I’ve dubbed my wastebasket the wishing well
Well I wish for nothing more than a dime of
creativity to hit me,  ripple across my wrinkles
Knocking some sense in,
sink beneath my pores
So swallow my codswallop wishing well
because this is another petty penny for you.

© Matthew Harlovic

Ang pagpapakahulugan mo sa
kahulugan na animo'y unos ng
kataga, sukat, at tugma, ay

sapat nang saplot sa hubad na

siniphayong talinghaga ng isipan
at libingan. "Namnamin mo ang
damdamin ng Wika," ang wika ng

mangingibig na makata.

I am sure of it now.
That I'm the least sure of everything,
That I've ever been.

And if I close my eyes tight.
It won't change the fact that
I'll sit here until I turn green.

I've been in a depressing daze.
Rebooting a flattened soul.
Looking for comfort in all types of ways.

My mind was a maze as it were.
Now it's been blended.
And there seems to be no cure.

I am now sure!
Of a vortex inside
And nothing more.

Not every caterpillar
wants to become a moth or a butterfly.
Not every snowflake or drop of rain
wants to fall from the sky.
Not every petal of every flower
wants to tilt its face towards the sun.
Not every second of every day
wants to die the second it's begun.

it was all oh so very sad,
a guy has a brain haemorrhage
gets diagnosed as a schizophrenic
starts saying things like:
i’m charles the third, i’m charles the third!
you know: ***** cut me through
ended up being a hyena on my mother’s
payroll of the united front of housewives...
and... as all tragedies assert... one whiskey later
i was dry on the wordplay, and to the tune of ‘ta da!’ wrote this.
now monkey get peanut and elephant get banana...
no for either? oh... eddy lizard then... keep ‘em
rattling phrased i: i’m a comedian funniest telling jokes
when telling them pretending to be an act’ ‘tore
slicing through canterbury with weak knees - but stiff lips mind you -
although i was wearing the iron curtain for a corset
and buzz wording a spider to an amalgam with
web and fly and juicy to then go further and
word it to an anagram with the otherwise aimed
for hope of storming in and saying... vietnam!

words breaking free
   from the cloud of the mind.
   the clout of the imperative telling:

  this is the wind blowing from all
  directions hoping to touch you
  where you sleep,
   rests its bone somewhere where
     no cold shivers the ground,
   somewhere familiar
   somewhere where both you
   and i have found each other
   two separate birds joining
    in the morning

     Magdalene wears these words
     melancholically
       hand in glove and earth
        in the mouth plump and tender
       like bosoms of full women
         eyes of men having their fill
       of imagined sensations in the flesh
       tingling forever throbbing
      underneath the white moon --

     until then the many loves
     will read this hoping for a deliverance
      the bow of my breath aims true
        but the precision is falsely taken
    a sidewinding serpent,
      a riotous guerrilla in the bush,
    hinging the heartland
        a poem washed away in the river
   as women rinse the clothes of men
     singing songs of despair;