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RMatheson Jul 2014
I said I took you for granted,
and I had.

It was how I've survived
being taken for granted.

I am sick of laying in the shallow grave
you have been forced into against your will.

I am still standing next to it,
my fingers spread,
beg you to take my hand,
pull you up
and into
my palms.

Don't
take
that
for
granted.
RMatheson May 14
The flower bloomed
in fertile dirt
then pulled her roots up,
spat on the soil she grew from,
petals turning vanta black,
and left.
RMatheson Jan 26
How could it not be
that this branch
I've clambered out onto
would hold me,
but instead it lured me
false pretense
to climb further out
until it has now snapped
dumping me
into the carnivorous jungle
below.
RMatheson Nov 2014
I can pretend behind this wall
that I'm okay,
tender little teeth
wear the truth each night,
grinding down to nerves.

I've not gained so much as recently,
as I watch it all
drain
away.
RMatheson Feb 21
Expedite my end
bring it to a close
the new me that deserves to be
is something I'll keep close.
RMatheson Jun 10
When I was sitting at home, considering suicide,
you were ******* someone else.
When I was too nervous to even go outside,
you were ******* someone else.
When I was staring down the barrel,
you were ******* someone else.
When I was needing love and protection,
you were ******* someone else.

And when I needed my
wife,
soul-mate,
friend,
lover,
more than ever,
guess what you were doing?
RMatheson Dec 2024
Can you see these words?
Stare down the barrel of this
alphabet soup,
broth of blood.

Touch my hair,
trigger,
and muscles
turn to puddles.
RMatheson Sep 2014
These sleepy little scars reaching from the back,
where numbness holds a noose, can your *** free this hangman?
I could leave palm prints on your skin,
like  ancient art proto-men left on a wall,
with just as much animal rage,
and just as much desire to create a lasting impression
on the world.
RMatheson Feb 2019
He was cursing again.
The brittle drops of saline etched
their ways down his face,
carving evaporation trails.

He just couldn't fight
the feeling
anymore,
like that stupid ******* song.

Lashing out, he destroyed it all.

Smiling, he died.
RMatheson Jun 2013
And I'm still trying to figure out how to say that without feeling like a liar
Making up a screenplay in my head: dead
lead from the real way I wish to express, again
Exiting into your u-turn I always ******* dread: descend
Melodies I learned to hum when young
To someone now no one, flashes of red

You hummed them to me; child-like: off to bed
Implanting this seed in me 
I don't recall a single syllable you said
But still memories are melting me like butter on burnt bread
Talking to a ghost
Pointless...end.
RMatheson Jul 2014
He's running to catch you, Marion
at the end of the dock
stretched out over cyan waters.

His hand arched out like vellum over dry bone
reaching for his dream
hoping that when he reaches the end
he finds something other than a requiem.
RMatheson Aug 2013
Of all that stood by,
he alone
ran into the water, fully-clothed
on that cold February day,
to pull her (flailing wet-noodle limbs) from the water.

He alone
recognized she was not waving,
but drowning.
Coincidence they had recently
discovered that poem?

He’d heard once that Bob Dylan said something like,
“When someone is close to suicide, they don’t ask for help,
by sending family a letter in the mail.”

He’d heard,
many times before,
How dangerous it was to attempt such a thing,
but love muted those mnemonic memories,
replaced them with muscle memories
(the heart is a muscle)
and he flew, wind-like,
into the ocean.

Neither ever felt the earth under
their feet
again.
RMatheson Dec 2024
I would have moved the very crust of the Earth
to save you from myself.

I could only want one thing for you and that's
happiness, even if it's without me.

I can stare into this bottle of
whiskey in the jar
until the end isn't different
but we play pretend,
like it's okay it's not okay...
...okay.

And so I'll release you
but I may need to release myself
as well.
RMatheson Jul 2014
I'm not asking for much...just a
sliver of something to
hold onto.

I only want someone to love me
when we are old,
for the things they loved me for,
when we were young.
RMatheson Feb 27
I'm the fruit you left
to die on the vine
so don't be surprised
when I don't give you my time.
"I could talk about every time that you showed up on time, but I'd have an empty line, cos you never did."
RMatheson Dec 2024
My heights are like you've never seen,
I succeed where Icarus failed
and I touch the sky.

My beauty is
alluring,
but deadly.

I am higher than Everest,
and despite the many attempts,
none have survived.
RMatheson Jun 2015
My head sets on the horizon,
aflame with impending doom
scuttled like a sinking ****,
burnt and begging.

My hydrogenic mass defeats you,
surfaces spread thin like oil
on glass and there is only one way out -
immolation.

Sun-soaked dust clouds rain
their bitter truths on the
spires of steel antennae
violating my mind.
RMatheson Oct 2024
If I could hold you a thousand times
it'd never be enough
If I could kiss you a thousand times
it'd never be enough
If I could love you a thousand times
it'd never be enough
But if you could hold me
just once
and never let me go
it just might be enough.
RMatheson Jul 2014
I want to hold my breath
like I thought I'd hold you - forever
RMatheson Mar 13
My brown-skinned dream
Coalesce my fever screams
Take the holy remedy
Bring me to my knees

All that is, once was, will be
And she can sing me
Sweet to sleep
Into finally-peaceful dreams
RMatheson Dec 2024
How
could this
be true?

This dream that binges
on my only source
of peace,
come true.

And all the times
you swore
that it wouldn't be,
have rotted to lies.
RMatheson Jul 2014
I am waking up in tears every morning
our songs echoing through my head
covered in sweat,
shirt soaked through,
hair on end like I've been swimming in the bath of
warm water and
memories
we drew over nearly a decade.

I'm spinning out of control and
I don't know if I can remember how to be a good husband anymore.

But mostly, I just miss you
like the desert misses the rain,
and just like that metaphor,
I am becoming a ******* cliche.
RMatheson May 12
How can it be
that after all
you're just another
stereotype.
RMatheson Jan 18
You've spun your pretty blonde hair
and now you just look away
and I'm left, stranded
driving off into
a neon horizon.
RMatheson Jan 26
I'm sorry
I didn't show up
knowing all you'd been through
before.

I'm sorry
You counted on me
and were only let down
again.

I'm sorry
That I got comfortable
and took your love for
granted.

I'm sorry
That I gave you safe spaces
then slowly pulled them
away.

I'm sorry
I let my illness get the better of me
breaking your
trust.

I'm sorry
I'm sorry
Mija,
I'm sorry.
RMatheson May 12
My pornhub
searches
start with
"loving".
RMatheson Mar 18
And the wind is yelling
through the absent leaves
and like a child
I am afraid
and you are not here.
RMatheson Apr 15
Just, endless
in my sleep.
Show me the way
to finally find peace.
"Things have never been so swell. I have never failed to fail. Pain..."
RMatheson Oct 2024
One: 24 hour denial
Two: Tears
Three: Try to stuff it down
Four: Fail
Five: Tears
Six: Completely breakdown
Seven: Go to hospital because you wish it were you
Eight: Destroy all semblance of normal
Nine: Tears, fear
Ten: She makes you realize the sky has fallen in
Eleven: You realize again, a star explodes, you hadn't seen the light
Twelve: Love
RMatheson Feb 2019
The edges were brittle,
the chip's corners itched
down like a metal prong into a filling,
nerve.

It squealed binary hemorrhages,
subtle as a battle axe,
my pleasure,
please
put it past me,
in the present
where I can now hum
electric.
RMatheson Nov 2014
Hush little babygirl
don't you cry,
Daddy's gonna read you
to beddy-bye time,
And if that story
doesn't work,
Daddy's gonna *******
until you squirt.
And if that squirting
don't make you sleep,
Daddy'll fill your ***
with His special treat.
And if that treat
don't make you swoon,
Daddy's gonna cuddle you
like a little spoon.
Cos Daddy knows
how to care for you,
and wash away all that
makes you blue.
RMatheson Mar 17
Here I was,
writing
the beauty of you
the beauty of us.

The unwritten holocaust
redacting facts
written in
my mind
written on
my heart.
RMatheson May 26
And like that,
the switch
in my head
in my heart
is, somehow, impossibly,
flipped to "off"
You won't talk frankly
about what you did.

Keep running,
you'll never find happiness.
RMatheson Jul 2015
I'm not the power they say I am.
Lost and curdling in my corner,
a broken, brittle man,
shaking in the recesses,
corners in which a
faucet drips blood.

So break, baby, and run.

I am a symbol of death,
and my name is rot.
RMatheson Dec 2024
Give me succor
Fill my heart
Let me pray here
where

the only thing more bald
than my tongue
is the *****
it caresses.
RMatheson Apr 2011
My Brittle Star arms detach in the acidic water of you.

I stir, and try to escape the gaping tremor or your teeth
uncovered face
free of meat.

Roaches crawl inside your skull,
the bone powdered with the years,
all that remains:
Toskavat.

You are an Incan Mummy, the sack pulled off,
as rosy-cheeked, young boys stare through misty bus windows
still spackled with flecks of mud from your wet road.
They smile -
their microbes shared unintentionally,
a condomless foam party.
RMatheson Jul 2014
I am not the one who will do that to you.
I am not the one who will twist the lines
around your body
until they form a noose around
your neck
until you
choke.

I am not like the others.

I hope you realize that
in
time.
RMatheson Oct 2014
I am a piano, slightly out of tune
but my dissonance makes you notice me.

I am a steady nurturing rain
and I keep you cool and wet.

I am the sunlight on a blackened world,
that brings the music of memories
and the life of fresh precipitation.
RMatheson Jun 2014
I am writing a new story,
but don't look here for the narrative,
because
I am not writing it with these words you think you are reading,
or the patience that I have found.
I am penning this new manuscript,
and all the illuminating circumstances that make those reading
wish they were the characters in the joy-tear-jerking plot,
the parts everyone passes eyes over in order
to make their own lives richer...
I am scribing my way through to the end
not with words, letters, jots, tittles,
but with
actions.
RMatheson Jan 6
If there is a ghost of you
these are the edges
the cheek-turn,
the second-guesses,
the body-lean
the back I face
as I only cry this blood
wishing for your grace.
"Blood-signed, we made a pact. Yours dried, you took it back."
RMatheson Aug 2015
Leprous ash,
the soreness of atrophy, caught,
a terrifying tenderness,
and my numbness just cannot sway.

I just cannot give what I want,
what you need,
and I'm dying
in my attempts to provide it to you.
RMatheson Feb 25
And she's doing cartwheels
inside my heart.
RMatheson Jan 26
Your hips rotate, counter-clockwise
and I breathe deeply into your
honey ***,
my wet tongue coaxing you out
your button shows.

I press it
tongue it
gently
then not so
gently.

Worship at the temple I present
Hard stone, broad
supplicate yourself
in prayer before it.

Face down now
spread
open
invaded
consumed
release
***
RMatheson Oct 2015
I carve you like marble
grind and push my chisel over every inch of your body
feather your skin with a brush
buff you with my rag
rub my polish into you until you glisten
push you down the elevator shaft
touch myself as you fall
come as you explode.
RMatheson Jan 24
When life turns against us,
I choose you.
When scars are all it seems we have,
I choose you.
When the easiest way is out,
I choose you.
When the easiest way out is not easy at all,
I choose you.
When the end seems like the only way,
I choose you.
And if you walk away,
I choose you.
Until my end and beyond,
I choose you.
RMatheson May 20
Conquistador
claiming you
night after night.

In those hot and
cool May and June nights.

How much could mean
nothing?

In memoria,
our ashes sing
songs of sadness.
RMatheson Jan 7
I watch the ticks tick away
seconds, to hours, and into days...
Scratching my eyes out
to get you to stay.

But time kills everything,
including this, apparently.

And so I can drink until
there's nothing left
(of me).

And so I can wet this page
until it melts away
like so much sewage.

But how long can I hold on to this?

I don't mean to you, or him, or any relationship or want of mine.

I mean to life.
"Jumping on a hand grenade but it won't go off. No, it won't go off. It wasn't hard to realize: love is the death of peace of mind."
RMatheson Jul 2014
Shudder the alarms,
I won't burden you with this weight
so fly
free
and come
back to
me.
RMatheson Jul 2014
All I want is your attention,
Your fingers in my hair,
Your soft voice in my ear,
Your cradle made of arm bone and flesh
to rest
my head in,
Your chest
to rest
my ear on
as your heartbeat murmurs its lullabies
to me.
RMatheson Jun 2014
It comes to fill an empty space
to fill in the spaces left by the loss of

our pores opened
our saliva blended
our sweat mingled
our velvet moments
our staccato line of site
our time spinning in reverse
our words spoken with our eyes
our family held together by a thread
our love stretched so thin over our bones

It comes like a dead wind
filling the emptiness left behind,
and I don't want that inspiration.
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