Matthew Bass, 24 march 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 march 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 march 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 march 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 march 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 march 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 march 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 march 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 march 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 march 2012
STOP
TELLING
ME HOWStructures
are TO
strAight jackets
with
can you[not] flower
SCREAM AND YELL
lace.
think?
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