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4.0k · Oct 2020
Mangled
Matt Martin-Hall Oct 2020
A swerve and crumple

the too-low Miata meeting
the steel of a
semi's rear.

top speed impatience
becomes

a mangled massacre
of twisted plastic and metal.

Bone just powder in
a pillow of pink
red-streaked
pulverized flesh.

my jaw agape as I pass too slow-

existential dread is the hand
contorted upward
a few fingers missing
or lost in the mass-

A horn brings me back.
People too late
to care.

I contemplate stopping
but I'm late too-
and there's nothing to salvage
for me here.
Witnessed a brutal death today. I think I'm still processing, but writing helps. It was disturbing.
493 · Oct 2020
A Dionysian Funeral
Matt Martin-Hall Oct 2020
Huddled grazing at the feet of drunken Gods,
imbibed by crimson blasphemes and the lust of lies.
Smeared unto the grasses- a darkened hue.
onward weighs the pleasantry that binds.

The tight flog of a screamless whip.
Chaotic lore into peasant skin it rends.
A stench rising from cadavers - a carrion feast.
As a Ravens coups spur the ilk of ill portents.

Ominous lures of the slivered silver moon-
echo flashes upon sable black feathers.
Speaking in glints against rising wings agape,
the unraveled conscience of a God unfettered.

To the slaughter willfully go the droves
of cancered thought and blinded eye.
From whose spoil will feed the starv'ed flock
whose flagellation still yield no cries.

A Gods stature at which fullest they stand
is only dwarfed by the encroaching universe, avast-
whose very stars are the moon bound Ravens sprawl
pocking the scape against which the ****** dispatched.

Cyclical onslaught of the sacrifices come-
Inescapable fate beats the drum.

And so eclipse the ravens - o’er the moon!
their ****** return to the banquet strewn.
A modified sonnet much more akin to my Gothic and Victorian proclivities. Also, who doesn't love a band of maddened/drunken Gods and the slaughter?
365 · Oct 2020
Killing Kingdom
Matt Martin-Hall Oct 2020
Stones hinged
In jagged mystery
Behind whispered veils
And torrid grays.

A damp earth hinting
The bashful sun
bides it’s peak.

Morning is a majesty
parried
By chaotic wakes.

Hark!
The stolen kingdom!

All is Regicide;
the car
the train
the lovers quarrel

Over coffee-
A public execution.

Mysteries remain

The sun bides less
Unabashed-
Fading
with the grays.

We’ll try again
tomorrow.
An observational/existential reflection with a tinge of peace glorification. Maybe over-glorification? You tell me...
Matt Martin-Hall Oct 2020
Were I to dwell a day

in the den of my enemies.


What would we say

of the corpses they ******

and threw in the corner?


Their history torn to ribbons

and chained to the same toilets

from which they garner

their greatest thoughts and values.


How many burning crosses

would dawn their books?


How many hoods for the wash?


Who-


pray-tell


does the washing?


The husks of flesh cut into pounds

festering on a shelf somewhere.


Once colored and cultured,

now decaying,

both in smell and in sight.


All by design.


At an oaken feasting table.


I see them eat the termites

as appetizers.


So many holes, it looks like dry split bone.


Some monstrous creature

that never had blood to spill.


From the corner of their slack jawed mouths

I see the wine swish
and drip
and drench.


They talk about Andrew Jackson
 and the Civil War.


As I fight the urge

to light myself on fire.
This is another piece from my political series. It's based on dumb words from farcical political figures. Feel the disdain!
Matt Martin-Hall Oct 2020
Americana is a saggy *** ***** that leaves pockmarks in the sheets and sludge underneath the handles in the bathroom. 


The staff either don't or can't clean it. 


Lazy or honest. 

What a legacy. 


Her steel sheds and high hanging water towers peppered with rust stains, harken to the diseases that claimed this body long ago. 


Waylaid by a bygone era of chauvinism and supremacy.

***** by billionaire promises and suffocated
by his Bible's belt. 
 


Autoeroticism is a blood red state gasping for hot wet air in its own existential twilight.

Never to rise again. 


Your labyrinthine streets shaded by overgrowth and cracked freeways. 
 


Your dirtbrown waters and fenced in dogs.

They bark at the sky, screaming of the same stir crazy psychosis that's infected everything else within your borders. 


Beneath your clothes. 


I can see your long drooping *******, caked with the inky milk from long gone reserves. 


Black gold drained. 
 

Powdered milk of a different sort. 
 

Victim to the greed you've coveted and ****** on. 


Hard. 
 


*****. 
 


Fast. 
 


Loud. 
 


Your tragedy is vaguely romantic, 

in its slumped and defeated stature. 


Vericosed stilts stuck in the sewage and mud of your ideologies. 


No, we cannot go to bed together. 


I'm afraid of what the blood test would come back with in the dull diesel smoked grey morning. 


Something I've come to know you for. 


The sun sets red as the corners of your eyes. 


Who ever said an apocalypse had to happen suddenly? 


Your broken bones and hip strapped cattle calls. 


An auctioneer in the distance. 


The proud cliche of a lie laid Western Lore. 


The hot irons of pride in your sockets. 


You can't even see how hard we're all laughing. 


Only a few of these tears are for you.
I wrote this while driving through Huston for work. Suffice it to say, I was not a fan.
183 · Oct 2020
The End of Colossus
Matt Martin-Hall Oct 2020
Oh, the corpses that float

In the shadow of

the New Colossus.


A gift that should

have been taken back

by the French

long ago.


The lies of her crown

of her torch

her tablet

upon which writ

was a cattle call

to the enslaved and persecuted

within our own walls.


Is it justice?

Is it fate?


Whence they tear from you

your robe


the tarping

they use for Army tents.


Before they nailed you

to the stake,

they made you dance

a little.


Wave your torch over your head

so they can see the light

bounce off your tired *******

and crest the slump

of your dimpled ***.


Your crippled legs beg for a kneel.
 

Yet you dance on.


In vain.


You will still not be spared.
 

When they stripped you of your crown,


Did you know they were serious?


Plucking from it the thorns,

that became the spikes

that held you upon and to

the stake.


The rust from your green palms.


Blood red and weary.


Not a tear,

as they douse you in oil

and sneer through expensive veneers.
 

The cash at your feet

was not an offering,

but instead,

a wick.


Your hallowed bones

and hollow soul,

the offering.


That beacon,

that torch,

meets the fuse.


As a chorus of laughter rises

from the company of despots

at the backwoods ceremony this is-


as the light of your wilting steel

and melting carcass

flicks off of their contorted faces-


can you tell me;


Is this the rooster coming to roost?


Is this the reaping of the sowed?



Is this a lie laid to rest?
 

Or,

would you have rather drowned-


Like the tablet they stole from you

and threw in the ocean.


To rest in the shadow of a wall.
This is the start of a short political series I'm refining that uses American iconography as a lens through which hypocrisy and corruption is viewed. Enjoy?
177 · Oct 2020
Disease
Matt Martin-Hall Oct 2020
What is this putrid and
vile creature
rapping at my door?

In mangles, borne-
stricken with
a sore decay.

festered arms reaching
thin as blades in winter-
pocked skin draped.

Clawing at gowns
and masks
to no avail.

From such weakened stature
upon the floor
sprawled and lying.

Were ever you proud?

Are you of what John Donne
spoke when he boasted
“Death, be not...”?

Tubes tethered slack
Keep thous poison
from thy veins.

And dance on-
Lo! The broken glory;
rapping still in pain.
My Covid poem with homage to one of my favorite Metaphysical poets. enjoy. Or don’t- I guess?
116 · Oct 2020
Foliage
Matt Martin-Hall Oct 2020
From whence love comes;
so to ventures
the soul-

a vessel left
caverned
and wilting.

Hollow wisps
dancing in
drifting husks-

enriching soils
upon which
they fall.

Hooves pattering
to impress
the fauna that begs growth.

Packed earth.
The nudest berth
for which it burgeons;

a bed
to rest
our heads.

And watch
it all rise
around and about

us.
This is about as close to a love poem as I can get. I posted this one first because a poet friend told me it’s better than the next one I’m going to post. I disagree but - I’m also impressionable.

— The End —