What is Life?

Life is getting out of bed tired this morning, snailing to the bathroom, and finding out that my sister has left the top of the toothpaste ***** again. Life is drinking orange juice with that toothpaste taste still in my mouth.
Life is driving to school and missing the right ramp to get off of the highway.
It is cussing loudly in an empty car.

Life is coasting down the highway in between two huge, Moses-parting-the-red-sea, concrete walls.

It is reminiscing about magnificent popsicles from the ice cream man.
Life is realizing how ***** the ice cream man’s van really was.
Life is being that one kid whose dad bought him a pink bike at a garage sale.
Life is losing the reader before the poem even began.

Life is “Santa clause is real but not in the way you thought he was.”
Life is always being too obvious or being inscrutable.
Life is having a correct answer on a test then changing it.

I look out the window and see the night sky —millions of blinking glass shards on black pavement.
Life is craving to drive on that endless milky road instead of the road you are driving on to get to your school at three o’clock in the morning.
Life is driving an extra ten minutes because you missed that exit on the highway.
Life is the High School Cafeteria.
Life is your best friend who stabs you in the back.
No it’s not, life is like not having any best friend in the first place but telling your parents you do.
Life is arriving at school and entering through a pre-opened window in the dark then climbing through the vents in order to break into the math office to steal the semester exam answers.
Life is stopping - and turning back at the last minute and driving home to probably fail the test and class the next day.
Life is the divorce rate in America.
Life is the same boring start of a line over and over again.
Life is people politely nodding and saying “Yah” even if they couldn’t understand what you said.
Life is teens throwing handfuls of coins at each other’s (parents’) cars for fun at the stop light before getting on to the highway.
Life is the beggar watching them from the side of the street in the cold.

Life is not noticing that there are a lot of cars on the highway at this time of night.
Life is driving home at four o’clock in the morning.
Life is imagining your warm bed while you drive.
Life is breathing more slowly.
Life is the mellow rhythm of the highway humming underneath your wheels.
The music rocks on “Life is life, na na na na na.”
Life is soul-stirring music making you tired.
Life is a small brook bubbling silently through some far away woods.
Life is closing your eyes while driving for only three seconds.

I **** my eyes open just as sheets of heat from the air conditioning cover my body.

Life is the confidence that you can stay awake with your eyes shut for longer this time.
It is closing your eyes for 6 seconds. Then another 6 seconds.
Life is the reader knowing that you will close your eyes for 6 seconds a third time. It is them reading on excitedly.
Life is splattered all over the side of the highway.
Then life is the traffic flying past the spotless side of the highway the next day.

“What is life?”

Life is the disappointing last line of a poem.

Siri. Type this:

More memories. Less Facebook moments.

Let’s go back to concerts filled with lighters — warm seas of flame,

instead of stadiums filled with phones and waves of blue light that keeps us from sleeping at night.

Our phones, it looks like we’re all telling one big ghost story around the campfire — our faces lit up from underneath in the dark.

It’s like a part of our bodies, a mollusk’s shell,

That we won’t outgrow until it’s torn from us and we’re eaten, still fresh.

It’s like we call it Facetime because that’s what we need, but don’t have.

Since when is being viral a good thing?

Viral means an infectious disease.

Viral Viral Viral.

I feel like I need a ****** just to surf the web.

I honestly can’t have a conversation with a person

without toying at my phone anymore.

We post our beautiful stories on snapchat,

the colorful blurred days of our lives,

and let it slip away into the ether.

Your stories are still interesting even after 24 hours.

Seeing that red notification, knowing I’m special, I’m wanted, I’m special.

when it turns out to be another Farmville invite.

Talk about crutches. Nitze called religion a crutch but at least religion helps people walk. Phones make people run into things.

I wonder if the New Messiah will have a social media account.

We are so close to just hooking up our phones to traveling robot vehicles and navigating our world from our home.

The future’s hangouts will be phones arranged in a circle

on a table,

all on Facetime,

as we take shots,

in our rooms alone.

Jerry smiles because he isn’t wearing pants

but no one can tell.

Our phones only show what’s on top.

Please share this poem, by the way.


For videos of my reading my poems, visit https://mateilatte.wordpress.com/content/poetry/

Young and old people sipping beer, with hands in pockets and heads nodding to the rock music, standing in a crescent around the stage.

Some 30 year-old guy in a cut-off is on stage playing a bright red guitar which is shining silver. He finishes his set.

I'm sitting here alone and nobody seems to mind. Actually a couple of people have smiled and said hello.

One of the drunker guys sitting at the bar yells "Encore" first and then the rest of the room starts echoing him. Encore. I even let out a few "Woos!"

This man probably trades his cutoff for a collar during his day job. But we liked listening to him. He take a long drink of his PBR.

Then, he starts playing his bright red guitar again. The rest of the room is cast  in red lighting with blue-christmas tree lights dangling around the room.

The bar itself looks like we are on the inside of the hull of a ship.
Woody, damp, safe. Decorated by a collector of whisky bottles and olden times posters.

I'm in a booth and to my right is the act which just ended and to my left, books. "Can I buy you a book," I ask a beautiful woman at the bar motioning to the books with a smooth wink.

Just kidding, maybe next time. But as the act ends I see a drunken, happy, young man with a girl who looked like she was his girlfriend.

In his drunken courage he attempts to take her hand and bring her to the dance floor, now empty. He pulls a rare for college, Charlie Brown dancing, sort of moveset and she is laughing. It's still red blue and dim but she's probably blushing.

He keeps dancing by her till she stands up and dances near him, both of them laughing and enjoying and somehow dancing to the rock music that is playing.

He keeps motioning his finger for her to "come here" as he backs in the center of the dance floor, until eventually she follows.

For one song, the two dance by-themselves to this music, in the center of the dance floor and lights, bobbing in and out, and just jamming.

College kids drink.
It's not the blood of Christ.
And when it is,
they still seem to abuse it.
The church doors are locked.
And my parents called.
And I don't know who these people are
And we're all drunk,
and it feels like skipping time.
Not in a grand sense of the word,
a 5 years ago I was in high-school sense of the word,
but where time doesn't exist, and there we are/

The night shines like gasoline oil.
But we're crammed together.
So I take a walk in bare feet in the mud.

I walk by guys who want to fight
Who smash bottles of Sky.
Shards exploding.

And I want my bed
and I walk home
a mile, then two, then it's three a.m.
Half jogging, drunk walking,
tipsy jogging, singing songs,
car lights are shooting starring
past me.

And no one drives me home this time
and I just want my bed
and I keep singing
some kid cudi song.

And then I'm home back in my bed
and I drink glasses of water
and then strip and get under the warm layers
and cool ceiling fan wind and drift asleep.

And I wake and drink more water.
Then fall asleep again.

Click here to go to the poem. Sorry to do this to you but I want to have all my poems in one place.

https://youngmanpoetry.wordpress.com/2015/12/22/beauty-is-a-narcissist/

Your eyes, they speak,
I'm trembling, so weak,
your hair, seems to dance,
your touch, what a dance,
Like a ballroom,
and two, intertwined
humans who, become more,
more than two,
become me, become you.

But I doubt, my stare,
my desire, my care,
will get you to dance,
or say hello, or even glance,
My way.

So for now, I'll write.
About you, and the night.
Till the day, you look my way,
and I give you my hand,
and ask you, for this dance.

Can you imagine it?

Scrunching your forehead,
pursing your lips,
sealing tight your eyes,
pulling your head back and into you neck in anticipation,
And a bullet going through your temple.

Your hands are out to a T if you're a martyr,
Or in front of your face in cover if you're scared.
or one is held out to the side of your head holding the gun.

Imagine the initial split second of a piercing pain and then shattering of your skull like oxygen being pumped into your exploding bone marrow. The next split second feeling is very wet or very dry, like being submerged in water or sand and then being thrusted ten thousand feet under.

It's hard to imagine when I'm in my car listening to FM radio at a stoplight with a vanilla air freshener hanging from my rear view mirror.

I sit my backpack down on the university bathroom floor with a clink.
I pull my pants down so I blend in to the other collection of feet below the stall walls.
Balancing the large glass bottle between my thighs --
I pick up the unwieldy weight and strangle its neck - I lip it.
I pull in *****, no chaser, like the rappers do.
Throat-clenching cold, metallic liquid,

I try not to retch.
Humming represses the gag reflex.

My best friend asks me why my breath smells like alcohol.
It’s 12:30 on a Tuesday and I’m chewing gum.

I stumble home for miles after a party on the cuff of dark roadway with shooting star cars bulleting by.
I just want my bed.
I violently stick my ***** finger nail down my throat.
I feel much better.

A girl asks me what I was reading at a coffee shop.
I’m too hungover to keep a conversation going.

I fall asleep to the view of a crumbling mountain of beer cans beside my bed.

I take shots before having to make a phone call.

***** looks like water until you shake it.

A nerve pinching, vertebrae crushing chronic back pain sets in.
I drink to numb the pain.

Hidden bottles and cans lay under my my bed in my house back home in Saint Louis.
My dad pulls me aside and timidly tells me I have a weird, dead, look on my face at a family party.

A poem that doesn’t make sense when I read it in the morning.
Haywire words that might have been beautiful.

A google search.
Has anyone died from cirrhosis at the age of 20?

A body-wide rash that was the result of 1.75 liters of ***** over the course of a weekend.
The toxins seep from my pores.

The rest of the lines are whited out.

I'm not an atheist.
These words are a prayer.

If there's no god then random particles bouncing over billions of years are writing this poem.

If there's no words you wait then as you waited like a kid for the mist to spray the veggie isle.

If there's no memory, and there's only blotches, then I drank so much *****.

If there's no *****, and you're in class, she'll act like you aren't even there.

Stopped at a red light,
no one else around.

You roll down the window,
there's not a single sound.

You look into the darkness,
you look into the night,
you scream,
yah you cy
yah you scream

I wish I'd ******* die

Were probably murmured by
a quiet one, sitting alone on a couch,
who would one day be homeless -
asking for money and half-crazy
watched by police and passerby,
but ignored when he told us about the tenth planet from the sun.

Your eyes, they speak,

I’m trembling, so weak,

your hair, seems to dance,

your touch, what a dance,

like a ballroom,

and two, intertwined,

humans who, become more,

more than two, become me,

becomes you.

But I doubt, my stare,

my desire, my care,

will get you to dance,

or say hello,

or even glance my way.



So for now, I’ll write,

about you, and the night,

till the day, you look my way,

and I give you my hand,

and ask you, for this dance.

It's over. We are through.

You keep the sun. You always
were partial to the mornings,
pretending to sleep so I didn't have to wake up,
but you were probably just staring at the ceiling
lost in thought. I don't really need it,
the only time I like the sun is when it's setting.
You take your cigarettes and stray cats which
I'm allergic to.

I'll take the moon, but you can have the
time it was blood orange. You didn't even want to watch, I kept looking up at it as it slowly changed.
The nighttime drives and the parking garage top floors are both mine.
You have to give me back my poems,
words and ***** texts. Although I guess
you can keep this one so we have a record of what's mine and yours.

I'll take my soft touch along your spine and gentle kisses,
you take the rough, chaotic ones where our teeth clink.

There's no divorce lawyer to help us,
but I think you should keep the dances we've had,
because you are a terrible dancer.
I'll take the time you said yes,
to getting coffee with me,
because you said “why not.”

And so it's over, but I think
we ended up with more than we started with.
We'll share “Latch,” because I can never let go of the way you smilingly
mouthed the words to that song as you looked at me like
you loved who I was  and how you felt with the lights dimmed
and your eyes shining like the moon.

Reading what you wrote -
after a long enough time,
let's you read what someone else wrote.