Rap>Poetry

No time for this emo shit no mo

Life is great when you make it so

Afterword

You know it's over when the tides go out from under you
and the world seems frozen in a crystalline form.
When you look into the mirror and don't want to be there any more.
But I'm no quitter.

I'll clench my teeth until my molars crack and I fracture my jaw
into a million splintered pieces,
smiling all the while: blood dripping, warm.

This dissonance is quickly building to a roar.
Some days I wish I could just be an invisible man,
so that everyone would address me as such.

I've lost my desire to inspire anything,
or perhaps just my capacity therefore.

Fuck it.
All I need is a pen and a bucket,
with which I may finally sit and collect my thoughts.

If only it were that simple.

all yours

An ingrained sense of inadequacy is never easily reformed.

When all you can see are all the ways people will walk out-
when your heart beats muffled for fear of being torn.

Maybe if I wasn't raised gazing out of foggy windows at departing cars;
or if they didn't say one thing and do another because they never thought
you would notice.

But you grew up detecting breakable promises,
and knew when they would, from the start.

When all you ever really thought you had were your own thoughts,
and the dark,
you get so caught up in both that you can't see things for how they are.

I'm sorry I sold you damaged goods,
but they will never do you harm.

You don't have to be gentle.
You don't even have to keep your promises.
Just don't pity me.

I do enough of that myself
and wanted to give you something besides sorrow.

Pearlcussion

What a crude instrument
this calligraphy is.

Give me some drumsticks
and let me paradiddle my sins
into a innocent snare.

It's probably for the best
that my parents never got me
a drum kit when I was a kid.

Rolling hat hits pulsing
as the kick concusses
cluster-bombs of penance through the air.

I would've punctured their skins;
then my drums would've been broken
and I would be left with my sticks.

Today a plane flew over my house.

I live less than 15 minutes away from the airport and have heard jumbo jets flying over my house my whole life, but today I wondered why. I wondered why I had to stop thinking to myself to listen to a commercial airliner shit through my sky.

My father is a pilot. He would probably be disappointed if he knew I was ridiculing aviation.

I just really enjoy silence sometimes.

2 days apart

I could never pack up my memories
and try to forget about you.

It began one summer evening
in an empty pool hall,
when you leaned into me and I took my cue.

How beautiful this life can be.

The parks, the bathroom closets,
the birthdays, the valentines,
the bedrooms, the showers,
the restaurants, the museums,
etc.

You taught me how to see in color
with your head resting on my shoulder.


Maybe we could make something beautiful,
together, some day, baby.
Just you, and me.

Brandon

(Drugs only kill those who never realize their potential;
never take methodone, kids; and if you should choose to shoot
yourself, please do so cleanly and save us all the anguish)

I was watching that freestyle you recorded of yourself
wearing a dunce cap of your own fashioning, making fun of rapping,
and could not help but laugh a little at your exaggerated mannerisms.

You were always a child at heart-
late twenties prankster, faithful son,
beloved uncle, coveted nephew,
wise brother, trusted friend.

You showed me how the funniest people were often miserable,
and that they had to cloak their wounds with jokes.
And you had jokes for days.
For daze. And years.

I remember when your mother passed two septembers back,
knowing I couldn't stand swallowing a similar pill,
seeing how it had slit your throat from the inside,
as you seemed to choke on your own saline blood at the funeral,

trying to hold back, wanting so bad to let go.
Down that slippery slope,
some pangs are residual, still.

Over the summer I saw you had been taking it badly,
mostly with bumps to the head,
and a few downers every now and then.
Then you got into the hard shit,
which i neither condoned nor condemned,
but you could hear the brokenness in your songs.

Your sister in law said she and your nephew and niece
planted a Magnolia tree in their yard
so the kids could remember your smile every summer when it bloomed.

The saddest part is
you told us you would die just like you did-
chasing your dreams-
but none of us wanted to believe you.
Now it’s about to be summer and I just wanted you to know
that we still miss you down here.

you couldn't dream my dreams
and try to be normal

I miss my dogs

When I was 13 I held my dog as the vet euthanized her, trying to offer her some final comfort from her vital affliction. When I got home I dug a hole under an oak tree, and buried her in my backyard, fighting back tears all the while.

I realized we had received false information as soon as I kicked through the deadbolt, only to find the sights of my Beretta filled with a still absence where I had expected life. An immediate horror swept over my pervasive paranoia. I thought of you, behind the back door- waiting for a sign I never shot.
The sound of forced entry reminded me of the cacophony of death, the lock erupting with a singularly hopeless chime: The punctuated combustion of your Glock .45, followed by the foreign interjection of percussive uncertainties, then an infinite moment of distilled silence. I didn't need any visual reassurance; I knew what was waiting for me wherever I should find it. I followed a muffled scuffling coming from something rubbing against the floorboards.
The kitchen looked like genocide- crude wounds on lifeless bodies, a variety of bullet casings, blood running like red wine, all strewn about chaotic distortion of common objects. Then there you were- leaking out of your left leg and your right cheek, the latter just a few inches aside from humane extermination, sitting like a statue. You had been reduced from your larger than life persona, stooped in your own untimeliness.
Criminals don't die like they do in movies.
You showed no remorse, only a dissonant resignation. After realizing the other two were too dead to draw weapons, I knelt beside you, bowing my head, so as not to let you see me crying, unable to look at you until you spoke. You said something about a lottery ticket, tripping over the t's with a tattered tongue, trying to divert the inevitable. I grabbed the back of your neck and held you like a big baby, letting the blood pooling from your leg stain my favorite boots, as I desperately sought to construct some lasting asylum from this insanity.
I couldn't find the words. I just rested your chin on my shoulder. Then your body started convulsing. Your mouth fell open and a rattle resounded out of your throat, a cackle I had grown familiar with. I gripped you with all my might, as if I hoped to expedite the conclusion of your suffering, but the rattle still rolled until I felt your weight come down. Your eyes peered from behind a glazed inertia, as I drew your eyelids down and drug you to your Chrysler, to bury in the backyard of your childhood home.

Hendrix

Dear Jimi,

I really wish you would come back and teach these kids about living on the edge. Maybe you could play them a somber rendition of Little Wing and tell them about how, sometimes, when you bend the rules they can break you into a million effervescent shreds of subdued rebellion. I know you don't like to share some things though.
All I really want is for you to play like you did. Music doesn't feel the same any more Jim, not that I ever knew how it did. Nowadays everything is dead.
Give us a soundscape we can build generations on. Pick that guitar like a scab, until you bleed yourself over the fretboard, and women throw their underwear at your red hands. Sure, some kids might say you don't make sense, but they would be the same ones that have trouble following anything besides dance steps and synthetic snares.
Tell us how to listen Jim. Play us through lost lifetimes, until you lose your temporal disposition. Save us.

sincerely,
Matt.

p.s. do Biggie and Pac still biker over street cred?

I'm sure some of my classmates wonder why I always write sad poems,
so I will do my best to explain my disposition-

A life is a terrible thing to waste,
and watching young people being lowered into graves
like fragile pieces of trash makes you reevaluate a lot of things.

What means the world to you?
Is it just a stage for your vain actions,
whose repercussions you will fail to realize
until you stand at an altar thumbing a page
of postulations on the essential nature of fate?

I saw you in my sleep, the way I prefer to remember you:
before your innocuous eyes were colored with your own blood,
before you became a subject of my nightly prayers,
before you were disposed of.

That day,
when you realize how truly insignificant most of your worries are,
you may find yourself plagued with a chronic anguish.

So I told them that we were made to love each other,
as a shameless cascade of tears trailed down my face,
and that even when that love is vanquished
it's haunting recurrence will one day take us
to a consolation in some alien space.

I can't escape my self-imposed confinement,
so I just write on the walls,
page after page,
edifying chains.

Doodling in Class

As the paper was passed around the class,
a domino of laughter spread down the row.
I try to hold it in every time, but I know I never will.

Last semester I started scribbling little drawings
on other peoples poem revisions.
I like to think it gives them something to remember me by,
if not my writing.

Hopefully the giggles rectify the silent stillness I feel after reading.

A comedian knows how to bend the mood,
but only a poet can kill it.
Jokes always have punchlines, but not all poems have happy endings,
especially not the ones I've written.

The next time you feel that smile swelling up within you
know it was derived from my guilt,
and laugh until you tear up inside.

Even if my illustrative skill is not as developed as my penmanship,
at least it can make people happy.

Killers don't cry

Our demons would think us to be heroes,
but we're just disillusioned drug dealers
with bruised egos.

Some of us sold our allegiances to strangers
for paisley patterned belongings.
We all wore black to confront the beyond-
sheltering ourselves from the scrutiny
of whoever was watching with a cloak of darkness.

Tears are death warrants.

Only the heartless survive,
in spite of their physiological flaws.
As I stood in front of the congregation,
trying to make sense of our losses,
I lost it.

The bouquet-covered altar blurred
like the subdued sentiments of despondence.
I looked out into the crowd.
And the tears started falling.

"We are all dead men walking.
This life only lasts so long,
especially when you keep swallowing
the salt on your wounds."

Dogs

There are innumerable bodies lining the sidewalks;
and we still talk about sitcoms, sports, and dramas.

Some people will never learn to think
outside of the box.

How long will the forgotten die as our memories go on?
Will we remember them at all?
The prospect is somber,
regardless.

Under the rubble,
buried too deep
to be met by our dishonest sympathies,
lies a truth
too dark to uncover,
too poverty-stricken.

A tricycle sits on it's side in a deserted street
waiting for a sweetheart that lost her life before her innocence.

This isn't how life is supposed to be;
is it?

We've become too blinded by our greenbacks
to see that they've sewn seeds in killing fields,
and compounded the causes of relief efforts.

A chorus of crushed voices resonates from the ruins,
Crying out.

Sometimes I think I feel the pursed lips of my wallet
bleeding down my hamstring,
beaten centsless by a constant diet of tender dollars
as others starve.

Then there were the dogs,
pancaked under the concrete stories.
At least grieve for the dogs.

Kote Ii ou fe mal?

Disillusioned is my favorite word.

Mask

I don't remember any of my babysitters, just the fog on the window by the front door spreading from my breath as I watched my mother leave with some other vagabond. The blur of the school parking lot as I watched my father drive off into another month of absentia from behind solemn eyes. My brother was hardly ever home, and when he was he chased me around wearing a Halloween mask.

Family ties hanged on broken bonds. The noose is too loose to stop our fall. But we've learned how to love each other. We've uncovered each other's scars; well, at least I have, but sometimes I doubt they really know me at all.

I threw that Halloween mask in the trash, and forced my brother to wear his true colors when he wanted to kick my ass. I just wanted to be close, but he enjoyed knocking me over a little too much to notice. We aren't even really brothers. We only talk over intoxication.

My dad was my hero, before the fall: before I saw how pitiful of a man he was when I was gone. I still think he was a coward for hiding behind those bars.

And my mom was the only one that stood by me. Though her hand oftentimes only sought mine when she lost hold of her wandering affections, I never stopped her. I just wanted her to be happy.

My criticism is no malicious vengeance. I've been trying to digest all the frogs I swallowed throughout my youth. They croaked in my throat until my voice box grew sore from their sallow songs. It feels good to vomit their truth.

5 minute ultimatum

Perhaps one day I will write something substantial. Maybe some people(hopefully institutionally recognized ones) will praise me. Then I will sit back, and realize I have accomplished nothing. My legacy will only be blotters on a page, of a language that will most likely be widely unrecognizable in the distant future that they seek to penetrate.

How vain is this cathartic act?
Why do I pose questions of my own contemplation,
if not to only further confound those kind enough to take time out of their day to read them?

Who the fuck reads anymore anyway?
Poetry has become a marginalized section of bookstores and libraries
where introverts hide away, where a canonical selection of literature remains,

forever.

Kiss my ass if you don't think I'm clever.