult of expectations,
with one eye toward knocking off
the proverbial chip, and one eye fixed
squarely on the past – hands steering away
Bought in on flawed premise,
in cynical acknowledgement
of the absurdity of burgeoning war,
and potential collapse
4

Cashing out – triangulating
what could be reconciled. Caving and carving,
but henceforth marrying what was saved
Finding hope in quasi-enlightenment forced
on the unsuspecting middle mass
Seeing the strain of humanity grappling
with the tilting axis to and from
its future, but finding
illuminations within the journey
This parting is a disturbance, an appeal,
a disappointment,
and an acknowledgement,
that the perspectives of past inform the future
more than they provide a cure
It’s a picture of the present
as much as it is the past
American Street
Summer’s writhing beauty,
grieving in isolation’s stain, paved over –
bountied thickets, turned earth,
fallowed fields
Pillars of stray sticks and clay
paths to the top. Unfettered in their view
of imagined decades
Bloody battles laid bare in pages
of the World Book
Statistics of the dead –
gruesome and grotesque,
bravely reenacted by boys on the street
Supply runs,
5

the exchange in Doraville – ‘Old Sarge’
Replica, semi-automatic, battery-operated M-16
charged soundscapes, flanked
in the woods behind our houses
Bunkered in camouflage gear,
with face paint sticks,
and hot water canteens
Go-cart trails across the street,
written in the trees,
too afraid to ride or drive, I’d watch
At the edge of a long backyard,
a creek dammed in piles dug out,
erosion of its banks,
attracting mosquitos, and the ire
of grandmothers
The street we’d roam,
packing Daisy pellet guns. Distressing friends
shooting at squirrels on power lines
Kicking fences of angry yard dogs
Spying and profiling,
across and between a ditch and some yards,
our tormented neighbor, brandishing,
and his idle threats
My older cousins played stickball
over Miller Lite in the backyard
of their bachelor house
Wiffle-balls wrapped
in black electric tape
Thrown heat, it would welt your skin
if pegged, your bare hands if caught,
off a wicked yellow plastic bat
A trove of dirty magazines in their front
6

athroom closet, not
just Playboy or Penthouse,
they had Genesis, Gallery and Oui
Taking one from the bottom of the pile
in my waist band, I’d sneak past
them and their friends, drinking
and talking about the lines on games,
calling their bookies
We traded baseball cards out of plastic sheets,
re-visioning series in the yard,
reimagining each future and past
season of major American team sports,
but not hockey or soccer
Night games of Capture the Flag,
epic in the darkness
with only one light on the street – pitch black all around
Explorations of the spring, the destination
of the neighborhood creek
A live crawdad was swallowed whole
on part of the journey
I blazed a trail, bionic speed,
over rumors of wild dogs,
all the way home
Summer’s blissful abandon,
rezoned for posterity,
its development passed
in memoriam
Capture the Flag
Who ever thinks the end is now?
Who ever thought a sleepover night’s game
7

was the last time I’d ever set foot in the neighborhood?
I set foot into a strange kind of time machine
It shrunk me away from you
It must have been a strange sensation
The nights so perfect then
Street lights’ pale yellow shine,
illuminating in brilliant bleak shadows
Explosions of voices speculating
on the whereabouts and strategies to breach them
Theorizing this rock would knock
some dude out of a tree,
who was so into the moment,
it was his everything
Lifetimes ago and beyond
any memory I could conjure again
Pages turn and then they burn,
you can’t go back and read the instructions
Control was just a thing,
the magnitude could not be fathomed
Beyond was another night altogether,
never to be imagined
Yet there it lied, residing
just around the proverbial corner
I got lost there, my friend,
and I regret not getting back to you
No Funeral
I’m compelled to remark about timing
as much as anyone we’ve known
After twisting years of this, I’m convinced
that there’s no such thing as order or organization
8

My high school friends watched me tie the knot
one Saturday between school days
I was sixteen
Late one night at a party thrown
by the employees of a local Taco Bell,
I was sneaking around
behind my parents’ backs
The first taste of freedom that summer unbinding
Fucking for a blind moment too long
on a rubber that traveled in my velcro wallet,
just a few salad days too long
With a girl who needed anything I could give her,
and I needed someone too
Somehow discussions turn in circles
How could we be parents?
It wasn’t a question
Her home broken into pieces before we met
She told her aunt and her uncle, they said
the only logical choice was to abort,
“You’d never even have to tell his folks”
But how could she give up something she’d always needed?
My mother had tears in her eyes for three straight days
She’d never known what teens would do
My father was silent, he said nothing
They were good Christians and what else could they do?
They offered us one choice,
it was their help for our matrimony
And there it was,
a sixteen and seventeen year-old,
with my shaved head and her nose rings,
9

exchanging vows at a church on a sunny day
in the October of my junior year
I was back in school on Monday
Peroxide
She’s like a clean window,
so easy to see right through
Fragile as the glass that breaks,
the fragments draw the blood from you
The glass that shatters
so violently when provoked
by the pressure of an iron truth,
the damning of an unsettled doubt
You are naked by a window,
broken into pieces,
all that anyone can see
is the cut and bloodied skin
While they’re holding one another,
a sorrowed song is sung
ringing through the ears
of anyone who hears the screams
I’ve got a cold heart,
hardened as a stone,
because stone is the only thing
that can’t be torn away from me
I’ve got a blind line of sight,
because hindsight burns my eyes,
and I am seeking out
the comfort of a worn conclusion
10

Livid Step
Everything is a reminder,
a flickering candle, a photograph
of a light that would reside,
that would call out to you
In light, in darkness too, a reminder
It eroded, it dwindled
into the deepest depths of a spirit
One day you will know
Oh child, be patient
There’s something waiting for the clutch of your hand,
your heart too
Darkness can’t reside,
it just can’t live here anymore
It’s something to let go of
Flush the spirit, cleanse it
There are reasons for this, oh child
Be patient and realize it
Without a Day
Somehow your first taste of blood
is an initiation. A cold hard truth
you live with
You nor I will ever forget
how momentous it felt to step over,
to only fall
I know all too well
how far I’ve fallen, how deep I’ve swam,
because I’m drowning
11

You know all too well
because your heart is lifeblood,
saving me
I hope this is redemption,
or something close, because
this is all I have to offer
Everything that’s said, glances met,
every solitary moment,
means the world
Breathe Again
In the corners of my eyes
breathes again
an apprehension that corners
my movement
The lid has been removed,
and the contents left on the table –
saturation
Can you pick up the pieces?
Can you forge a meaning
in a puzzle for which you’re constantly throwing
away the pieces?
You can burn them,
but they’ll never go away
You can run,
but they’ll always follow
Like the vision in the corners of your eyes,
always clearest
12

Lonesome Jones
When gravity settles in,
the pull makes your blood boil
As you step off for the last flail
or kiss off,
we’ll sew your feet to the ground,
with fishing line!
It’s so unsettling,
it’s bounded
I’m down with it
I’m down to see it breathe
We’ll get a big kick out of muddy fangs,
a big kick out of gaping holes and fiery eyes
A lonesome jones just sitting there,
like cornered prey
realizing that nothing ever changes
Because gravity is so unsettling,
it keeps you in your place
It tells you to shut the fuck up,
after the consoling stops
A lofty attempt at something big
may gouge those shifty eyes,
but the screams can’t drown the laughter,
can’t stop more pressing issues
The realization never changes
Sunshine Slowdown
Pull the sunglass lens over your eye,
brake for the rising sunshine
Another morning might have been the one,
13

a passing day it has become
The green numbers glaring off the dash
always read ten minutes fast
I broke a split-second too late
to chase the clouds away
I’ve got a sickening feeling
churning up in my stomach
I think it may be taking its toll,
or just finding its place
Echolocation ran you into a wall,
you’ve got my sympathy
Now go out and find that vote of confidence,
the one we’re looking for
Feeling on the dash for sunglasses
to block the first morning sunshine
Staring down at the lines on pavement,
just kicking around what the night meant
Half-shut eyes getting their first look,
taking time to pull the sleep loose
It feels just like winding down,
but still feels like the sunshine
Gathering of Children
Head of triangled eyes,
wide open like the sky
Stars staring down at me –
geometrical gathering
Smile as if to know
where the pointed arrow goes
14

Striped like a candy cane,
lit by a hand of flames
Snout like a baseball bat,
stuck out long and flat
Just there to see the sight,
just hanging out at night
Eyes grope the swollen face,
feeling strangely out of place
Walking with sandpaper soles,
too afraid to venture home
Just the second in command,
upward eyes and spotted hands
Blind and loyalty’s intact,
philosophies are based in fact
Keeping watch on the distance,
feeding off a nervous penchant
Breath in the chilling air
disappears away with care
Days-a-Wastin’
Like the last granules of sand –
these are days-a-wastin’!
Grease monkey on a bridge
knows the password, knows which way to go
Cold junkie on a ledge
holds his heart, contemplates the jump
Warm body on a bed
flushes away the fears, regroups for tomorrow
A hot head gathers steam –
she knows there’s a train-a-comin’
15

Sands-a-slippin’,
the tide’s washing you way
Everyone had a laugh and a drink
Let’s take roll and see who all is left
Let’s take a pulse and see
who is alive and who is dead
Impulse says to make a plan
I’ve got plans to act on impulse!
With a hammer to the porcelain god on the mantle
who never answers prayers
With a hammer to the skull
who never knows an answer
Slippin’ away, yesterday
was the day I’ve spoken of
Prodigal Girl
Crushed like a soda can
Can this lifeline recycle itself
to the fullest straight and narrow?
There’s no time like tomorrow
to make it like today
I kick a rock down a road,
I throw a stone into a stream,
to dream of less important things
I wake up screaming
Kick yourself for sleeping in
through the reignition moment
Until the planets realign,
the sun and I will bide our time
It moves on anyway,
regarding regardless of what to say
about the wrenching wait
16

The prodigal girl was led astray
Her words ring so true
if only to get back at you
for losing a grip, sanity
I’ve got it sinking in,
its warmth is a blanket
to the greatest of the Great God’s
air-conditioning vent
Right Out or Right On
See closing doors are open
Hear open doors slam shut
I’m either left on or left out
I’m either right out or right on
You could be either one
Revolving circles of understanding
A moment on, a moment off
The cuff I’m clinging onto,
a downward funnel inward
If you could relate to
The shovel use is digging
your way out, your way in
Not inherently anything,
it’s just another instrument
I am the musician
Open doors to let control out
The harbors burdened some
Seeking out and seeking in
Spinning spools do come undone
I am the other
17

Part Two
Determination of
Deterioration and Passage
19

Smoke Harbor
Smoke harbor – new day
Curl up and uncoil,
deflower and reload, refresh
in crawling under my skin
Under my toes the ground caves in
Rethread and replace the grace
of that moment with sleep
Replace the increments
of darkness with morning’s questions
about the time,
because the light finds its way in
But don’t ask because I wouldn’t know
Unfurl my outstretched arms
to beeps and rings, to let them in
To keep them outside
the window, cars in line
Harmony with their direction
Objects of my affection
keep their distance
Distant grumbling, they whisper
this need and that
Always clocks to be punched in
Not ever too much
Fuck, it’s too much
Cooperation
Marked for life with circles,
longing for circular motion - movement in time
Swinging around,
run around again,
20

epeating tender moments,
and the same mistakes
Still I ponder at the sunlit window,
but cannot separate the blinds
to look outside,
if the circle is complete
And there I am,
my love for you goes in circles,
it’s never stuck on points of a line
Its tide rises and falls,
but never subsides
It rides like a Sunday drive,
or through minefields in a war
It never stops turning away,
if the circle is complete
Days will turn in circles,
from the alarm that sets you off,
to the frustration, the comfort, the restraint,
to the love, the hate, the fear,
to the compensation,
to whatever puts you to sleep,
rise and fall within it
Eight Years
Eight years gone by so fast
Never felt able to put them together
Chapter by chapter – piece by piece,
you look so complete to me
But it seems
we are tearing you apart,
21

lining up allegiance and reasoning
It falls apart,
but someone has to pick up the pieces,
like they always do
Even shattered glass was once a window,
we looked through it together and apart
Day after day – why be surprised?
I’ve never been able to fill in the gaps
Eight years on,
the gap is widened
Moment after moment
Hot and cold
Turned on and turned off
Hissing, Pissing, and Buzzing
The circulation is speaking volumes
on what is stuck in your brain
The air is thick and splitting
with all vague analogies
They’re vague because I do know
that we’ve heard them all before
Every day is vague
so you can just get used to it
Stuck on our tongues and buried,
hanging around in the air
Released and snatched away
to consume and call your own
Retreads like an escalator,
on up to the next floor
22

An unconscious escape,
just coining the moment
The air is splitting in my ears
The space between everyone
The distant conversations
to play on or withdraw from
Hissing, pissing, and buzzing
We Lost a Friend
We lost a friend that day
I remember you gathering up her things in no certain order,
trying to make brave through distraught moments
I remember shuddering, hearing about the scene
Gathering boxes, getting the yard in order,
trying to look busy in a show of empathy or solidarity,
or however you want to think about it
I remember her at my house one night,
playing with my cat, putting tape on her paws
I remember a pro/con page and future plans,
being on the list of the last round of calls,
not understanding what it was
but not being surprised when you called
about what happened
I’m sorry I didn’t understand the dynamics
It’s too easy to simplify things to your own meaning
You don’t realize how things change
and what your friends need
Life marches on until it stops somewhere, or with someone
It takes so much to take notice
23

I remember you shouldering so much weight of that moment,
I don’t think she would have wanted it that way
I’ve been in so many messed up situations,
but can’t imagine being you during that time
I remember the funeral so awkwardly surreal,
like an act of appeasement,
and all the politics surrounding it
I see you now and it makes me happy
that you still have shreds of your sanity left
I know how hard it is to keep,
even when the grieving settles
I don’t think enough about you two, or those times in the past
It’s so easy to numb ourselves to the turns of life,
like the last line of defense
to worlds beyond our control
The sun shone bright those few days,
conflicted with the darkness cast
It hasn’t shone as brightly since
I know that it hasn’t
Hidden Partner
Traveled with me throughout these years,
silent companion waiting in shadow,
dragged out of the box when I need an expression,
there like the crutch feeding off my limp
One can’t move without the other
Feeling muscles at length in my legs
tightening, frightening when I walk
Little anchors just hanging down,
boiling over to jump out of my skin
24

The colors within shadows can be intoxicating,
they can cause paralysis, or can induce sleep
Gray and raining inside my head,
a wall to stop the march of time
Hidden companion that few will see
The New High
The new high is the subtraction of pain
Little bottles melting flesh into sheets
Lying on your side,
not wanting to move
Burrowing under the peace of waiting,
next day to turn over blinds revealing
scarce light to mundane isolation
Hatching complete control of the universe
Staring blankly ahead
and slightly out of tune
Rails against your knees,
a painful communion
Yesterday’s issue, the present comfort
Morning Meeting
We’re watching the photograph burn,
chemicals hissing from the fire
Gone is the dream of functionality,
the thought of it was comical
We laid out plans in blueprint,
mapped a route to our success,
25

its outline read like a script of epic motion,
now we’re enshrined in failure
Running free and blind for our lives,
taking stock of the damage,
licking wounds with scalded tongues,
speaking of some consolation
From a damaged collective unconscience,
from white to black, to dayglo blue,
the journey surely has
had its moments
Heart Below
Standing over the edge of the widest chasm,
a body to careen without control
Eyes swollen with tears of rememberance,
it’s so calm, and deep, and clean
But there are no clean breaks,
but we already knew
The air with a numb chill,
but we already knew
Brilliant blue looks down from above,
all thickness but clean and dry,
on a cold and solitary figure,
afraid of the depths below
Feet sewn to the ground,
but we already knew
The air, it breathes for you,
but we already knew
26

Waste high in deep panorama,
life moves forward below your feet
Unswollen and unspoken depths,
all calm in its frenzy
Boards and Bow
Let’s handle this with careful measure,
consider this moment one of many
Let’s guage the tempurature and the controls,
and hand the reins to new identities
You shed, you step behind the tide
I remake ways that I go forward –
submerged in details filling space,
compiling blank lines and rewriting them
The pen just moves and speaks and flows,
translating some passage that was and always is,
coming through the screen or through the air,
mining the lines of your face
That door defines us, walk on through
That bridge was laid to speak to you
The depth it staggers and shakes your faith,
lie or fall or walk across
Highway 27
Driving so deliberately through morning fog,
star flies circling around my sight
Breaking into brilliant blurred sunshine,
slowing down into new worlds
Stopping, hearing birds sing makes me want to stay,
27

or at least to roll the windows down and hear them
I think about the times I could have taken someone home
but was too blind or stupid or afraid
Or about being mixed up and coming out again –
a metamorphosis of enlightenment in the scope of a few miles
The new beauty of a forgotten place
puts things in perspective
Wanting for something bigger than the sphere around my head
Taking myself back with music,
getting myself back with a song
I wish I had someone to share some thoughts
There’s something about the way light hits landscape this morning
There’s something comforting about seeing this for miles
There’s something about the way the miles are counting down,
like your life running out of time
There’s no time like the present to be so lonely
The wiser we get, the harder to talk
Two people sit together in silence
like cats with intersecting lines of sight
The tears only come when one is alone
They’re so fortified and held in tight,
but released by something as simple as The Creation Story
I can think of a few words to live by,
can see the road ahead,
and am content to get to where I’m going
A Passageway To May
I’m a spirit in the passageway
appearing and watching from afar,
a gathering of angels singing over your head,
28

weeping of our brothers and sisters at your bed
Held up in a state of suspension,
a display of colors and cloudless sky,
comforting blue that soothes the pain
both within and without
We talk about those memories and conversations
Idiosyncrasies both loved and mocked
like only a family can define,
do continue to live and breathe
beyond your calling
Threadbare in Repose
My sister, you wrote to me
from your laid bare dying bed
Dotting eyes and crossing tees,
just trying to reconcile me
And what sweet words could I transcribe
to ease this passing bind,
or tie it all together,
to justify
the difference between our minds?
Ironing a crease,
driving great distances to never forget,
to not make words on a screen the last
moments of being reconciled
If words were passed along
in years fixing foundations in caste,
each person’s a niche in an imperfect union
My sister, older and wiser,
administrator of black-white protectionism,
29

your questions that day, they cut
across and burned a hole in my screen,
planted resentment and guilt
to swallow in your memory
A seat in silence for many years,
strapped to the point of convex,
molded my mind, mending time
in unraveling the explanation you were seeking
The justification of divergent paths,
of politics, philosophy, chains of events,
still unraveling so many years on,
after passing
So many worlds apart from that place,
sans the shade of reconciliation,
sans stain of justification and shame
Old Friends
I didn’t get your call,
missed your musings altogether
Now we just drop out of plain sight
rather than risk crossing paths
I’m still waiting on a note,
a move up the chain
Yanking the screen down,
an exposure of disarray
You make me feel so dull,
incomplete like a puzzle that makes no sense
Just drop right off the page
until something real comes around
Circling back around once more,
30

only false consolation
Eras die off like ancestors,
ghosts that crown my mind
31

Part Three
Caustic Reexaminations
33

Not Easily Resolved
You packed for me a token of misunderstanding –
a monument for the time lost,
a symbol of the edges of a canyon,
a metaphor for violent waters
cutting a drift through sand and sink
The sigh of resignation
and the unrest of guilt
mounts up like the expanse of a landfill
Muddy tracks lay rested,
a campsite lies at the ready,
the air is crisp yet stagnant,
ominous hands swinging branches
All movement is manipulated,
calculating the plot of a course
Dry winds extinguish a spark of forward motion,
putting it into its place
A continuum of unions fully formed
in a nexus of understanding, or a pattern
Gestures of seamless layers –
paths marked with unbroken bonds
To set out in isolation
to wash hands in which to welcome,
is the resolve to reveal the space
that is enclosed within a spiral
A Small Part
A small part of something quasi-real
A small part of a wide-cast net
A small part of the collateral damage,
and oh what a flame-out it was
34

This is something we can all be proud of
A small part was the first to fall off
A small part that just scraped against the ground
Phone in your disgust
Feign your cold dispair
Encapsulated with the black void air
Lie in a coffin and wait
for the world to begin again
Ancient Position
I’m stuck here in this ancient position,
the world keeps on drifting away
Ways in which I’d fashioned an image,
sinking into the muck or rising
Envisioning a fire scorching the chance
to redeem or to see this through
Erosion pervasive continued formation,
a landscape forgetting the sun
It gets wrecked through the plumes,
I can’t quite get there
to collect ruins or survey the damage
All that is left are well-worn ideals
Details on distance unseen,
seen through the photographs,
highlighted expressions
in symbols behind for the next one
This isn’t a vision
as much as it is a commentary
35

Am/Are a Shadow
I am a shadow
whose darkness recasts around my face when I speak
We are a shadow
living in shades that gray what we once were
The day is a mountain
so high we can’t take the time to walk around it
The light is a dimming field
as our eyes are closing
Memories are moments
spent never to be played again
Steps are footprints
vanishing, there is no hope to retrace them
Roads are traveled fast
and then they turn onto blockades
The screen is a projection
too convenient to ignore
The nights are like mortuaries
for our increments of time
Our sleep holds the meaning
and our dreams hold the mourning
Priorities are asteroids
colliding around our universe,
or standing like giant fortresses
protecting grating nerves
Dog in Cone
The structure that we find ourselves in,
36

so ironically impenetrable
Layers upon waves upon rows
The familiar face of an alien
invading your nightmares,
eyes and shapes and colors
that distort and distinguish
comfort from utter pain
I’ve seen the models
I’ve studied their directions
then structured those things in ways that would become this
Every moment the DNA for tomorrow’s deconstruction
Like moving piles of sand,
impossible to mold, percentages lost
Staring at the lines,
swelling, throbbing, saying something
Sharpening and falling completely off the map,
dampening expectations
Siphoning the reasoning off
Interpreting and molding them
to fit that day’s dawn
Draw the shades and retire
This is the Best We Can Do
You know the feeling,
it’s a vacancy,
or something more like fait accompli
Let’s just stare down into the abyss of the future
while veering off the road
This is what you work for
37

This was carefully thought out
Just the next generation’s set of failures,
or tolerance through clinched teeth
Why not go for it?
This is the best we can do
We hang ourselves on a set of ideals
The rope is a chain and a line of communication
The chair is mighty wobbly,
and the beams in the ceiling might not hold
The black heat of the night stifles,
and then the shock wears off
What’s left are spots black and blind
Marks breaking lines of time
Marks breaking strides
This is the best we can do
Cold Reconciliation
I buried a heart,
a heavy piece of cold stone,
ravaged earth in the backyard,
a hole eleven years deep
The spade is a line of time,
reading with the last marks left blank
The last pages are so blank,
and light just trickles through bare limbs
down onto this vacuum
The space that occupies a life
is to remain uncorrupted
So uncomfortable to play pretend,
new beginnings, or some other bullshit speak
Supposing some things not meant to be,
they just play themselves out
A burning fuse that flickers out and dies,
38

lights that turn themselves out at night,
taxing the circuitry
A sad backward glance at the scene,
casting a crestfallen shadow on
Quiet Scenes
It’s a quiet scene here
The only light comes through windows
into the empty room where I sit,
not quite alone and not quite fulfilled
Solitude forced upon me
in one week increments
‘Time that’s no longer time,’
morphing into a vacuous space
where I’m carving out a new existence
Freedom and mobility,
never in sync with circumstance
They come in crashing the party,
and leave me feeling wanting
The decision is made from somewhere else,
calmly washing over my body
like a narcotic numbing pain
The solitude is a small consolation
Green leaves swaying branches,
wistfully remembering
the ghosts who’ve walked beneath
I’ve laid them aside,
I’ll dream of them tonight
At some point they all fall and disintegrate
39

ack into the stream,
the movement toward total resolution
Shades of Gray Turn Black
The shades of gray turn black,
empty sounds of night,
ships leaving their harbors
Rippled, broken waters of past
slowly become
less disturbed as the journey fades
Moments thought as beacons
are divided into two distinct marks
Little souveniers that move across a continuum
from the sentimental to mere nostalgia,
from something shared
into something self-defined
The sounds of night amplify
so loudly through the song of loneliness,
so resoundingly through the mirror of solitude,
through the strangeness of the movement
from blinding pain
to sedate contemplation
Days in Frames
The week ended in messy tones,
with pieces of past lives spread like wreckage
scattered across the highway
Paths were blocked,
those involved then left to stagnate,
40

to wither off and die,
or to just move on
Some are soldiering through
across uneven lines,
pure pain or slow-formed drips of bliss
Oh how it reminds you of life
As the pieces recover,
those tiny shards or fragments
cut your fingers as you gather
Hardening skin left open
Some lost to sickness, internal or external,
collapsing or transcending
Those were shots too cold to call,
piercing and reviving
It Gives Lift
This time is the tiniest drop
Not swelling or throbbing,
just the crest of the wave
in and out the fields of vision
The only distraction may lie
outside of circle or sphere
A figurative death,
billowing smoke and escalator tread
With pinpoint precision we wait,
plotting out the movement,
or negotiating silence
Deliberately washing our hands
41

The lonely call to action,
random intervals and inconvenient,
a figurative mass
of the drowning and the surface
Shapes of Motion
The days are the shapes of motion,
formations extended bursting outward
The majestic solitude of flight,
ghosts across the landscape
Echoes and ringing and screeching halts,
the drift you feel so deliberate
Deaths become marks on a timeline
Pain becomes a void sprung forth from
The days are the shadows reflecting
more than just time or light
The motion ever-defining what it means
to scan or to plot the course
I’m looking at my hand as a map,
so coarse and worn, so often used
I’m the jagged detail that is cast
The spade that plants the stake
42

43

Part Four
Post-mortem or Rebirth
45

Transitional Landscapes
Undulating, unveiling, timbered pines
in the country, on the interstate, east of Dallas
Across transitional landscapes
into the rocky planes, north-central
Heading west, cross-fading
from a bizarre winter wind,
dull and balmy, that December from the south
Charmed discomfort, or surreal confusion,
headlong into dissent, away
toward all that was unknown
The dry-ice desert-scape along the 40
in northern New Mexico,
tracing its gaze across the Southwest
as the moon shone
the snow in stunning black light
From eras glazed over mounting exposition,
abstracted from within and dutifully charged,
defined in propulsion, then deadened in tracks
A lier in wait, unknowing, rearranging
weaves of ill-timed, esoteric inscription
read aloud in earnest –
in tender loving cruelty
Dress Rehearsal Rag bellowing omens,
touching raw nerves, eliciting your tears
Rattling window speakers, raw baritone slicing
meditation through air, like Santoku blades
carelessly cutting our silken skin
Dropping weight in symphonic clangs,
spontaneous gasps, staggering away,
projecting ahead – remains on the road
46

When we met, I’d asked you where you’d been
over swaths of time, both toiling and spent
cratering distance, charting a path, away
from points where we may have intersected
I’d marveled at the grace and ease, your words,
the presence in the shaken space
where your eyes glimmered the darkness
Yet drawn back and muted,
my eyes crusted over crucial intervals
An opaque journey, unclean and unclear,
fed and spawned, bountiful and unrequited
I could only hope
to take you there with me
It’s Time
It’s time to start something
It’s time to start something akin to unraveling
It’s time to begin to being
It’s time to knock off the rust
When time graces and when time sprawls…
It’s time to start mending menacing moments
It’s time for breath and healing
It’s time for the great unwinding
It’s time for the great unwinding from the sky
Breathless in an ocean’s infinity
It’s time for waxing and waning
It’s time for waves upon you both warm and jarring
It’s time for resting upon the tops of heaps
of motioning rumbling unrest beneath you
It’s time to realize that the morning creeps into your room
and shakes you with an anxious sigh
It’s time to pass between a stage,
47

and to know that life and death are interchangable words
It’s time to pass the rung to the space below
God’s Cave
Billows from a canyon
in shadows formation,
a god-form pervasive and dense
One gigantic clip or chapter,
it can literally suck you dry
of life and of inertia –
shackling or piercing or nailed to the floor
But when eased and prodded,
and carefully peeled back,
harnessed with such an extreme degree of concentration –
it begins circulation,
it casts light again
Gray shadows become nuance,
within them lie beginnings,
upon them forever and ever
Lead the way, then follow
The Great God-Like Projector
The Great God’s projection is upon us
The Great God’s projector never lies
Solemn light and shade and heat,
breaking upon your days
I’ve never met a moment so clear
as the moment that I see in you
48

Breaking free is understanding
the gravity we are subject to
Alternating and turning away
Books and tablets are carved in stone,
prescribing the past, the present and future
It’s just a meditation we have
We watched the undulations, kicking,
rolling across the surface
with such intensity as if to say
‘this is what you will become’
He and I, she and I, and we wait
Watching tension boiling over
and agreeing the surface was buckling –
designed internal combustion
We walked as if to know
ourselves and our delusions
Trailing far off in the distance,
like beaming menacing headlights
Effective Presentation
Projecting failures out into the future
Stacks of cards lined up across the table
in rows, you just can’t make them straight
Rationalizations in the key of existence
and heads in the damp dark clouds
The scanner shows it sinking,
but logistics surely lead the way
from the show into the storm
49

On legs all wobbly and loose,
this table holds forth the half-baked plans
The epilogue is a shame faced red
for the silence in the story
And the motions are of a steel-toed boot
kicking the shit up slowly and dutifully
Churning in silence, biting your lip,
waiting for the turn
The New Season
I’ve got a name and a place,
maybe shame within grace
It’s flowing out of outstretched arms
It’s welling up in a twitch
A gasp that speaks in stoicism,
of tension drenched in cynicism,
bubble-wrapped layers of protection
Cargo dripping with death of supplantation,
out of its element
When things go awry
it’s there waiting outside the door
in conference with its quashed thoughts
Under the table it lies,
ghosts of the dead moments
expressed in an activity report,
quietly brewing up a new plan
to move this spike from the table to the grave
The new code
50

Blood Mediation in Transit
Funny how distance, literally the expanse of space,
rewrites
Across thick tufts of forested pine –
over rolling clover hills – down roiling rivers –
piercing the crop circles –
into the scaling weathered crags
Signs of settlement, revising staid provisions
Forlorn entrenchment,
sewn within the seeds of static form forgiveness,
envisioned through hues well-played and pleasing
Quiet deference into
the libelous architecture of this moment
Gestures incremental, still as they are in sync
Telegraphed,
written as instruction, red ink on crusting skin
crinkled and retreating, across a range of secular motion
Eyes opened, into an emergent dissent, despondent,
‘cross oft-severed planes
Yet the distance, pulling as a rope from atop the well,
arrested,
reeling in begotten ages, or clinched conviction
Clichéd, ill-spoken half-truths, arrangements of discomfort,
gleaned from an array of like-moments,
scattered about the calendar
A knowing glance, submission or acknowledgement
Life in arrears,
repaid through the subtext of ransom or engagement,
reminded by the simple pilgrimage across
the vagaries of one lying in wait, the weight
hunkering down with a darkening presence
51

Awake to Mourn the Passing of Your Future Perception
Deep within a core of rotten wire
tied in hundreds of little knots,
a dynamic torture tension,
like puppet strings from within
Forced pleasantries within the line
to the edges of a panic room,
scaling around a giant centerpiece hole
to a jimmied-up window board
Awake before the alarm
greets the day like a mourning song
Morning’s mounting heaps –
death and despair and uncertainty –
Blurring perception of the moment
and mirroring the acid eating away
the guts’ core lining and structure,
or the labyrinth in the ear
These and Other Questions
Did we share the same vision,
the same gravel to crack our soles,
same light ingraining colors
that alight movement in conscience?
Is language more than a vessel,
or voices draining empty in the herd,
burdened trampled feet depleted,
reverting to adjoining paths?
Were intentions bent upon infringement,
52

illicit gifts sent inconspicuously
planted within a child’s willful wonder,
positioned as a delicate inversion?
Is pain of loss held sway,
an examination of the entire screen,
meshing process – straining nuance,
commoditized, offered in prayer and digestion?
Does the reflected prism spread wide in rays,
or crystalize it’s vision into distillation,
like shedding light in dark spaces between,
offering payments of past?
Out of Sorts With Being in Sync
I’m looking to simplify but not dumb this down,
to crystallize the flow of light in tones of sound,
into something we can move forward with –
more tangible than the tics we’ve developed
and more sensible than rapid response –
an instant aggrandizement of position,
positioned on edge in blurring fields
on the slope of crumbling ground
Some burgeoning fantasy quest develops
across toasted slopes and though spring flowing shade,
into murky dusk and down into night fire –
on through the pricked points of thousands
simultaneously broadcasting code onto the path,
laid out with a mirage of muddied water,
littered with signage,
marking confusion away from established boundaries
into a just pattern
53

Mission Statement on Love & Marriage
Love is the intimate understanding, acceptance of, and commitment
to ourselves and to another person
We are born into the love of our family,
and through that love we learn to love ourselves
Transferring on to the important people
who may cross into our lives over a lifetime –
close friends, romantic partners,
and subsequently our children, and our children’s children
Being in love is love’s expression and intensification
due to the physical and mental intimacy that results
from two persons’ initial attraction
and subsequent growth together
Marriage is a partnership between two people,
built upon a foundation of deeper love,
where the partners define themselves through the marriage
as well as individually,
structuring their lives according to a shared vision
The partnership creates a family, with or without children
Its success is dependent upon both partners understanding,
accepting, and successfully negotiating its cyclical nature,
never letting it veer into the path
of becoming linear
Living Tones
Written up in fragments of many
piecemealed verses trading onward
To each, a partial payment in its grace
An ascent……….
54

The brilliant remnants of dissembled youth,
unclaimed,
fraught with enraptured turbulence
A steady beacon beams forward, warm, unafraid,
in your steady, guiding content
Undulating, uneven lines,
strewn about in their wake
Miraculous in reconstruction, pulsations in rhythm,
marked in hypnotic beams, brutal concealment, and mercy
The justice of your journey
Whimsically unbounded in spades,
injected with humor
Kindness unassumed and freely disposed, issued unawares
Uncanny in bright open fields, unfolded in simply sketched
shades of your enlightenment
Mystically connected,
bound in respite
A flair for unforgettable moments along its magnetic flow
Alighted from a knowing glance, shined down
in the ravished steps of your beauty
Spring Solution
As it were, the last memory,
wafting across blooming countryside shelter,
from spring’s whipping Mistral
Time’s effortless pass left us stranded
on vistas, vines untethered, atop cobbled soils
Grand meandering currents to the west,
and mighty receding glaciered peaks of the east
Off-roading in a French rental car –
risking damage and stern consternation,
55

for the sake of blathering discourse
on the significance of a slope
Fascinations defining all composition,
and the storied evolution of dirt
Origins upstream,
from steel and iron
locks, setting the flow adrift,
splitting currents from adjoined waters
Passersby waving away, unbowed
A culminated city overlooked
by ominous clouds and gothic brows,
through colors from an age of enlightenment
From coliseum slopes of granitic density,
terraced erosions, too steep to tread
out the bitter blood and iron
from its sweet fruits
From ancient stone crosses,
monastic rhythms over centuries,
laid in pastoral patterns,
on gentle grades, gleaning redemption
and a kiss of sublime, resting
in an unkindly giving moment
To pastel brick-stone street cafes,
amid bustling city markets, oblivious
to monuments of purposeful past
Retreats of forgiveness
in shining fields of lavender, stone outcroppings
overlooking the vast indifferent sea,
or the enveloping meadows
harbored from crumbling ruins
of solemn futures
56

In Accordance With the Shared Vision (For Jonathan & Sylvia)
The days that we meet are the days that we’re born
Enchanted lifetimes where origin is risen again
of the ashes from randomness or pain,
or from pillars of understanding and enlightenment
We refresh and begin anew with the ones we love
Raised of the fear of our creator, creators, and creations
Pathways reveal themselves through cloaks and shrouds,
and illuminate through fiery incisions
In journeys toward a maze or a riddle we become
the cycle we tune ourselves into
Until some crucial moment turns itself inside-out,
like the first break of sun into dawning skies
This is the moment when you two have become
beacons in the die-cast mold of a hardened world,
or reflections of color and illuminating beauty
raised in the shine of your redemption and love
The Burial (Please Find Enclosed)
When I dearly depart from this vain earth –
just wrap my body in a burlap sack,
take me to the crook of the woods,
release to the subsoil to which I belong
In preparation for this crucial mass –
float some words piped ‘cross the brown room,
pontificated for a clearer haze,
from minor chords with frenetic pace
If a priest is sent to read last rites –
57

confer with them a book of spite,
with god-formed brows and distorted limbs,
frozen ghosts with a sweltering eye
Solicit some cold black witticisms,
cackling cracked-smiled sly rejoinders,
flowing clean – anew from a spirit birth,
raised out of reach in proclamations
Close with prayer and questionnaires,
processions shown aground in shadowed vignettes,
passage of the sack, one hand to another,
dampening in its hallowed retreat
58

59

Part Five
Deconstruction Imprints
61

Imprints & Post-Scripture
Arrival, here to make peace again
merging and centering the vast cells, intense
indifference, or volatile repair
Compartmentalized, obscured visage
perplexing with vast lurking beauty of sea
layers lumbering in smuggled air
Refracted sky of approach
from atop in hypnosis the jagged horizon, time capsule
draining, displaying gray artifacts
Ulterior moments, gathering
pieces, divvying out staggered remedies to dose
the indifference with treacherous contracts
Pounding a fist to feel for the palm
the hours contained in a medicine dropper
mistaken, arrayed, half-life compliance
Conditions to which an edge, backed off
staring at a wall in comatose, a deep refrain
ingrains, imprints, reposes in trance
Arrival, all is here now
backfilled, forecasting and foreboding
forbearance of the nervous shell
Reshaping dense granite, cultivating
out of a spate of nervosity
and tended notion too quick to dispel
Receiving solemn lines
disseminating, dismembering time
62

partake in a body of rations
Dissolving illustrative dement
fortified in a text bound and spined
in falsity and overt extraction
Prostrate in parallel
sparked in duality, road maps maligned
malicious and buried, unregistered
Festered, hysterical and spurned
in dutiful margins grounded and carved
with acid and unruly pressure
Encased antiquity
imprinted tracts, en route its brutality
well-conceived and ill-figured
Slinking faux-worship, rewritten
in servitude, bowing and burrowing
parasitic fissure
Dark Days Beckon
Every dim-lit candle burns away
wistful melting wax reveal,
an ill-formed layer - cold-gray ash,
the burnt calendar days and rotations
Passing across a channel or walking along an edge,
the brow beckons inevitably
to barren landscape below,
to time well-traveled
Every dim-lit hand of minds’ decay
63

watching in waste’s rotation,
a permeation of broken ideas or trite remainders
through worn pages, dimming screens
Passing through some type of afterlife,
some pervasive move into
the post-mortem of certain ideas,
to permanent reminders
Modern Conscience
Strange dots distant on a horizon line
Encircling approach without cause
Without pause
Sewn and/or rooted into a frame of modern conscience
In fellowship degrade, it’s shifting
It’s drifting
Strange recirculation within tidal pools
Entropic forces alive
Will metastasize
The dirge of symbiosis grounds into a pattern
Treachery of its passage, into scourge
Into birth
Internal Compass
Passing through interminable spaces of grating noise,
enclosures of timed movement into back-lit shade
Shadows fell, driving a stake through a jaded heart,
uncovering the passage inside to the darkness or the light
64

Dual meaning and moments interchangable –
it’s all about which ride you’re about to jump on,
how to define the role you stake
in this signature moment in time
A veil of smoke dropping from leering eyes,
staring into the gray-orange plasma maze,
drifting around peering into windows of idealized existence
Every day bears the weight of an unraveling scene
It drains the weight and drags its way
into the darkness that colors your context,
that shapes the inside of your eyelids
that lives on larger than life
Passing through terminals in motion and in song –
pattern recognition of the unknown, unknowable
aspirations into total purity and context,
adjoining paths into some expanse of wonder or willingness
Pressing forward into the shedding of skin –
giving space for some unknowable truth,
its dimensions laid bare internal to eternal
through passage from the inside out
Repurposed Idealism
Seeking – fleeting light and beauty in small hours
Searching – small margins for the bleakest of consolations
Reaping – elightenment that was brought out forthright
Supplanting – only with a profundity of misgivings
Vacating – all sensing of making moments whole
Gripping – adrift some claustrophobic sense of belonging
Mourning – beyond the crest of well-scripted ideals
Burying – baggage of all hope and its remains
65

Watching – lines of your fingers intersecting
Blurring – in the first light of semi-conscious awakening
Drifting – in cold comfort, a voyeur of subversion
Praying – an opaque projection of sense and of placement
The Unredeemed
Unredeemed
Hiding in the margins,
an amalgam of severed wire crossed up,
crossed out,
wrapped impacted in ill repute,
its ritual advance
Scurried about,
just corralling from one vice
through a snaking cover mounted
onto dripping hand collectives,
bleeding and thirsty, passing
the currency of cowards
Unredeemed
from on high and in vantage,
insipid advance of the interminable
depth of a dirge,
surfacing from atop a regal stone,
undressing of the wound
to maggots underneath
the violence and ruptured disturbance
Myriad starts, symmetrical spirals,
shockingly unearthed
from messaging and interference
Harbingers in currents
66

Unredeemed
Unwashed and untoward in the downward cast
of voice instilled and destemmed,
of burgeoning and bludgeoning
the blunted end of a rancorous stake
uncrossed and controverted
Moving points across,
gasping and blue in mounting swells,
pensive, appendage to rank and concept
Sprawled about and calling out,
the apotheosis of degeneration
Of common fodder
Moderate Dysplasia
Mining terse indifference,
I tread carefully yet willing to wade into
a waist-deep sty or milieu, unencumbered
by varicose circulation or circular logic
...
Every lingering dry-throated horror jumps,
pumping breaks, with squealing screaming tires
Tired of placating constricted pigs binging,
damned from behind the wheel
...
Scrolling trolls malinger - a shiny window displays
encrusted neon green light-cast nocturnal shine
Polished off loud, disfigured lust
leering down - crossed star-ridden eyes
...
Their answers lie crawling, sprung beneath some willful
laser-guided firebrand, fired blind,
straight through freshly singed cornea,
embedded in the heading of a caption
67

...
Captioning a void, formerly a vision,
razing a freshly planted line of sight
Pilings and debris, a stench so pungent, so pure,
emblazoned on a paneled crest - calls upon the concept
…
Slow and sore, form of numbness - unbound
Arrested containment - drug in suspension,
modulation slipping into the bloodstream, rising aghast
Read reach revolve react
…
One-Line Form
Specked one-line forms
Convection, gotten all twisted,
melded through – modulate synopsis
soldered into long, lone ire
Needling cum misdirection,
sutured and setback, into position
Composted – conflated,
the posture of fertility
…..
Tapping a nerve – a vein
Here is where the grain shakes out,
a tiny felted box of razors
Strapping in shade,
Or raising the specter
of time sucked up a straw
Wrists bound in chloroform solutions,
easing, no, lowering
into memoriam,
a passage of said time
68

…..
Certainty in certain concepts
Eyes retrained, overlaid,
patchwork layers timed out, unbinding
flesh-dripping tapestries,
resewn and unmistaken
(Glances away in wincing sight
Eyes return within form,
within instinct – harried)
…..
Drowning in must
Slurred vision – slithering contact,
culling cobbled planks
together for sound and sturdiness
Walkabout,
pile high and breathe deep
Shadows on the Other Side
Whispering avoidance in detuned song,
lyrical – well-versed gestation, hissing in meaning,
tuned in and wrapped outward
Seek to enclose the orb within a sphere
The fog bank –
Godspeed, my friend. Around mangled curvatures,
unfolding passes and shaken rag ridges,
into scope of elevation, vicariously
Context of a hidden moment
projected into violet spring hues
through gnarled embankments
Staggering… Shining…
Spurring scene warms, bittersweet,
69

choking on the pill and its packaging
Sights signify, signs comply,
scenery paints a path of escape,
enclosed in certainty of passage,
informing eyes and conscience,
with shadows on the other side
Overheard and overseen,
the tiniest brushstroke on canvas so vast, its vexing
finality of living motion and rippled earth-toned pattern,
careening toward dusk – interminable fade,
downcast and damned toward
all future spatial interludes
Some rung, awaiting,
in muddled remembrance of the void
Percentages in cycles, positions eroded
in prayer, forever lost,
fodder to preying interlopers –
erasure
The near hypnotic highway rhythm
transmits vision, transcribes refuge…
Snapshots, committed memory and speculation,
landscape reminder of future highest use,
remains and relics
Hysteria passing lanes and jammed signals,
transmission crossed, reception trained
Static bred through mourning’s season,
breaching cracked from veering sight,
from the year of our lord,
the distribution
In fear, security, voiding reprehension,
black stare encased in corner of the eye,
70

shepherded and fed,
belied
Disturbance threads a vantage point,
Metastasized, submerged in craters
Wrecked exposure draining,
cyst of deliverance
Common Margin
Kneeling, born and bred, at the foot of an edge
Prostrated, upbraided, tilting over in ritual free fall
Deconstruction broadcast in speeches and songs,
from magnets’ opposing poles
Withering supply, flippant recourse,
there were days when the summation worked,
and future paths outstripped
the stunning cruelty from which they were laid
But the sun chafed the plastic smog,
an amorphous view guided its path,
the margins’ present retrograde was splayed
in shaken sand beneath its glass
Churning from the inside, the sight
of those who’ve lain in near constant
rippling tension, in fraying exhibition,
exploited, their plight across brazen wire
Meanwhile, in common margins alight,
mercurial shifts spontaneously contrived
gears aground, a combustible dawn breaks,
then collapses against itself
71

Questions aren’t unasked nor dignified,
they’re painted on the cave walls
in their stark painful context, frozen
in exhibition of their endorsement
Give it Back to Them
Give it back to them---
Their country maimed and reclaimed,
sterilized in iodine, fortressed,
stripped clean of nascent perceptive reason
Fodder stoked for the risk averse,
clamoring for safe keeping, and securely
clutching chemically derived commodities… (in lieu of…)
Give it back to them---
Primal and uncured,
basking in lust for fearmongering
hysteria-colored lens, encroachment of the other
Rights versus privilege, in mutual exclusivity,
in birth and bleeding,
in worship of the suckling pig…
Give it back to them---
Anesthetized psyches return,
in a revised dream deranged into order,
its religion an indivisible mass
of narrowly defined inversion
from ingrained and learned principles
into delineated acceptable outcomes…
Give it back to them---
Leaching in the well, indefensible
trails of plastic diluted and divided,
infinitely halved, invasive digestion,
72

washed along, or emitting stacks
The parties return to shell games,
in concerted concentration
DOA in May
Disconnect on arrival
to rights, be damned and dreaming
of erosion, cobbled together seconds
in fractured and illicit fields
of vision, you lie
in the pooled insurgent
crust of well-worn auspices
Bleeding off, drawing down in
moments encryption,
flashing in pitch and fragmented
vision laid forth in infinite halves
of depth and of death
in breeding haze dimmed
and fading last rites
Waking fucked-off and parched
in suspended animation bled
and crawl to whet the throat,
fixed in searing lines
all the way through this beaming
deliverance path of makeshift
and grave – you wait
Informed in catatonic states
of chronic mass, absorbed through
surreally exposed grafts
coming down from wallowed
hallowed eulogies, gifted in tithes
rushing into the bloodstream
informing its finality
73

News Cycle
Each day is a process
of reconciliation’s stain, upon
the evening’s resolve, dissolving
into folds of a void, shifted through
tension fields and projected
throughout the night’s pattern
of restful disturbance, craning
interruptions
Morning’s horizon beckons
in ominous first light, alighting
a new pattern of mounting
tension cured only by the human
stain of fractured opiate
connection to the first hit
of technology cased
to the dementia, unwinding
symptoms of the dawning day
Repay, wait,
it creeps into your dreams
Entrenched Age
Traipsing through an entrenched age,
roots driven subterranean
in search of hydro-enlightened
enchantment of one’s inner-workings
Comments aligned in columns
feeding into loops, a continuation
through where opposing circles conjoin
in vexing intersection
74

Discourse is relegated to damaged
primacy expressed through the visual
instinct of regurgitation displayed and repulsed
in bizarre mating rituals
The circuit of solemn gestures
gestating full ranges of rationalized existence
through screens of measured response
through uneven channels of despondency
Struck chords resonating archways
into radioactive trenches, the sanctimonious tide
versus the festering stench of caustic
reenactments of the past eternal
Borne on the backs of displacement, dead tides
receding beyond common comprehension
litigated, explained away, justified
in common line formation sway
Through hackneyed points of reference, marked
and linked back to the most recent frame
drawn to the stench like flies circling
tragic exploitation conflated to agendas
Disturbances of this sort are well
established across the landscape, ranging
the scope of tragic myopic monuments
erected in anxious displacement
To the unlikely redemptive dreams
managed from small hours of dwindling night,
through drawn time anesthetizing its way
in light through wandering days
In free exchange through middling layers
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we’re entrenched in impressions driven in cast
at surface level and defined in theory
rather than nourished in being
Midway
I was born in the south in the year 1974,
six years after the death of Martin Luther King Jr.,
ten years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
twenty years after Brown vs. Board of Education
Growing up I remember witnessing the African-American marchers
through green-forested Forsyth County, Georgia
So many years, a hostile and dangerous place for them, from the
lynchings of 1912
Greeted with epithets in the town of Cumming,
a gathering of white supremacists
from throughout the north of Georgia
spewing stones and hatred
across blighted generations
The same place where the Olympic torch passed in 1984,
carried in flame by a man of color
The place where my father was a grocer
with patrons oft in the infancy
of their own rung of enlightenment
Just a few miles from where I grew up
in a town across the county line,
still with remnants of segregation,
in transition to the throes of suburbia
Internalizing my personal sense of justice
through these visions, or TV shows,
the encyclopedia,
or the Fulton County schools teaching on the era of civil rights,
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and bussing in my best friend in fifth grade
Or the highlight of Hank Aaron circling the bases at his 715th
in the city of Resurgens,
defined by its movement away from the old south,
yet shadowed by the darkness carved on Stone Mountain
It hasn’t been so long
in smoky blaring rooms and punk bands
Scenes corrupted by manchildren
with shaved heads and white laces on their boots,
commanding attention and disdain,
threatening in their presence,
pushing you and your friends from behind
Their names and faces showing up in journals
of the Southern Poverty Law Center
Just a small slice of my humble young life
Entrenchment doesn’t turn on a dime
Remediation doesn’t take with turning away
Lifetimes are spent shedding time and trauma
The work is never done
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Part Six
Post-Scripture
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Religion Among Us
The religious among us know that the planet is a slow-draining tub
with tiny black mildew-stained holes in the sealing caulk
They know that stagnant water cannot stand,
its seepage drains through until gravity takes hold and shapes
its course correction all the way down to the bottom
of the floorboards
Opening in idiosyncratic waves through daylight hours
in advance of sycophantic displays escaping scrutiny,
they call it for what it is
They recognize that master carpentry and architectural drafting
are among the noblest professions,
yet are defined within their bountiful constraints
The religious among us sense a third dimension in translucent casting
and enlightened stanzas, viewing them as transcendent
while sensing their nascent decline and disturbance
Possessing a belief not in what can be possessed,
but in the riches of the transitory
and the fulfillment of transference
They forge ahead in stoic grace, making good on internal resolve
to procure modeled states of being,
while improving the deterioration and desecration
happening around them, warming grave hearts
in fellowship along thin air space between laughter and tears
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Status Interruptus
The body resets during sleep,
muscle memory abounds through fitful coughs,
aching joints, dry-itching skin,
serving notice to Mind at Rest
Rogue satellites broadcast status
interruptus in the arc of their course
through night-stills of twittering chirps,
drones of machine fan humming,
chorus of death-chant crows
Restful bodies lie in solace and silence
cleaning filters, expunging
the need for the minds’ input
of the day’s disorders,
its tightening grip as evidenced
unwelcome in the clutch of my wrists
urgently held in my plaintive palms
reacting to the distorted playback
of looped invasive dreams
In halves unfold time loops,
in and out the quirks and fits,
unwilling and unable to fall gracefully
into the limited and limitless embrace
of total surrender to the mercy of the alarm
residing in a small compact computerized appendage
that greets and accompanies,
that fixes the cycle
Rest Impediments
The voice is time draining
its remains through caustic
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enclosures, cataclysmic rhythms
raining down god-like structure
on intransigent position
recording its internal dialog
with a well-formed void of spirit
in reeling space
The gray glow outside
casts a hollow sheen surreal
quaking overturned buds kicked off
the tops outstretched and clinched unflowered
spread about the staggered steps
among the ransom’s reason
brought out of solitude unresting
in space invaded
The immediacy in closed eye
fields magnified beyond infernal
periphery pervasive enveloping the voice
piercing the slack surfacing
the perimeter of your person
bridging the barriers of renewal
cross-flowing numb tension
in rest impediments
The words in transposition
line their attack feigning indignity
of the speakers’ holy position within
audible patterns and pieces intersecting
rims and casings within visions
colored by meters of moments and mileage
unmarked in their distance remaining
unnumbered
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The Spirit Vacuum
Exploitive conceptualization spurned the many,
and molded clay crystalized
one’s internalized role in obscuring truth
into illuminations on one’s existence
Borne witness to
blood on the altar, in rapture
subject to confirmation bias
Remember when we wondered astray?
From stately sanctuaries, ominously hanging crosses
symmetrical in third dimensions,
past the rooms where we avoided Sunday School,
and fellowship hall with checkered tile floors,
dodging old men in suits while displaying
fundamental forms of delinquency, foreshadowing
re-examinations and unwelcome assertions
Senses of obligation and duty, under development
disrupted – remained unengaged,
yet instinctually ingrained with rusted-out relics,
unfulfilled yet colored through the prism
of their projected worldview,
into the spirit vacuum,
born of isolation, inoculation, or indoctrination
Enlightenment grew to be formless and prescient – beyond
its call and spurning commonly identifiable text,
unmotivated and unmoved, redefined
into chasms revealed beyond comfort or convenience
A trace beyond deliberate, unveiling like nature
reclaiming its basis over severing generations
in guided engagement,
offering virtual telepathy unwarranted,
revealing ranges of emotion in sound
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unparalleled within the depths of its grooves,
coming to refine this presence without attempting to corral an origin
Discussions with Divergent Spirit Guide
Dreaming, disconnected from the spate of paralyzing
streams, static painted in morning cool mist, numbing
this prayer, this visceral conversation, with Divergent Spirit
Guide
I asked of thee, in fleeting reverence of slipping sands,
to justify this play for divine affection, a blessing of existence,
fleeting days aligning moments fracturing, fashioned out
of trepidation for passing lineage
This is an exercise, in its way an unfathomed form reaching out,
not unlike some lost shadowy figure thought unmovable
Hands, words, extended in cloying sentiment, reach repelled
by desperation gaze
Each side wanting to believe the equation’s integrity
My partition’s path laid out over many years, painful deliverances
of hollow triumphs, bitter cynicism segued into warmth and flow
of unmistakable gratitude, seen and raised and slowly laid down
to rest in memory’s grave
Denial and defiance railed and scrawled in regrettable volume,
exhibitions in deferred distraction, expressions in servitude, masking
the color of skyward eyes, into feigned affection for that which
we share interest, an increasingly fallow world
Sequences emerged from missing, tight air spaces, adjoined,
evening out retractions mistaken for truth and monuments running
tactical diversions, ironing out the creases of hysterical
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waking moments waged from fevered dreams
Hands alight in the symbolic bewilderment of belief, in solemn
questioning form
Oh, Hallowed Ground, I’ve walked, carefully treaded and spread
rigid snap-brush and clay, covering sacred imprints in the soil,
away from your name, indefinitely surpassed and encircled, brightened
in the holy light of decay
In the spotlight of significance, in pockmarked ritual surveillance,
in knowing acknowledgement and unknowing disembowelment,
in the unveiling of the customized context of your face and name,
I remain humbly detached and gainfully engaged
To the fluidity of text and dampening tone of voice in differing octaves,
offering conciliatory terms of re-engagement and remission, pathways
into the vein’s circulatory regulation of sinful pittance,
carefully conveyed, repurposed denial and compelling in its spite
What is implanted can no longer be connected to logic
or interpreted conclusions
Offer no logical outcome or connection to ancient parallel streams,
other than vessel carrying flow brought forward in open divinity
No remedial rewards for one’s constricted, tethered scope –
there are no shutters slung to slot the blotting light streams
Offer no solemn assurance, gazed upon tapestry,
averse to shades fatigued and enthralled in dot-dashed formation fails
None collected in withered wisdom, or fronts discerned
by elder committees in the face of blunted wits, to mimic far slung eyes
toward id and era forsaken
Offer reconciliation not with the sky, drifted and blue, far away comfort
dripping, chirping in dementia’s rhythm, unseen yet engaged
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within mercurial leanings, sans salvation permit, withstood
through feasibility study and minutes, bidding commissioned, surveyed
swaying blades of grass lean eternally
Offer none but the rain awash, obscured gravelly drift extension,
Reconciliation within the scope of newly budding green, ensconced amid
mournfully dissolving escarpments. None but salience, dispersed
unwittingly in regeneration’s scion bared ungrafted in mortal soil,
tended and raised in fertile detail, recirculating elements,
fostering new orbits
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Thank you – Bob Medina, Melissa Miller, Mike Acosta, Jonathan
Rothman, Tom Cheshire, Gavin Frederick, James Joyce, Steve
Wishart, Gray Kiser, Kip Thomas, Sonny Kay
“No Funeral”; “Cooperation”; “Hissing, Pissing, and Buzzing” –
Earlier versions published in song on Chocolate Kiss ‘No Funeral’
CD, Moodswing Records, 2003.
“Peroxide” – Earlier version published in song on Car vs. Driver/
Spirit Assembly split 7” vinyl, Yuletide Records, 1994; and on Car vs.
Driver ‘The Completeist’ CD, Stickfigure Records, 2005.
“Livid Step”; “Without a Day” – Earlier versions published in song
on Car vs. Driver ‘Deja Grateful’ LP, 1995; and on Car vs. Driver
‘The Completeist’ CD, Stickfigure Records, 2005.
“Breathe Again”; “Lonesome Jones” – Earlier versions published in
song on Car vs. Driver ‘Out of a Silent Sky’ LP, 1996, and on Car vs.
Driver ‘The Completeist’ CD, Stickfigure Records, 2005.
“Sunshine Slowdown”; “Gathering of Children”; “Days-a-Wastin’” –
Earlier versions published in song on Chocolate Kiss ‘Onethrutwelve’
CD, Moodswing Records, 1999.
“Prodigal Girl”; “Right Out or Right On” – Earlier versions published
in song on Chocolate Kiss ‘Les Boom Boom’ CD, Moodswing
Records, 2000.
“Smoke Harbor”; “Eight Years” – Earlier versions published in song
on Chocolate Kiss ‘Set Yourself on Fire’ CD, Moodswing Records,
2001.
Earlier drafts of all poems were published individually on the
author’s blog, ‘Hidden Partner’ www.hiddenpartner.blogspot.com,
2008-2017.
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About:
Matt Mauldin is a poet living in Santa Barbara, California, originally
from Atlanta, Georgia. He was involved for many years in Atlanta’s
underground rock scene as singer and lyricist for the bands Car vs
Driver, Chocolate Kiss and Sonn Av Krusher. His first anthology,
Patterns of Reconciliation, is comprised of select poems written from
1993 to 2017, and is organized around themes of coming-of-age, trauma,
love, mourning, depression, anxiety, relationships, enlightenment, social
commentary and spirituality.
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