writing

Pulled mind

MattLeave a comment

Their voices always travel faster than the truth
Always found in the gutter after the lines have been run through
spark me up a cigarette and burn away these untruths
I can’t see for the smoke and mirrors
The string that keeps my mind wrapped inside has come loose
and I’m trying to tie it back together before they notice I’m turning footloose
tying up the laces, weatherproofing my boots
I’m burning up these heedless warnings
you were never meant to mean a thing
so why does my mind keep drawing these useless strings
I’m pulling at tethered threads; all this white noise and dread
stirs things inside my head
my teeth clench together, and all these neon nooses pull my neck
there is too much information
but nothing about you
I’ve been making ghosts in your image
I think you’ve been making me too
Drawing me in your visions, trying to pull me through
but I never was your puppet
even though I’m always drawn to you
but it’s all for the same reasons I’m repulsed too
this hate is closer to love than it should be
yet I have seen through you
but it’s all just white noise buzzing in my head

Their voices always travel faster than the truth
Always found in the gutter after the lines have been run through
spark me up a cigarette and burn away these untruths
I can’t see for the smoke and mirrors
The string that keeps my mind wrapped inside has come loose
and I’m trying to tie it back together before they notice I’m turning footloose
tying up the laces, weatherproofing my boots
I’m burning up these heedless warnings
leaving a trailblaze no one can cut through
I’m highly strung, wound up with no wind down
pulling at tethered threads; all this white noise and dread
stirs things inside my head
my teeth clench together, all these wires become nooses
pulling me into the void from which I had fled





Another letter from Mammaroon

Matt1 Comment

Dear friends

It’s funny what you remember when you miss something. See, it occurred to me recently that there was a great forgetting down on earth. We’d pour our filth out into the world, and then when we glimpsed the ripple effect in our environment, like stones in water, we’d remember for a second, a moment, maybe a little longer if we could hold onto the abstract long enough.
We’d sit, mourn, sigh, and shake our heads, ‘What about the whales?!’ We’d ask, ‘What about the curlew?’
Then, in the next breath, we’d turn and pour more filth, always re-forgetting.

I only remembered our great forgetting because I’m here in this fish tank on another planet. How far removed I have had to be to realise is…nothing but shameful to be honest with you, dear friends.

I miss the way Herons flew like a rope with wings and how the squirrels pissed me off by chewing my bird feeders.
The early morning dawn chorus would irritate me after a sleepless night.

In other news, though, I married Spoon, not because of love but boredom.

Sitting here in this glass tank, I know what a goldfish felt like; if his memory is bad, surely it’s from the tediousness that rots one’s brain from such an oppressive home rather than from biology. I remember having a goldfish that knew when it would get food, and I am much the same when the mammarrians throw in some food.

Occasionally, when the boobacious little spidery mammarrians come and stare at me through the glass, with even smaller ones standing beside them I take off my t-shirt, and I take a run-up to the glass and the little ones skitter and hide behind the slightly bigger ones. It passes the time and amuses me no end!

Yours faithfully
Holden Mcgroin.

Not me, not I, look there at them 

MattLeave a comment

Keep the faces within
disembodied voices crawling
a shattering of skulls behind eyelids
peeping to tomorrow’s byline
author unknown
hatred the tagline
the other freaks are calling
Finger pointing
‘Not me, not I, look there at Them.’
contortionists contorting
fists clash, skulls smash
twisting, cavorting
freaks on freaks in blood
sheep calling sheep sheep
over the fence and mawing
grazing on the zieteigests distortion
groomed into war and extortion
And so the chant goes
‘Not me, not I, look there at them‘
‘Not me, not I! Look there them’





The stallion and the misunderstood

MattLeave a comment

Do you know what it’s like to feel like
At any given moment, they’ll take away your rights?
When all these people keep on arguing on either side
and you’re just trying to keep from dying inside
trying to be unknown
in a landscape of hatred
keeping to the edges
I used to think I hung around these places
cause I wanted to be alone
but now I think I was pushed
pushed to the side

Sometimes I think I’m strong
but mostly, I just think I’m wrong
my stomach churning with all the news
as they preach to all the masses in their pews
I laugh at their ignorance
and then it all burns in my lungs
their fingers pointing to all of us
and I hear their teeth clash as they speak
hungry for the blood rushing to my head
and I think of the look in that horse’s eye
tangled in barbed wire, the flare of the nostrils
as fear curdled his blood
and I think we are brothers in blood
The stallion and the misunderstood

The long black train

MattLeave a comment

Trying to learn to be captivated by the moment
but

All these thoughts get away from me
and I give chase
never catching the momentum of now
but all the tomorrows
like how one day
someone I love will slip away

And I want to fight against the indifference of the universe
but it wouldn’t fear me anyway
I could bend and break all the rules
But time will still etch itself onto my mother’s face
I could photograph all these candid moments
light capturing my father’s face
but in the end, even the lights paintings will fade away

and I wear a mask of calm
But these butterflies are held
each flutter pulls a different trigger
and time keeps rushing
The long black train that can’t be stopped.

We are asteroids

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Springs symphony stirs
but nothing compared to that which spurred
the machines to toil away
Clank, clank
never the hammer of a woodpecker
but the clang and bang of the extractors
the green has all but gone
no weeds to straggle the edges
no brambles for Jenny Wren to nest in
the fox lost its hunting ground
and the owl’s hoot grows ever-distant
perhaps they liken us to a storm that passes through
when they glance us in their beady eyes
but soon, they’ll learn the truth
we were asteroids
plummeting the earth to ruin

Look at us

MattLeave a comment

Look at us, our crimes loiter in the air
dangerous with intent
but we’ll carry on
skuttling along in our exoskeletons
It’s true, we haven’t really got much choice
so we speed along
looking out of our windows
we undo all that was said
every day
A great forgetting
making plastic hearts to preserve
the life force once organic
and in the stale breath of a museum
the heart of a whale
consumes us
as we pass
A reflection on what makes us human
fading fast
how can we know ourselves
when everything we are connected to is imprisoned?