Poetry

Every Damn Time

MattLeave a comment

I carry this world on my shoulders
‘You can’t save the world.’ Says a voice in my ear.
I hold it in the hollow of my skull, smooth as a pebble worn by the babbling brook
Each syllable I have worn down
I have turned them till each edge is smoothed, childproof.
I know the words. I hear the words. I know what they mean.
but I don’t grasp them, quite.

I live under
where all sounds are shorn and clipped
dulled, distant.
Yet, clearly, I can hear my own eyes with each blink
clinking like coins.
Neon light spills over my dirigible head, reflecting back from the slick wet pavement
beaming up to my twin coins
splitting my head into that ache I always carry.

The rain is cascading down like a waterfall.
Extreme weather events
Say that to someone
They don’t say much; they might even shrug their shoulders.
‘Don’t look up!’ I tell them.
They always look up.


They see nothing. They hear nothing. They look back at their screens.

I see it in the eyes of the wild
bewilderment.
I am too.
And each time I see that their freedom isn’t all that
that we each suffer in our own alien way

My head expands with a whimper
We expanded ourselves with the clang of hammers and tongues.
We clash, we break, we fix, we mend.
Stick a plaster over the gas leak from my dirigible head.

But what if not all things can be rooted
held secure, anchored, fixed?

I have seen girls with spiral eyes, staircases up to the light’ouse
Seen boys with ‘em too.
Irises gleaming white against bloodshot kintsugi porcelain plates
the white lotus pearl of electrical snow bleeding into all of us eyes
Lost in the splizer zeeth watching white noise in a tubers teeth!

Politicians smiling on TV with teeth for the radio
Roadkill badgers zipped past burred windows
a nation of nature lovers

and Tom foolery knows as much as fuck knows; ask him, he’ll tell ya.
You can’t save everyone

 and it kills me.
Every. Damn. Time.

R.I.P Flint.

MattLeave a comment

The spectre of death grinned behind my flesh
While my muscles dragged my lips into a frown
holding you in the grooves that etched themselves in my face
the memories of you behind tight lidded eyes
And before long you have become a summary
something no longer held or absaloute
abstraction pulls and pushes
And you ripple and fade
and I carry the burdern of this change
This silence that was here before you, but now its shaped like you
You were so small
yet the the sum of you was bigger than any whole.
My hands have since been washed
These same hands that held you
As your tiny heart slowed
And you slipped away.
I said, ‘i think he’s gone now’
And like that, you were gone
I said, ‘you’ve been my best friend’ and I lifted you to my face. I meant to say goodbye, i meant to say a million things.
But none was forthcoming.

Neon Shapes Of Absence

Matt1 Comment

Written using a few of the words from this weeks sunday whirl

Neon shapes your absence
on the slick cobblestone
my pulse startled into suspended animation
where the night never turns on its axis
Behind the silence comes the blue that comes with the sirens
as if we lived lives worth saving
the jazz band detonated music out into the street
And the wind whispered your name
And under the green-blue halo
I almost fall to my knees like cain

Don’t sell me hope

Matt1 Comment

Don’t sell me hope.
I cant wait with baited breath.
Don’t tell me there is hope.
The most hopeful i’ve ever been is always simultaneously the most hopeless.
My heart cannot withstand more
I, who is, as ever, on a cowards walk
skirting the ledge but never daring to skip over the edge.
I wish to be dead.
I wish to be alive but without the grindtooth dread.
This guilt that pins my flesh to my skeletal passenger
waiting beneath
with its toothsome grin
to be free.

And what of this world
is there left to bleed?
If there ever was?
No. I am almost certain
this world….we pin meaning to it, in the trappings of pithy sayings.

Only because our birth cannot be undone

Pig-snout fang’ead

MattLeave a comment

It were an unholy feast
To which he gnawed with verve
With mad coals of green flame against his alabaster whites
Starin’ through that dreadful snare o’ his own eyes
drippage o’ ichor from his lips to his chin
Tentacles twist and writhe betwix his bladesome teeth
The corners o’ his lips curlin’, turnin’ every which way as he tore into the grisly flesh
o’ that pig-snouted fang’ead

Authors note: This is inspired by the words linked to and a project i’ve been working on.

A Walk in The Rain

Matt8 Comments

I was walkin’ in the rain
which was delicious, no delectable
the way it sparkled in me lions mane
Made me feel worth it
So’s I ruffed up me collar
bobbin’ me ‘ead like a pigeon or a cockney
then all ruffed up like a ruff
I played at being cantona
And kicked a can down the road
‘And he has it! Its a hat-rick!’
I roared
and there was a cloudburst o’ pastel hues o’ music on me tongue
playin’ me like a vibraphone!

This is written for W3

Then I Do It All Again

MattLeave a comment

There are gremlins in the shallows of my face
Pick pocketing the needles that they tried to use to knit back together my brain
I dont have the heart to tell them its made of glass
And it breaks. Sometimes i fill it like a vase
with flowers and that.


When i walk around town people mistake them for a hat
They say, ‘hello’ and i softly speak back
But they rarely hear me
And then they turn to their friends and screw up their face and say, ‘rude!’ With a huff
And a gremlin pulls me by the ear and says ‘look at that. They think you’re a twat’
And i think Maybe i am so i take the flowers from the vase and let them wilt and die
And then i say to myself memento mori
And then i roll into bed
and rest my sorrowful head
Then I wake up and do the whole rigmarole again.