Matthew Bass, 6 june 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 june 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 june 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 june 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 may 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 may 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 may 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 may 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 may 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 march 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.
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