Inside the day, convulsions sweep me within the circular tide, whose currents endlessly root themselves along the shores of disappointing sentiments. Abandoning a singular precision, in using reverie with a blade to carve out the jewels with splendid contour, fashioned after the exquisite role of the past, I have failed to attract the elegant throats around which I stalk the beautiful endlessly.

© Matthew Goff

I see you
I see that tear burning in the back of your eyes
When you say its okay I do not care
I see the sadness that you carry
When you act strong
I hear the pain in your voice
When you speak to me and say your fine
I see the lonliness at night when you
Hold your pillow so tight
wishing your holding someone tonight

A beautiful day;
Breeze blowing
  Birds singing
Sun smiling
Life is a dream

Before I started draining parts of me
onto this page
I couldn't see for the clearest of paths,
I would dwell,
Hide away in my own safe house
Of saturated stories.

I would scratch my head catching gravity
between my fingertips.
A color would be a rainbow in black skies
of circling crows.

The floor around me would move
dancing along,
It would lead me and my pen to paper
Like a knight's sword to stone.
I would wonder why my mind
Could paint,
My thoughts would explode
into millions of fireflies.

Sometimes I would see the most
flawless imagery
But I couldn't write it down for the awe
of being lost,
Inside my own world of untold stories,
and poetry.

I'm a pendulum
Slowly swinging one way and another.
Always destined to be opposite,
Always almost touching one extreme or the another.
I long for the dull thud of metal on wood.
I remember as a child playing with the brass pendulum of my parents' clock. Interfering.

I'm a cuckoo cuckoo.
In my cuckoo clock.
Popping in and out.
Hidden inside or on full, crude display,
Chirping away,
But never will I not be the other,
In time.

I am the weather,
My own seasons,
A planet orbiting its sun,
Ever-changing, always running,
Spinning, dizzying, ever busying Myself but never getting to the sun.
Never knowing true dark or true light,
Only the insistent tick tock of day and night.
Regimented, regular dawns and dusks.
Waiting for the next change of scene
Wondering what it would mean to reach the sun,
Wanting to let the cuckoo break loose of its small, wooden case.

a solitary Seagull sings into the sky
while the daily chirrups of Sparrows
fills the air that I breathe. My constant
neighbours all of a flock feeding young
these little companions on the way. A
slow summers day, to sit, and melt into
the open spaces of the spirit world, and sing
the occasional poem that flies around the room,
and from whence it came I know not at all.

it's not good to look forward too far
cause life's not a single lane
decision is a bet, every take pays risk

you have history as a story
and i heard it as a lesson, buddy
don't stuff it alone into your head
cause pressure is deadly

throw away your sorrow
to ring the bell of silver lining

I can’t write this poem
I can’t write this poem because the last time I opened up to someone artistically they told me it was pretty dark and I should keep it to myself.

I can’t write this poem
I can’t write this poem because I was raised in a culture that was anti love and pro meaningless ***. I saw endless commercials about movies that glamorize a lifestyle in which your body is fulfilled but your heart is ignored and at that impressionable age I learned my heart came second but my allure came first and the less I cared that happier I would be and I carried that belief around with me the way I used to carry around a Bible as a child.

I can’t write this poem
I can’t write this poem because of the time that I opened my father’s phone to reveal a family secret I would hold to this day against my own moral instincts unraveling miles of insecurities wondering if I’m not a good enough daughter or if he stopped loving my mother or if true love was never real and although I had been taught marriage was my purpose, it was what I believed would make me happy, maybe rings aren’t enough to stay in love and maybe people’s feelings change and maybe no one actually has a “one true love” and that this purpose I had been taught was really an endless wild goose chase that only lead to broken families and lost souls.

I can’t write this poem
I can’t write this poem because sometimes I still wonder why I fell into an abyss of toxicity at such a young age. And when I say wonder I don’t mean a trivial ponder, I mean I contemplate every possible reason why the person who I once believed held the universe in her eyes would lie to my face, why she never kissed me in public and our love was always a secret, why she valued girls with blue hair but my blonde hair was not good enough, why I had to hide bruises from my family when I was still in high school or more importantly, why at the time, I thought I deserved them. These thoughts, this lingering paranoia that I am undeserving of healthy love, they muddy my interpretations of real life and distort reality and effect my relationships. My doctor would call these intrusive thoughts, my best friend would tell me they’re symptoms of PTSD, but I have come to realize that I’ve been burned and I am damaged and I hope to god I can recover.

But you,
Oh god, you
You can write this poem. You can be my safety net while I’m free falling in love. You can be the one to listen to my mental tilt-a-whirls, you can be the one that introduces my body and my heart, you can be the one that calms the storms in my mind when I’m questioning the love I’m deserving of. You are the one who makes sure I fall asleep in my bed after drunk nights, you are the one that still sees my value after acknowledging my flaws.
You can write this poem.