Under Matt's Hat

2009-03-20T22:08:00.001-07:00

smells of campfire
pull open wide
the doors of summer

2009-03-19T08:58:00.001-07:00

striped spring termite
this is not your house
nor is it mine

2008-05-16T12:06:00.000-07:00

chattering bird
the cat
chatters at

hidden trickles
snow melts
under ice

from the plane
a trail
I once climbed

car horns
cacophony
or night's melody

sea above
clouds below
moving eastward

2007-02-06T08:05:00.000-08:00

pigeons wade
beneath parked car--
hot steam vents

restless cat
electrified!
assults the rug

2006-12-31T09:42:00.000-08:00

faintest cheer
home team scoring run—
the man’s headphones

evergreens
even greener since
thunderstorm

cloud of bees
end their flight
my speeding car

eighty degrees—
palm tree glows
Christmas lights

shrill cry
forgotten kettle boils—
time for work

I sit
shadowboxing skull
doves escape

fog enrobes
the looming coast
curls away

students
clutch books tightly
braving the cold

2006-03-27T09:40:00.001-08:00

2006-03-27T09:40:00.000-08:00

I drift off to zombies,
hackneyed as they are.
Hired extras wait for their cue,
for my fight or flight,
or something like my full, burgeoning bloom.
The clamor of a lion’s claws
he paces the garage
and I am the tiniest of cats.
The claws are rapping--
I’ve been here before
somewhere in the minutes
haunting the space
just before I wake
to bubbling, boiling radiators
my home warm, underwater
as the neon sign
glows into my room
flashing: “LIQUORS.”

2006-03-22T11:21:00.000-08:00

2006-02-08T21:41:00.000-08:00

I haven't written in a while, because I've been writing essays on Virginia Woolf and Body Language and how it effects a tutoring session in the writing center. One of these does not interest me. Bet you can't guess! Bet you can't eat a whole cheesecake! But thanks to Jen, I am taking the time to contribute to this session of tag, and with good reason.

7 Songs I'm Into Now

1. Vampires of New York- Marcy Playground
2. Rat Poison (for dinner)- Say Anything
3. Thumbelina- Nightmare of You
4. Autumn Leaves [Take 2] - Bill Evens Trio
5. Blue Valentines- Tom Waits
6. She Says- Unwritten Law
7. How Long Is Forever- Willie Nelson

These songs, if not already enjoyed, should be illegally downloaded. Just kidding...or am I?

Tag, Dave you're it!

matt

2005-12-19T20:08:00.000-08:00

The ice age is here.
Bitter cold creeps around,
searching for a doorway, a place to sleep.
I exhale the air in my lungs,
watch it drift over a handrail.
It freezes, dissipates, changes form,
hangs suspended before seeping
into someone's living room.

2005-12-04T21:16:00.000-08:00

I knew Jerry,
the man who went hunting Ayhuasca,
skeletal in a midnight field of husks,
or part of that scene, seen
later through the lens of Patricia Faure
at a Ferus opening so long before
my birth.

Jerry was a carpenter like Jesus.
I used to listen to his bones creak
as he built shelves.
I helped him carry the mahogany slabs
to his converted van.

Jerry, the spirit of Venice
before it became so overrun
with money and houses.

I grew up in Indiana, Jerry,
but you took time with my poems.
Really helped that one about the sea
serenading us to sleep.

Jerry, are you still alive out there
in the big, cavernous, sprawling, lonely West?

(I guess there was an intoxicating spirit
that started to work its way into my blood, under my skin,
like a draft or whiskey buzz.
I miss it badly.)

I’m back home now, snowed in,
and just wondering
if you’re alive or dead,
you broken bulb in a sea of drunken stars,
reaching shadow in an alley of towering palms.

2005-12-03T17:43:00.000-08:00

In winter
frigid air sucks dry
gayest tune

Small box home
amidst sprouting green--
crowded town

creaking sound
ghosts on the floorboards--
old man sleeps

frozen limbs
blue and ivory feet
warm wool socks

2005-12-02T20:41:00.000-08:00

bitterness recedes
pitter patter...bird prints
in the concrete

2005-11-30T12:12:00.000-08:00

world bustles

smoke rises

even in city

heart of peace

a thousand pines

resonate true, eternal

singing song

of prodigious earth

2005-11-26T12:37:00.000-08:00

I stand alone,
On a frozen El platform.
What pleasures have I left behind?

The child has grown
Three feet since last I saw!
Eyes of a hawk

Frozen bird,
Heart chewed out
Onto stark white snow

Dinner party…
Tender snowflakes fall
Against purple sky

Train roars above
Shakes loose the track;
Lion runs through a thicket

A cat’s pink ear
Conch shell by the sea
Hears eternal waves.

Frost grows like mold
On a building’s side;
The city churns

Steam from a chimney
Meanders vertically,
Cars, a horizontal stream

Sun forgives icicles
Winter has arrived
Where have the days gone?

2005-11-26T09:30:00.000-08:00

Downtown’s history is visible
In its layout.
On the outskirts of Los Angeles,
Chicago, St. Louis,
Great buildings jet upward
Pronouncing their position.
“Isn’t the skyline idyllic?”
They say.
The giant sculptures overlook
Their surroundings:
Industry, mainly, moats metropolis.
Wrecking yards and power plants,
All once outskirts of the city,
Now tucked inside, desolate,
Save for artist lofts and storage facilities.

2005-11-16T15:21:00.000-08:00

The West is no longer a frontier,
Nor are we pioneers of the edge of this flat world.
Nestled in a valley below the Pacific winds,
The City of Angels stretches on for miles.

Do you want to go back there with me?

We could take a boat out past the jetty,
Past the pier and churning shore.
Turn and look back at twilight,
On what has become this so frequented land.
The water is dirty as I bob amidst the kelp and brine.

Come back with me, please.

We could erase our names and start again with some new fortune.
So when we turn and life is hurricane as tumultuous as life can be,
We will be within its eye,
assured that the body of some laughing child
Was not dashed against the rocks decades ago.

2005-11-07T17:47:00.000-08:00

Hola

I tend to leave out certain words sometimes,
when speaking to them, so they understand.
Of course, I have respect for foreign men
just as for those who might call me their own.
You see, I am not one to go about
adjusting dialect or frame of mind
to fit that of the man across from me
unless communication might be lost.
So if I tend to leave out certain words
due to their coarseness on the ear or tongue,
it’s only so the chance for relation
is not lost in the garbled transmission.
In fact, when it grows late, and I have had
several drinks and just happen to pass
the busboy on the way to the bathroom,
all that I can muster up is “Hola.”

2005-11-07T17:27:00.000-08:00

Temple

I will not go to Zen temple today.
I cannot face the sitting and the pain
of cramping knees and thighs. The silent room
grows unbearable from the passing trains,
and cars, whose drivers have places to go.
The bell sounds resounds, and each person then tries
to be the clevr’st so that Roshi knows,
that they alone are like the Golden Child.
They tumble over dead, or shout answers
to unsolvable koans they’ve been giv’n.
Those riddles will indeed be their demise.
But alas, I should go down today,
to settle down at least, to make myself
right with the world. To fully breathe at last:
this alone should be my intention.
How can it be, that good men do grow bored,
with touching bits of emptiness they find?

2005-11-07T17:01:00.000-08:00

Storm Chaser

His mind is focused, poised with steady hands.
He’s ready, moving instinctually, letting go.
His body contorted, he gives his weight
to the approaching storm. His face is red
like sunburnt sky. The fire shoots from his eyes
as the ocean swallows the burning orb.
Could it be her, with flesh obscured by boughs
of evergreen? Or is it her, tumbling
through cotton ball clouds, calling his name?
A flash of white, he’s floating with the stars.
He looses grip, his forehead hits the glass.
Perhaps he’s been a bit too loud this time.
He listens, but hears only sounds of sleep,
and steel radiators in the night.

2005-11-04T19:40:00.000-08:00

How far have we gone, now?

If only it were as simple as the shadows in bones.
Stillness in marrow, warranting release,
and the falling of eyelids,
now ten thousand or so notions removed.

Before sight, was the candor of non.
Non-everything, yet condensed as sulfites,
grouped like multicolored posterboard housing.

All under the sun
Equal to the distance from Big Shore--
plane of no substance.

Equal to the distance we must swim back.

A lottery of karma,
borne against its will.

Yet its ceasing--
like the momentary retreating tide--
the hardest task,
surpasses will.

2005-11-04T19:36:00.000-08:00

That hillside--
one could take a charge to it,
and hardly change it,
as if man has no legs to climb that soft soil.

There are craters aplenty
which already glaze the spectators eye.
A few modified-- we have the tools--
made askew in a particular vantage
would not warrant panic
in neighboring villages.

Alas, there is no cable long enough,
to harbor us from that fulmination.
We must either submit ourselves to the blast,
or find some other occupation.

2005-11-04T19:24:00.000-08:00

I can get enough as the Spectator...
I have had enough.

(i.e., In the back of the room, Lucy flips the breaker.
The crowd gasps as the cinema is brought to life. Again
the film plays with the same flaws in the reel, the sound
skips. It is a ball rolling, underwater or perhaps it is the
cloudy nature of the film. Music plays but it does not
correspond with the visual, as if trying to “take off,” or
“separate.” The projector operator is smoking, which
has an ethereal affect on the hall. The crowd would
not mind watching a third time, but the fuses keep blowing,
and it gets smokier until grandpa coughs. The hypnosis
obviously had little effect, his back, his lungs.)

2005-11-04T15:43:00.000-08:00

Regarder un photo du chatte:

Fantastique, no?

2005-11-02T08:48:00.000-08:00

A line of patients wait outside my door,
They have been there for weeks now, taking turns
Peering in through the frosted glass, my name
Etched on the outward facing side. I have
No secretary, no second hands to field
Their fussy, impatient queries. One man
Loves his father, one only loves the Bard.
A woman has trouble keeping composure,
Another sings out of rhythm and tune.
All need amending before they can be
Acquianted with the world; they are such shy,
Demanding seedlings I am in care of.
The wife will soon request me home for supper,
I must leave all this for another day.
Though late at night my thoughts will be with them,
Resiving has become my twilight dream.