Matthew Bass, 29 października 2012
took the 56 bus downtown
to a place once real,
or at least in imagination.
The flat windows and cold steel
that scraped against the winter sky
felt like human parking lots
hanging over the abandoned shoulders
of people running back and forth,
while the homeless sold newspapers
no one cared enough to read.
A city lived only in imaginations
by people without imaginations.
I talked to old friends along a dirty river
about nothing about a reoccurring past,
their names slowly forgotten, names whitewashed
into a tapestry of post-industrial bliss.
I followed an address to my childhood:
an empty void with escaping memories
blowing in the lake effect wind.
And when I awoke
I walked forward... because
there was no where else to go;
tears were not worth the trouble.
Matthew Bass, 15 października 2012
Am I insane?
Blessed with trials
of unclean angels
perfected with imperfection,
mirrors of experience
reflected in a cracked iris.
The holy face that follows
comforts and watches over
with a holy smile radiating
in stark starry sleepless
pre-dawn mornings intertwined
in long walks to nowhere
from Yuma to the Middle East
with notebooks of noble philosophy
holding hard against supernova
storm clouds that sway blindly
into unknown fiery revelations.
Murdered with angry shotguns
on the brink of failed hope
as thousands and thousands of
trumpeted bugles scream down hills
in complete darkness one can only
discover in slippery black sand.
Slipping away on credit
in imagined Spanish avenues
that continue on until irrelevance
is no longer a petty comfort
to watch pretty girls
dance on giddy toes
refraining "This is how I am"
thinking about strategy, conquest
the science of sex, and
the next fix.
This is for you Priya Shah
This is for you John Caltagirone
This is for you John Bouse
because this life is not for
petty meaningless us, we
pointless chroniclers of
what we strive to be with
words destined to fade slowly
in the utter blankness
of pre-dawn mornings cursed
with the comfort of self-important
tarnished abstraction obssesed
with structure, form, and
stark raving expression.
Without you we are nothing.
Matthew Bass, 6 października 2012
Tornados form in the distance,
products of wild imaginations
on rolling highways. Wisps
of nipples barely swirling
from green clouds turning above
God´s country in opposite directions
with unspoken understanding that
the plains are there only in preparation
for gloomy sunlit Kansas desert doldrums,
and the people on this tapestry blanket
only do his bidding here.
Screaming yelling kicking
in the absolute silence of corn fields
connected by straight lines dashed arbitrarily
in the great empty vastness.
Interstates, highways, country roads
marked with letters numbers
and towns unmoved with the strings
of quaint dignified sleep
with something lost in the madness
of cities who have failed
in their search for the authentic.
Symbols, important things.
Eagles in the sky encompassing everything,
sometimes lifeless on the asphalt.
Vultures salivating above rotted corpses,
floating over South Dakota waterfalls
that have always been there.
The moons burning in infinite space
guiding us in the darkness
from Des Moines to Eldon.
Harvest moons eating the stars
like red giants,
high blue ones atop
the otherwise unknown
in search of the spontaneous
betrayed by great horizons.
Small wood houses standing upright
against dismissive winds running away east
past the decay of another time eyeballing
underneath shallow skin with gothic dignity.
Deep into the night the world turns slowly,
change is just euphemism for how quickly
tommmorrow chooses to forget and ignore.
Matthew Bass, 6 października 2012
Oh world! (blah). Poets! What have you become?
Directionless without Bréton´s authority
Obscure like early Rimbaud
museum pieces in the attic
trapped on this plane, marking revolutions
from bored jaded middle-classes.
Alone on a stage with Kevin McCameron
with no one to listen or
pass us by.
Western destruction imminent and passé.
It is only best to speak in love poems
sonnets, and prose of sweet rememberance.
The sun sears asphalt on stop-and-go traffic.
The heat smells not all different from colors
in crowds of faces too unhealthy and beaten
to see all the beautiful things just outside
their frames of mind; characters only spoken to
in old books and ideologies.
The Meaning of life:
To catch a glimpse of the waitress pretending not to notice
the table full of torn notebook pages during happy hour,
but you notice her
and she held your hand in meditations
that very morning.
To teeter on the edge of obscurity because not all hope
has yet been lost. The universe exists in infinite space.
The Bodhisvatta has a pleasant smile, straddling the body
like a dripping wet sweatty naked woman in a blanket,
the fourth dimension hidden by the other three
length height volume.
Poetry has done nothing for me.
War made me fast and violent,
bloodied my knuckes with blistering cigarette burns.
Death made me a man without dreams of
towering cities over lakes and rivers.
Spain made me human, fascinated by
unscripted lives that moved still with time
lacking purpose. Priya taught me love
risk and heartbreak. To love is always best,
To love unconditionally is always better.
God taught me to never give in to astonishment,
to understand what is directly in front, but
can never be seen.
Everything that has been written
or will be written has already been written.
Fear is control, Fearlessness is freedom
We are only theater, extras trying to remember
what it is that we´ve already heard.
Matthew Bass, 6 października 2012
(You)
Sublime and calm,
pecking and cooing
at the unseen side of my brain.
A breathless hug pinning my body to the floor
asking me to come hard and let go this time;
sometimes it´s on the floor
sometimes it´s on the bed
sometimes it´s in a book of poetry.
I hope and dread but secretly wait
for you to tickle me with your soft syllables
to pull down my arms
and massage my lungs
until they fall on top
of my broken heart.
But
you
do
nothing
When you finish,
you just dance around in the air
hanging from a thread
with your damascus sword.
Blow me kisses on your tip toes
and say:
"It´s not time for that yet"
I almost walked away yesterday,
couldn´t quite cross the bridge!
Maybe I will today,
I hope.
Matthew Bass, 6 października 2012
Is it to much to ask for something more than
dopamine and ((pulsating)) cromatics
beating and shaking
against the walls
counting time
until
your middle-aged 2 A.M. destiny...
that never seems quite as good as it could be,
and you´re left singing karaoke to a wall
once your best years have passed you by
while everyone else gets drunk
fantasizing about
the fear of yielding to other´s desires
and you´re ass.
Is it too much to ask for a little true love?
Romance isn´t dead, but your bleached hair
and fake tan are; standing helpless in the cross-rhythm
of your insecure shoulders, just so you can complain
about something else. A rook in the relentless assault
to commodify one of the last few things
not ripped from our chests without anstesia just yet.
I will not forget how to dance on thin membranes of air
lifted by the scent of chivalry
because not all is sucked out by:
text speak and faux-paux dispositions stuck to listas
and empty stares batting themselves to death
looking for open doors to E-Classes and X5´s
with drinks full of secret ingredients.
Is it too much to ask for something beautiful
that goes a little deeper than damaged flesh
hung out to dry on glossy meat hooks?
To care about something more tangible you obviously
could never care enough to try an understand?
Matthew Bass, 6 października 2012
I am alone today,
Alone in a cobweb
with friends clamoring
from the kitchen to the porch.
Alone in the jokes bouncing off antique windows,
alone in my own smiles and laughs, and an ominous feeling
I share with no one. I am anonymous;
as a face in a dark pub
comforting itself
with feigned ignorance,
much like the night before.
Did I fall asleep? Does it matter? Do I care?
It's said:
Time heals, everything arrives at a rightful place.
I know that already, it's hell.
Yet I hope
I want to hope
I need to hope,
if only day to day.
I could write you, express my love in abstractions
though you would not answer back, even if you want to.
I feel your graceful movements
as real as they always are,
then you kiss me in the awkward moment, and kiss me again.
I say stop, shutdown,
clean off the beer cans
stacked on the glass table
and you put your arms around me
just before I fall into you
on a white leather couch
because,
I can only hold on from afar,
Matthew Bass, 7 czerwca 2012
I will sit here.
Drink another beer
smoke another cigarette,
alone. And contemplate
nothing.
Meanwhile,
Drunk Punk Mike stands on his corner
with his white witch wife
talking about 1977
when
people were alive.
Larribe the hippie
drinks mint tea in the Jewish Quarter of Tangier
talking about Katherine Hepburn and The Rolling Stones.
The whore in Singapore I got drunk with
who admonished me for feeling so so sorry for myself
still sits there with her teenage face
talking of beautiful things.
and
I will become this bench
punctured with splinter wounds,
watch man descend into chaos
hoping for the rise of woman
with a Teak smile.
Then decompose like stagnant driftwood.
Matthew Bass, 7 czerwca 2012
I promise I will
smash unplane mirrors,
let the stars align
like all the times before
with riddles cased in midieval stone
and shared cups of tea
as we fall into Saturn´s embrace
without ever saying a word.
Matthew Bass, 6 czerwca 2012
The color of your eyes
is as lost as your name.
I refuse
to look.
The warmth of your arms
does not make the bedroom
feel any less cold.
Before you spoon me
just know...
I´d rather not hurt you
tommorrow.
Matthew Bass, 6 czerwca 2012
I fell into the concrete
when you turned your head
at a harsh inward angle,
and replied
without passion.
I imploded
into a cubist painting
when I saw your hand
move toward mine,
until you became aware
and pulled it back
into your abdomen.
In that moment I died...
but not really.
I screamed!
"I love you"
"I love you"
"I love you"
too loud
for you
to ever
hear.
...in that moment
I saw the train
leave the station
with you on it, and
I knew I did not ever
really love you.
Matthew Bass, 6 czerwca 2012
The intersection
of a third world market:
An insurgent, and old man
a woman, or a child
broken under dawn;
sloppy pools of
bone and flesh.
What they never saw
will never see again
under the terrible
orange sun.
And the machine guns
continue to laugh
day after day
year after year,
like background noise.
Matthew Bass, 4 czerwca 2012
His rusty Machete gleams in the moonlight
over the scared scrawny head of Daniel
painting pictures of drunk tourists
and old buildings on the stone-lettered streets,
he is Jorge
and he has a machete, but he also has
a thick scarred Cuban accent.
Pablo, dirty and unwashed: watches with exitement
the pretty girls tripping over their heels
because even he knows those vulgar pick-up lines
are more charming on Fridays than on Mondays, next
to Gustavo chain-smoking like a stinking addict one cigarette
after the other between alien yellow fingertips. And
he complains like a man happy with unhappiness; about Spain,
about Argentina, about women, but never about the French.
A Danish boy who makes old ladies blush and sings newborns
to sleep, returns from Lavapies speaking in utopian tones
about French strawberry fields. Black women who endured
Rape in the Sahara to be raped by something worse
taunt English boys dazed by their own spinning stone-lettered heads amongst petty dealers in knock-off leather jackets.
I immersed, laugh at everyone
while the pretty Danish boy practices Bob Dylan poses
in the reflection of a water puddle, and the Chinese work harder
under the noses of the Conspicuous with back packs full of beer.
Soon though, this will pass and dawn will awaken cold reality scattering us as old ladies take in the laundry and humanity
moves on with drowsy hangovers. Our pockets will be empty.
"Go back from whence we came"
Come morning doors will only be locked when we
need a place to sleep. "They will not have the answers we seek".
and
"El Dorado is only a mirage of the Sun´s rays".
Matthew Bass, 4 czerwca 2012
The first drag sends you to space
in the fog of cherry red light bulbs
inside large windows of the meat market.
Like a child, beckoned by the perfume
of window taps: imagining what each one
will feel like when you penetrate them
as you count your money.
After she kisses you good-bye
you´ll fall into the stagnant water
of a dirty canal that rusts
white row boats bottom up,
and for the first time you open
your eyes wide closed.
The second drag hugs you
with gabled arms. Its
so hard! to speak when
your abdomen vibrates
and your throat burns
more and more and-
more. Every breath
a waterfall.
The third drag is a tall dark bartender
who expects a pick-up line you´ll never give
as old men stop in for a morning pick-me-up.
The third drag reminds Englishmen
they once ruled the world
with their pants around their ankles
and hot dogs in their mouths,
as well as everyone else.
The fourth drag brings you back
to a cup of Morroccan tea underneath
an unknown blanket.
Matthew Bass, 22 maja 2012
Bright luminous yellow circles
line a street on a small Malasaña hill
and the light reflects off
uneven puddles in the cracks.
"Life is a painting without us in the way
finishing another guilt ridden cigarette",
without the wild laughs at jokes
that are not funny,
without the wild laughs at stories
that are not that interesting,
without the glasses of red wine
spinning from the head to the stomach.
Without the dread of returning to the corner of the bar
watching with an extra pair of eyes the nonsense
of self-absorbed stimulus monkeys
positioning for social status
sex, or to forget their unintentionally normal lives
decieved by all too obvious verbs:
I am
I want
I need
I have.
I dread the spectacled reruns
of lifeless tortured dependencies
valuing small reoccuring moments
marked by headaches and forgotten memories
that was the night before.
I have been pushed to the edge of sane insanity
by one too many matter of fact pieces of advice
into the arms of pure love that I cannot hold fast enough,
and light heart to the carry the burden on a pair of shoulders
that needs nothing more than a sturdy pack
and a good pair of walking shoes
to carry me from
acid trips in the mountiains
to
the sweat lodges and poetry clubs of St. Louis
to
the the streets of Manhattan.
To an old man who refuses to go quietly in this night
and to
the the God-like wisdom of a Five-year old.
Matthew Bass, 22 maja 2012
The black and Brown kids locked in tiny pods
banged their fists and penises against the plexiglass
"I´m gonna get outta here
and rape yo whole family"
and the white stooges just called them animals
while they counted crisp bills to be spent
on county board meetings in Hawaii,
and those poor kids wasted
in a catch-22 without knowing
nor caring to understand
the horrible game
they´d been forced to play
pretending not to think
about their 16th birthdays.
Sometimes rumors would filter back
"so and so was raped"
"so and so is in the hospital"
"so and so is gettin off cos evidence
is circumstantial"
Most never left their blocks,
trains through other hoods
were gauntlets
and
there were 12 hour days on the corner.
They were handed pieces with promises
that a couple years in juvi
"wad´nt shit";
14 year olds don´t get tried
as adults.
Close to their 16th Birthdays
they now scream like animals
pretending not to think about
what happens to boys to young to shave,
and how many cigarettes a human being is worth.
Matthew Bass, 22 maja 2012
What no longer haunts me are:
the shrills of munitions
dropped onto a suspecting city
night after night, cold defilades
on a desolate highway, and
the smell of rotten air.
What no longer haunts me are:
the caved skulls of mother´s sons
no different from me, and the dead
torn apart in the pink mist
they never asked for.
What no longer haunts me are:
feelings beyond hate; emptiness,
because if we could not put a bullet
in someone´s head those pretty ribbons
meant nothing.
-That man passed away years sgo
the day he found the courage to politely say "no more"
and learned it is better to reach out your hand
and never let go.
Matthew Bass, 22 maja 2012
I cannot help but be reminded of rising dawns
in the rythm of ridiculous dancing in the perpetual state of wonder
of 80´s pop music played on the English radio station.
The air is still abound with the pheromones emanating
from soft South-Asian skin in a surrogate home
that has long since moved on.
Perfect cheek bones smile better than others
who dare question the human condition
and perfect cheek bones shatter granite
with the upmost frailty against passive serfdom.
Zion is fucked, but not us for we do not play stupid games
that end up lost in trees because idiots spend too long
admiring the forest, and your slight Jersey accent
speaks louder than the so-called profound
who place their weight on your shoulders
I wish I could put on mine, though I can
barely breathe.
A crazy old poet reminded me
attachment is not love, so
I´m learning to love you
the way you need me to,
but attachment is sincere
and the farther I am from you
the more important you become.
Matthew Bass, 22 maja 2012
I woke up three days ago:
with thousands of-
-wristshaking words
that made nosense at! all
And the boat was going topside
with the water seeping through
the white-painted wood looking
blue and beautiful in the balmy sunrise
as the wine tasted better than usual.
,Humming
"I hope I don´t fall in love with you"
put a smile on my daydream, then
it
made
me
feel
stupid, with all of
the possibilities of falling in love
at first sight twice with you;
which is more realistic(and optimistic)
than most concepts said to be real
by so-called inquired minds.
I thought about the non-justifications
to justify the unjustifiable used to supress
curse words sex and pointing out the obvious
somewhere in the semantics that go into
self-degradation. I thought about the trials
that quickened my spirit on the open ocean
to blissful alienation.
The thousands of blank words still
stared back at me, but they didn´t
need to make sense anymore.
The boat was just a lucid metaphor
to drop the scull in the plunge forward
associated with the inability to live.
Matthew Bass, 24 marca 2012
Just like my father
you are broken: the eggs
are melted, the scrambled ham
is rotten, and the steak
is mostly corn.
John Wayne died on the farm
seeing that everyone was
hanged by the judge,
his bravado drawing
a clear line in the East River
against the "injuns" in the sky.
Now, his cowboy hat and Colt .45
are trampled carictures
on the playground.
The purple fabric of your mountains
regally outsourced to oriental
shoddy workmanship chronically
bleeds in the acid rain,
eating at the decaying landscape of
crumbling bridges, communities
ravaged by renewal,and those
neatly rowed suburbs.
It competes for the love of Jesus
concealed in weapons permits
with the 2012 nativity/Santa-Rudolph The Reindeer
Light Show Extraveganza
for a spot on the list
behind Senators and Bankers.
God has given up
on the souls who call for him
the most, who plead
to make things right
but
even he knows
the message has been lost in translation.
Fight! you great rabid eagle:
your life source, your men and women
abandon you in search of the American Dream
that have fallen like grains of sand
on your majestic beaches through
loopholes twisted in supply-side slippery slopes,
refusing to let go like an abusive preacher
late on a mortgage payment,
insiting that he will not unfasten his hands from the neck
out of pure love for the wool of his flock.
For
we are numb and cannot afford
shiny obesity.
Matthew Bass, 24 marca 2012
Paths to love-Devotion;
the only way to cleanse
my thoughts: through you,
even in rooms
designed for Tai-Chi.
On a dark path
with yellow street lamps
swimming in dark-blue
impressionist hues
on a pre-spring night.
The only way home-
Through you.
The secret to flight:
to deliriously float
from street lamp to street lamp-
Is only through you.
You are kinetic energy
nibbling my eardrum.
Yet, I am sadly
only full of potential
on a blue-hued path.
Matthew Bass, 24 marca 2012
Increase The Pressure-Conflict
"Fuck´em up, Fuck´em up, Fuck´em up"
coming out of the stereo like a machine gun
no army, no police officer, no systematic hegemony
can stop us if we have the audacity to live.
The truest expressions
are the purest forms
without attachments
forced upon us
by others.
-freedom
I tried to picture myself
out of love this morning,
And I couldn´t! I really
do care about you so much.
Singular moments:
a tightly held hand
a kiss
a warm embrace
each just as powerful
as the last, leading
up to a crescendo
that has meaning
only in the now
no petty status
could ever describe.
-Purity
In the bar I write poetry in
the waitress already knows what I want
as I open a notebook blessed with
the scars of life "Café Americano"
she say in a husky Latin american accent,
and you are in the notebook shielded
from the crap that has no purpose
while fragile me claws for
fresh air to breathe.
I like sounding like a bad movie.
I will not lose my sense of wonder.
I only care just enough; that is too much.
I cannot defend myself against
what other expect from me
nor can I learn to stop dreaming,
to love
to share
to grow
to act without regard
is the ultimate form of protest.
-Independence
You´ve said I am your release...
You are mine, so let us not worry
and just be.
Matthew Bass, 24 marca 2012
I walk alone along streets full of people
who attempt smiles for brief moments,
before a man in uniform nudges them
back on the circular race of deadlines
consumption, and unfettered wants.
They peek into my book of anarchist poetry
in horror suprise and curiosity
in language they do not understand,
moving forward in shielded bliss.
Me. A ghost tip-toeing down the skirmish line
one foot in the orchestra of absurdity
honking beeping yelling falling slamming
chattering in the symphony of decline tumbling
down artificially expired peaks;
the other foot in utopia.
-
Cities can be terrible places.
Where people choke on their own dust
to keep their head above the smog line.
The polluted watch helplessly as their
self-worth wastes away like fluid trends
in the breeze, ignoring those in shame
who ask for a little, while fighting like dogs
for a little more.
Farms can be terrible places.
Deserts of corn spreading past the sky
beaten down by a hot dry sun
for scraps bathed in pesticides.
The screams of animals
diseased and slaughtered unmercifully
for rich men with throaty laughs.
-
The once great ones,
who despite their serfdom
maintain lost pride, die of cancer
feasting upon their muscles
of malnourished hearts
coming to terms
with the need
to break free.
Matthew Bass, 24 marca 2012
?
The perfect Café Americano
requires two packets of sugar
and at Morrigan Irish Tavern
in Madrid you recieve a complimentary
after coffee chocalate.
If you drink two cups
your head begins to spin
but you recieve another
piece of chocolate.
I.
Uncertainty flows from the wrist
"I know she loves me"
thats
why
this
hurts so much.
I like us.
I like what we have.
I love her.
II.
Growing up and giving up
are not the same, though
they are confused
with one another.
To look down-To lose balance
To look left-Don´t look left
To look right- To do what is right and lose your balance
Patlologies are Pathologies
People are driven by cars
to work for cheap paper
to buy houses that are too big.
There are many ways to be a whore.
Capitalists die at 30.
Communists starve from idealology.
Alcohol and Tobacco will kill Young Urban Professionals.
I.
It´s okay to be confused
about the important things sometimes.
The people who care understand that
and don´t overthink everything
and don´t waste shower water;
feed Pigeons instead
in a place with trees.
*After you have read this treat yourself with a piece of chocolate.
Matthew Bass, 10 marca 2012
The muscles tighten
The chest protrudes
The shoulders broaden
The endorphins
fly
spin
race
absorb
shake
blow-up
r i p a p a r t
stream
run
absorb:
brighter, higher, amplified
like the 4th of July
moving to one heartbeat increasing, Increasing, Increasing!
to
a climax
choking happily on drunk-red fleshy spots
steady drumbeats moving with steam whistles
pushed down a mountain like a free falling object
momentum
momentum
momentum
momentum
momentum
quicker
quicker quicker
quicker quicker quicker
quicker quicker quicker quicker
quicker quicker quicker quicker quicker
making toes curl in the imagination
ruptured by the blink-
Matthew Bass, 10 marca 2012
I lived
drank
and wasted away,
without ever knowing
from one day to the next
before the one after that.
Many nights(years later)
you were in front of me
with a red dress. So real
I could touch you. So I did!
Then I held you, kissed you
and fell to earth.
I no longer live for today
but for tommorrow, then
the day after that without
knowing what today is, nor caring.
Matthew Bass, 10 marca 2012
stupid audiences are no worse than
boring poets,boring musicians, boring artists
boring philosophers.
If the world is a stage,
the audience: (you) amoral nymphs
gorging off the sangría
pouring out of my wrists.
I am a prostitiute.
We´ll clank our glasses together
and taste smooth full-bodied delusion,
lay the cornerstone the next eleven steps
are bulit upon.
Eternal life Moral enlightenmnet
all crocks one in the same,
but you will still fade away
like blood thirsty citizens
swayed to and fro with the prose
of sweet idiots like me.
I am no vanguard
nor should you pat yourselves on the back
but digress
I,
because
that cute guy in the corner checking you out
is really saying
"She have wide hips, she give many babies".
that cute girl smiliing and tussling her hair
is really saying
"He have broad shoulders, he hunt many antelope".
and
all I really want is a spear to kill things with,
marking my territory on the walls with out
getting arrested, scratch my balls in public,
naked like pre-historic man.
and
six months from now you will love this poem
on a different night, in a different bar, no different from this
swathing into another more pretentious than the next
cursed by sirens singing on the rocks
about cusps, futures, selfish revolutions
taking vacations to the margins
with that so typical
Wicker Park mentality.
Matthew Bass, 8 marca 2012
Why do you revile!
this book of poetry
I read?
Why do your stubby
fingers shake! with
anger?
Why does your upper lip quiver?
as your blood pressure
rises! Spatially imprisoned,
conditioned to beleive
beauty is useless and unproductive.
Can´t you understand! Your
ugliness is as beautiful as
this book of poetry I read
you so revile.
I am, you are
citizens of a black mass
on Gray´s gray line
from infinity to infinity
Like Bus Stops on the circular
getting on at one stop
getting off at another,
while the bus travels on
full of Abuelas yelling:
Puerta! Puerta! Puerta!
when the driver refuses
to move slow enough
for their bones.
History has gotten over you.
The next generation has gotten over you.
Someday, I will get over you.
But, will you one day get over you.
Idolatry comes in subtle forms
and consumerism is not the engine,
but you, you alone, are stupid enough
to believe the Bus Stops begin and end
with tri-corner mythology.
I was once your Marine-Hero
burning, raping, pillaging,
killing; feeding the grass
the blood that makes it grow.
Carried those stereotypes
proudly upon my chest
above and left of my heart
you lap up like a dog
in those thoughtless
box-movie theaters.
Like all good Marines I
called myself a christian,
though I probably wasn´t.
And all good christians
called me christian
because
a scourge called Islam was upon us,
burning, raping, pillaging
killing; not so different
from us.
And God would forgive me
for the seventeen-year old asian Girls
I wore through like second-hand clothes,
though they fall in love and feel
their hearts break much like us.
I could drink a case of beer, run
up recon ridge then tell you to
"Shut The Fuck" with the best,
but
tonight I´d rather drink tea
and read the book of poetry
you so revile! The endless
rounds of cheap beer become
harder to recover from the
closer I push thirty, and
Wednesday´s are for Yoga.
You will always be welcome
on my property, after all
we are a society and communism
has been dead for twenty years.
I´ve seen it´s obituary!
I´ve seen it´s headstone!
I´ve seen it´s occupied
burial plot. You can stop
and take a punjabi breath
alone, together, indifferent
with one another on the same gray line.
Matthew Bass, 4 marca 2012
The years have begun
to pass with seasons
watching winter slowly
squeezed out by the sun belt
inching north, to where
frosts no longer sing
the dreary melody whistled
in the februrary chill. And
death in all of it´s tricky forms
from; the pointless slaughter
wasting, agonizing away
in a broken system: The
over dramatic shakesperian like
fall from grace by those
with fat ears who see the world
short sighted; and do not understand
the remnant who will not except
table scraps like hungry, obedient dogs.
Priya,
the first kiss on the 9th of September
is as real as the last kiss on the 16th of December
as real as the next kiss I impatiently anticipate.
I am not mad nor never was, but this weight
on my heart becomes to much sometimes
to concentrate on the next foot in front of me
when the horizon looks so beautiful over our ocean.
I understand more than you think, though I lose myself in
the dribble rolling of my sleeve I am irrecoverably attached to,
chained to this mountain like Prometheus above the first circle
of Dante´s Inferno, for it is worth the fire burning inside you.
Your hand clenches mine tighter and tighter
not in front of me, not behind me, but next to me,
an extension of my right arm. I lose myself in you as I
lose myself in the words of O´Hara, Ashbery, Kock and Shuyler,
words that call me to my mecca(New York).
I have always dreamed of you; on the playground
seeing cruel children choose sides until only one is left;
all the times I felt the salt sting open sores
like car exhaust on bloody knees; in the rotten desert
with a sword that hung over my hemet with piano wire when
I promised to loosen my finger from the trigger; you always
breathing on my shoulder. You pulled me from
the colf lake effect wind and 4 years later my eyes laid upon you
for the first time in front of a castle I now consider ours.
My Words, poetry from a recess
neither google nor facebook can spoil
the prose I express only to you
because,
to hurt
to love
to care
to yell
to share
to fight
to understand
to have compassion
to have symapthy
to dare
to dream
to take the path left of two roads
diverged in a wood
is to win.
Matthew Bass, 1 marca 2012
STOP
TELLING
ME HOWStructures
are TO
strAight jackets
with
can you[not] flower
SCREAM AND YELL
lace.
think?
Matthew Bass, 1 marca 2012
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Smoke Break
Light
Lift Arm
Inhale
Savour
Exhale
-------moment of slinece
Lift Arm
Inhale
Savour
Exhale
Sip Stale Coffee
Inhale
Exhale
Time Is Money
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-Lunch-
Bite
Chew
Swallow
Bite
Chew
Swallow
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Chew
Swallow
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Swallow
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Swallow
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Chew
Swallow
Bite
Chew
Swallow
Bite
Chew
Swallow
Bite
Swallow---Lethargy
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00-Zero-Punch-Clocked(Out)
Matthew Bass, 1 marca 2012
4
3
2
1
from a release
of muscle contracting tension
the rest of life begins
on a spring afternoon
strolling along the river...
...and it reverberates
through-not-so-very-old-bones.
"Not going it alone this time"
says the invisible sidekick
as she unseats the seat of my pants
from the rocket hurdling over yonder blue;
jet fuelled by vodka.
"No more gardens of grandeur"
or invisible walls to crush
the great spirit, because
it´s smooth boating from here
and perspective is spoken best
from a distant mountain
where solemn ommmms
sing with the peace
of liberty.
The safety net is unstitched
(more like a bit ripped)
so look forward falling.
No, sorry, I´m lying
on a hammock about everything.
It was never there,
it was to teach you
to not look down
and
be careful! with the mirages
the real treasure´s tripping
with the thrash on the side of the road.
Matthew Bass, 28 lutego 2012
Beloved,
There was an empty space
blocking your imprint on the bed.
The warmth of your skin
and the contours of your silhouette
buzzed through the nerve endings
on my fingertips,
I missed you so much.
All night, an abnormal growth
festered in my lungs
because the old man
has begun to die.
I struggled for my breath
as fate´s sucker punch
finally broke his back.
My father,
The man I waited for at the door
with my coat and
peanut buttter and jelly lunch
to go for a ride in the mustang
that I could not see
over the dashboard
(he knew the way)
now, finds comfort
in the same old westerns
he can recite
with his eyes closed.
You like to think you don´t cry
but I´ve seen it too many times
in your own distant way;
something we pretend
to not acknowledge.
I see you decompose
while watching T.V on the couch,
a place you once perched to
like an eagle.
I had a dream about
walking Jayden to school
on the sidewalks I traversed
in an old life.
How do I tell him?
"Papa is going to die"
while he emphatically
shakes his head "no!"
How do I tell him?
that the men in his life
are not suppost to leave him
though they keep doing it.
Beloved,
Spain moves in circles
while I stand helplessly
in the middle, paralyzed;
waiting for my turn to move on.
The passing of the sun
merely marks the time
of a means to an end
till the day
I can fall like a rock
onto the contours
of your warm skin
in the bosom
of the east coast.
Matthew Bass, 28 lutego 2012
A web of vericose cracks
tip-toe across the concrete
on the walk way behind my home
I come to from time to time.
Here, I can always breathe easily
under the artificial light
and Februrary chill, then
feel my worries float away
into the cloudless night
under the eternal song
of flourescent lamps.
Matthew Bass, 28 lutego 2012
I´m fed up with the monotony
of waking up to the same routine
everyday;
the same problems
the same worries
the same aspirations
the same goals,
roaming like a nomad
drunk on the present
in the early hours
of this city, this lifestyle.
I´m fed up with having
all the time to do everything
without enough time for
anything, to spend another minute
not holding you
not being with you,
with being love sick.
I´m fed up with wealth
my social class, prosperity,
the white picket fence,
with experts
with America
with Europe,
with all the things
I´ve ever been taught.
I´m fed up with
always being distracted
by mindless distractions,
with T.V., fast food
and no one saying
what they really think,
with apathy and society.
I´m fed up with
being a nice young man
who will graduate from a top 100 school
who will make alot of money
who will make everyone proud
who will do the right thing
I´m fed up with poetry,
with having to scream
into the coffee-stained pages
of a notebook, and listen
to your crap because
you´ve memorized all the right words.
Matthew Bass, 24 lutego 2012
Darkness doesn´t scare me;
isolation does.
The cold wind
blowing soft needles
between the thinning threads
of an unwashed blue hoodie does.
Prosperity is sickness.
Courtesy is blind
on an evening stroll
through urban-planned beauty,
and you are broken
like me.
Torture:
is the way you put faith
in something that will never
love you back.
is the way you drool over
the prose of half-naked half-wits
because their juices
dribble
on the tip
of your tongue.
to wake up
and play the same piano scales
without ever listening
every morning.
to fall asleep
in the warm bosom
of archaic tradition
without ever caring
every night.
Matthew Bass, 24 lutego 2012
I think aloud about
the direction fate
will take us, my love,
because this world
hurts me far too much.
The response of fight
gives way to flight
as the farce of my dream state
comes to a sudden crashing halt.
I crumple like a piece of paper
with the ink of an unknown poem
face to face with a thin line
where old friends and brothers
look back, but do not flinch.
How long till I´m deleted?
Each entry of my name
meticulously erased
until, not even I
can recognize
my own thousand yard stare.
-
Run!
The voice biting at the back of my neck
beckons, in desperation
to the mountains
where conquistadors
stand frozen in time
to the deep heart of Africa
where silence resonates
in the empty savannah
to the tip of the old world
where I jump into an ocean
with no water
with you, the one I love.
Matthew Bass, 24 lutego 2012
Sometimes it becomes too much
to drag this suitcase down the assmebly line,
the same mechanical routine.
I
re-read your e-mails everyday
to soften the metal edges.
I
consume, consume, consumed by lonliness
waste, waste, wasting away slowly
and
pretend.
nudged by an unnatural clock
divided by twenty-four.
maintained by the quality control department
of an artificial deist authority.
Why is it that everyone tells me,
who do you think you are?
There are standard operating procedures
for everything for a reason.
-
The world is not a stage,
just a curtain call that breaks your back.
It hurts not to see you everyday
It hurts not to feel complete
It hurts not to kiss you
It hurts to call out
in unrequited love.
Matthew Bass, 20 lutego 2012
"Look at your feet when you walk"
not up, cuss words unspoken
"personal space asshole", broken
cement, jackhammer, hemorrhaging money
smog, green smog, the spector of
defeatist chattering mindlessly
endless status symbols.
To win, not lose
to not be successful,
unhappy, not enough time
take a breath, not enough
time, time is money
Wide awake wet dreams
with the dream whore
on the billboard alone
licking her lips
alone alone alone
by ourselves in a crowd
tripping over garbage
and piss on the sidewalks
beware, defecating on the street
is a €500 fine
and a state funded
neutering, spent,
exhausted, all the wealth
in a glass bonfire
half-full of oil.
An ice breaker, a joke
a funny anecdote to pass
the intervals between
the cherry and the filter
and a dry martini ritual
one after the other
in a little black dress
or fine Italian suit
to end the day in the dark,
a minute a flash, a bend
in space time matter, a
self-fulfilling hangover.
Matthew Bass, 20 lutego 2012
Four handsome men
sing lullabys:
security
oppurtunity
pride
defense.
Four monsters
bleed through the pores
of a dapper´s mask:
repression
nationalism
patriotism
militarism.
I have no pulpit
no personal driver
no mahogany table
to rest my gut on.
No money, no success
no consciousness.
No power, no control
no more clothes;
stolen from me at gunpoint.
The pleasure spots on my flesh
numbered and registered
for quicker manipulation,
others consume champagne
while I drink table wine
and pretend.
Panic drips from windows, the scent
of black and white talking pictures,
torture victims and their genitals
scrubbed with black colored pencil
hidden behind a bubbling white veil.
I am not alone in the streets
with my gas mask and dry heaves
as long as the mob runs
in the same direction.
But as long as the chassis
are heard in the distance
we are all on our own.
Matthew Bass, 20 lutego 2012
I think about how much I miss you
on my solitary walks from Lavapíes
to Sol to Malasaña,
Along the river through Imperíal
to La Latina to El Palacio Real.
The sullen eyes of Africa
with their unspoken epitaphs
of rape death and fatigue
from the Sahara follow
the path I take,
the path I take everyday.
I am not Spanish
and never will be,
still I tremble with fear
when the rythmic drumbeats
echo down my waist.
Chants of U.S.A, U.S.A, U.S.A
are heard in the distance
squeezing the small rock
in the center of my stomach.
My hands are cleansed
but the scent of blood lingers on
from a war not that long ago,
but I feel no remorse
nor deny it.
The frigid lake effect chill
does not run through the white of my bones,
I am not made of that tough blue collar stuff
because the dry spanish breeze is too much
for me to wait at the bus stop.
Here life is not real
with nights that live on
past the breaking dawn,
melodic tears of the Roma
recited by imposters,
and rusted brick buldings
with bar after bar after bar.
Ponce De León searched for
the fountain of youth
when it was always
in the old world
although,
youth is very different
from never aging.
I have fallen out of love
with Madrid, only because
I have fallen in love with
you, and just you.
Matthew Bass, 19 lutego 2012
(Sometimes you have to suffer
to be with the one you love)
Some nights it becomes so unbearable
on the dark 4 a.m. Malasaña streets
swamped in the cologne of liberation
and sketchy prose, because something
is always missing, something very deep.
The street musicians and drunken small talk
cannot extinguish the thought of you
burning so hot it melts the inside
of my skin.
I plead with myself in the vain hope
you will hear me thousands of miles away,
how I am lost without you
how you are the only thing
that keeps me going
in an otherwise redundant life
going nowhere
in a chaotic cadence.
I try my hardest
to stand perfectly
still
in the fleeting hope
the sun, moon, and stars
will fall from the sky
and the next time
my eyes open
your naked body
will rest
seamlessly
inside my long arms
forever,
and all this pain
will be for naught.
Valentine´s day passed
with a skype conversation
and a metaphor for a kiss
that wasn´t the same
as the real thing.
It´s taken three days
to write down the feelings
lodged on the back
of my tongue, feelings
you already know; for
I´ve said them many times.
Yet, I am compelled
to express them again.
I do not worship you
but I will never put
a god, a leader,
a movement before you.
I will not die for you
but I will never live
at the expense
of your happiness.
-In submission to you
I am a man
Matthew Bass, 19 lutego 2012
I am alone,
connected to everything
I touch
I see
I love.
I am God
with unwashed feet
unnoticed, laughed at, spit upon
ignored, revered, respected,
all encompassing.
I live in alleys with the trash.
A hero to no one,
a bystander
in a masterpiece
that does not blink, flinch,
nor hate.
I am free.
Matthew Bass, 19 lutego 2012
like ashes
dripping from the cherry
of a forbidden cigarette,
on a cold morning
drunker than I intended
to be.
The bile
builds up
in the back of my throat
as I hover helplessly
over the toilet,
wishing my stomach
would make a decision.
I have never been lonelier
in this bathroom
pondering the point,
of all this!
While I try to recover
what has been redacted
from my memory,
then find the courage
to look back in the mirror,
and continue on till
tommorrow.
Sixty-Four days
since the descent
began, and the bottom
still seems like an illusion
although I know it´s there
waiting in the darkness
keeping close watch
over the other half
of my soul.
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