Let's talk about my forced position.

The nucleation of demons,
You allege that I allow it.

No one wants it!

Hey, maybe I'll become an electrician.

Would you foster my comeuppance?

I've got no choice in any matter.

Who the **** am I even angry at?
Maybe Bowser?

Ha, hahaha.

Back to being depressing.

The original stigma comes from the fact
That I'm only complaining to myself
There is no oversight
I am tearing myself apart
And you don't care
In some scenes you only laugh
And now every time I laugh, I choke
Because I don't want to be the one
It's not right
There should be something,
Something established for this person.

Must've done something wrong
The rock stands in the water
Heavy streams pushes by
I thought I heard voices talking about me

But it was not just the stream
There are voices talking about me
Building up a case, like in Kafka's book
Me, and what I did wrong

But I haven't done anything wrong,
I was born and everything just followed.

So shut the **** up.

Drawn to or repelled
All the same I feel you

And nobody is wrong for how they feel

Still you might not enjoy every feeling of another,
Who may not agree with sentiments
Which now are all too real.

Is the problem that I feel it?
But no, feeling is the reason!
Should I attempt to conceal it?
There's no hiding from the truth!
So much imbued within each moment,
That I forfeit all description.
You ramble on,
Complicit in your convoluted feud

It's always the wind pushing the house
Van Gogh black and navy swirls
That makes me feel alright

I don't know I guess it's just comforting somehow
To be inside

And when the rain starts to pelt the window,
My widow,
Once again my bride...

Am I like your Ligeia,
Frontier-man,
Your one true Enterprise?

Cause baby, you are mine.

I'm not looking for possession,
Just effort to stay on your horizons.

These days I think I'll fall...
Oh, darling... all the time.

Still I will say,
You exploit the gradient!

I can only be what I am
And we hate to be a disappointment
Or feeling helpless

But because you are not me,
You can take up this shape of something so desirous
Something I can never be
And because of these certain effects
You can say you worked hard for it
And you did, that's not a lie
But you also know how that comes across to me--

You just automatically are that thing,
No fair, how come you get to be that,
And I'm just stuck being this?

Whether it's my motivation, I didn't try hard enough
Or just my natural state
I could have practiced more and didn't,
Those things likewise all shake out and that is definitely the truth

But there is another way to arrive at that conclusion, and even if you validated me on that point it would still frustrate me to no end!

Subjective, sure...
But their ears are set
You cannot just argue your way into heaven

No, it's not just some big conspiracy to view your voice as less,
Some people have a natural talent
And they worked hard
You hallucinate an appeal here,
Just listen to the music
Stop complaining
Your whiny voice is so grating
And irritating

I'm full
Of things you'd like to hear
And things you'd rather not

Of anger at your voice
And opinions about when and how you sing

Of jealousy;
Because the angels were allowed to sing so sterling and clean
But my voice is clunky and awkward
But I can't claim your work as my own,
NOT YET.

Or can we skip those steps and say I can?
You do have to be a man
You try to make music
But sometimes it doesn't work
I know,
I know it hurts
But that's just how it is

You

Can't always be considered beautiful.

Inside me, nature cannot satisfy itself
Manifesting an external terror
Insignificance
Look how easily I am *******!

Gee I wonder why our dynamic would play out like that

And now I am some lazy *******
Who doesn't want to work!
With all the cards stacked against me
(But I'm just looking at it wrong! Exactly!),
It's a wonder why the guy doesn't want to work!

I see what is happening here
Charge me with complacency
When you claim your want to see me satisfied!

I will not aim high,
When I know what we are.

So just leave me alone,
Let me settle out.

There is no such thing as Matt Shaw

Collecting my moonlight,
I drew a silver pool

Made of little flames
Too small to see or hear.

We bowed to one other,
And danced between the worlds

In our common realm,
We shared a little peace.

...

When it was time to go,
Our lamentations rained

Down upon that hill,
Far, and far away...!

When my experience is born,
A dynamic is created.

You are able to do things I am not,
And I can't be impressive.

Some of the experience seemed to want to help,
And some of it was full of hatred.

Some taunted and mocked me,
Some rejoiced along.

Some times I did things right,
And sometimes I did things wrong.

I think a person should be happy.

The initial thought was,
"Raphael looks lost without me"

But I am starting to realize,
You angels have made your own space,
And you don't need me.

In fact,
What a lamentable thing,
To serve a man who is masquerading as a black hole.

Please keep me as your pet,
I am an artifact
I am collectible.

You are a starving artist,
We could be cute.

I can't afford rent
And neither can you.

Grudge or fetish,
Garbage or a body,
Talkative or silent,
I want all of us.

I reject nothing.

Reflection and laceration
Contrivance and reality
Harmful and even worse,

I actually want that.

I won't try to be wise
I'll take things as they come
And I'll be good I promise

And thank you,
For keeping me as your pet!!

Depersonalization could never touch you,
You are not like a drug
And I really shouldn't be so rude.

But you are and we are,
And there is no defeating that.

Except right now,
But nothing can hurt our invincible love.

These days, I get out of breath just thinking.

But Poppy rolls around with me through these convoluted tunnels of thought.

We go like two adventurers, torches in hand
Into the bowels of the earth
Disarming traps,
Using diplomacy.

Wingdings to the shadow creatures dancing all around
But we speak perfect sense in apocryphal tongue

It is called Light

Down in the silver mines we find its many cousins

This whorl of shades seem to swing closer and closer throughout our journey
But we keep our backs pressed
And our backs are our fronts,
And the cave is the room we rent.

We fought with carrots, celery and onions
Lightly browning our flour in butter
We brined and we dredged and we baked with our love
If there's an abyss, I'm gonna full it with food.

She offers up thanks from the depths of her heart
On the way up it passes the svirfneblins and kobolds,
Who see it as an alien phenomenon and are unsure what to do with that.

It brushes the tail of the Bandersnatch,
Who hesitates a moment, sniffing the air.

It carouses with quetzals, flirting briefly with each feather
Before slipping up through the skies and stars
The galaxies and quasars
Up through my love's throat and into her voice
Celebrating happily as it reaches my tympanic membranes

Silently I congratulate these thankful elves on their long and hard journey
And maybe a few of them are dancing in the mashed potatoes when I serve up our dinner.

These time, they'll be freeze-dried,
But Poppy doesn't care.
And we stay warm for the winter.

Poppy wraps her veins around me
And we are like a warm envelope to God
At least when he is lost and lonely
****** teeth in the toxic fumes
He'll know she is keeping me here
Far from the flames of the battlefield

She is like sugar and melted butter
When Mr. Philosophy and I are playing the choking game
And the celestial spheres turn round the 29 year old slump body in bed

I draw the curtains to keep away the sunshine,
But with Poppy I find the sun is stubborn

Her love ignites in the belly of my heart and dissolves all doubt
Right now the world is not a monster
But... it is going to be

That is why I am loving you now, she seems to say
That is why we have what we have
And even now I'm slipping
Instead of arranging these bouquets of imagery detailing Poppy
(Oh, that is NOT her name but I'm scared)
I am talking about the thing again

Exert all you can over me
From outside my perception!

No, I don't know that artist!
No, I hardly read books at all!
No, I don't know that species!

You are a faker and I know it,
You are ******* and lies,
Things would have to be true
And i loooooove getting to learn more
And having something to do.

But I really detest when you act so cool,
Things would have to be that way,
And I fully
FULLY
Understand why.

Have some sunshine, you idiot
All you see is death and decay
And I'm dying, trying to show you I'm here for you

What the f*ck are you doing
Whining, complaining
When you have it good

I'll force you to bask in the balmy waters
Dilate your senses and find you receptive
Seriously, do not deny that you've had a good time
We have accomplished many days away from that fire

Not that I need a witness,
Not that it matters
But I just don't like when you try to tell me it wasn't that good

Oh, so you can read my mind?

Something terrible would have to be someone's fault,
But that thing could not be characterized as having tried to avoid it happening,
It would to an extent be characterized as having let tragedy happen.

This is because of the quantum nature of reality and having to apportion suffering and joy into a serial experience.

Everything can be attributed as being caused by everything else,
So we have responsibility,
A system of action and consequences,
Blame, shame, guilt
Sins and heaven and hell.

But I see through all this, I see above it.
I see why the scriptures say what they say and I see what we're doing.

But I am still beholden to the same patterns.

This thing I am talking about
It would be able to fantasize about being free,
Worlds apart from suffering forever
But those thing could only live within the maelstrom--
We are looking at aspects of ourself here
In an ultimately tragic compromise
Pulling strings out of nowhere
And finding we are just pulling at ourself
Until there's nothing left to pull
And why would you anyway

The thing I'm talking about
It would be characterized in many ways
It would not choose its own actions
It would think about reproduction
Have traumatic memories about gender roles and realizing what it was

My girlfriend sleeps next to me,
I keep holding onto my pillow.

laud me for choking on my own spit,
it's an intelligent thing to do.

obligated with such atrocities
are all the universe's riches
so for dignity's sake and not my own
i convinced myself it's how we operate

how intelligently can a thing be characterized?
you've been giving me strange looks

getting myself up for work these days is hard,
i swear there's something different
and don't forget not to get all uppity with me
about how you, your daddy, and your grand daddy
don't know any other way

he stays in rotation the one with his spear pointed at my eye
i wonder why

i think my weaknesses were built in
you want to blame me for them
i encounter situations where everything closes off
but here's the thing, i know what you're up to.

and you will do that and i might just feel bad for being alive

no... I don't read like the famous writers of old
I'm a bad shot and I **** at guitar
I'm half Argentine and I can't speak Spanish
And I tend to get cold feet when I start a new job.

I'm just a broken man with a **** poor outlook on life
But in my own little world when you're holding in your violence
I savor every last drop of life that comes

Of course he has to write a poem
For his biological mom

All fractals and dancing crystals
Singing life across the world

They're spinning bravely on woodland trails,
All trilliums and violets and pink lady's slippers
Even invasive narcissus, obliged by the drops of morning dew

He's happy there,
And he thinks to himself:
I must have come
From somewhere...

She is a blazon of Love
Vibrant with galaxies, nebulae
And bioluminescence
The glow of her mind sprouting flowers and funny things

Deep in her heart,
She finds Love as a spring

You were never very good
At guitar

Absurdity complex,
The melting distractions,
The value of poetry.

A man calls himself to tell himself he is confused,
And unsure why he is calling himself.

Someone is on a pedestal,
Another one is ground beneath the iron wheels of fate.

No one did anything wrong,
But we gasp and shake our heads at the news.

Except we all did something wrong,
And someone's gotta pay for it.

I guess I chose sin for myself,
But that doesn't make any sense.

I guess it's time to be uncertain.

My poetry feels dull and lifeless

I cant write better than my own death
How do I compete?

And he whittles his stick
And it whittles him back
They've done it before
But they're glad to be back
He's fletching an arrow
He's making a bow
It feels a bit different from decades ago,

But he has the Wind
Like never before

If you
Were dead-set on collapsing
It's just something that happens

This won't be easy and it's
Gonna take some time

And let the poison pass by

Because God knows there's enough up above
And inside me
Inside you is the sky

What's wrong with you is that you are in pain.

Absurdity flies in the face of dignity
And wrinkles its red nose before the break.

I'll never understand the warring factions or their fame.

What's wrong with you is that you are in pain.

If we suspend two versions of the truth,
Calamity will mark the store of grace.

If nobody is wrong
Where souls don't get along

What's wrong with you is that you are in pain.

What's wrong with you is that you are in pain

What's wrong with you is that you are in pain

What's wrong with you is wrong

What's wrong with you is with

What's wrong with you is that you are in pain.

You could take me down for my lack of culture,
I haven't read,
I'm not practiced or professional enough,
I'm just such an ogre.

But baby, I'm the reason for the season.

You don't get Marx without me.

You don't get Sartre without me.

And you don't get paid without me, babycakes. Hah.

Maybe I should have done some things differently here or there, but there's really no metric to judge that notion against so we're kind of mucked on that front.

However suffering, like everything else, has to have a shape and a color to it. The fallout of my love is going to find its way into my senses and to the middle of my brain whether I like it or not. You could say it builds character, but I think it just destroys it.

Remember that I write, girl. I don't really read all that much.

I am the man who reads the burning book.

Stop looking at me funny.

Walk out on the edge of your eye
And see the edge of what there is to see
Do you see anything at all?

Do you see something in between?

I thought it was good,
I thought it was bad,
I don't think anything at all.

I'm careful not to think anything at all,
No judgments here.

I haven't thought enough of things,
Now I'm unprepared.

Complain to all the local gods that their system is wrong.

Amend the current methodology and ignore the howling redux reductionist egalitarian demon.

We are not equal, I was born to live.

Who are you impressing?
It makes sense that you should be average
If your theories really hold up.

Self-defeating...
We have to work backwards
But where does it get us?
We just embarass ourselves

And how did you manage to be embarrassed all by yourself?

Then I hobble to the placid lake of my soul
And cast forth prodding eyes

Are you really silent and void of judgment?

Are these murmurings really just illness?

When we come forth from nothing, illusion is no comfort in the face of howling demons

No solace as we're torn from our bodies and any sense of sanctuary

I want myself to know I'm not wrong,
That it comes on automatic,
That we can't escape the fire but are not a mistake
Just because there's no option but suffering and death.

I want myself to know and forget
Be proud and be humbled
When security fails
I won't be alright but I'll be... I'll be...

Inertia
Push and pull inside
The hapless cross-examination of the self

Hallucinate the pretty rainbows
Intensify their meaning
An angry God
Wants to mean something
Wriggling until it does

Until you have a seizure
Until a piece of the engine block breaks off inside
Ka-thump
But you still keep going and you're not sure why
Until for some reason the machine just stops
At the very threshold of life itself

But I'm not angry
This is just the yield
But yes, sometimes I'm angry
I definitely hate some of these things.

I'm not contriving anything
It was real!
But then why did it feel so contrived
Sometimes?

I find myself looking at these pictures now and then

You were so cute
A little angel pulled straight from life's wellspring

With so much light and excitement in your eyes.

You lively blossom
Suspended forever in happy yellow light--
You can't hear me now
But I love you too much

And I'm losing my mind in this echo chamber
The reverberating memories that mean too much to me now

I have to will myself away
And march on to something different,
I stumbled on to something different.

Da da da,
Da da da da da,
Da da da da da da da,

******* IT'S ME.

I guess you don't have a plan.

You unerring thought about insecurity!
Walking a straight path,
You take ***-shots at yourself for becoming a lie
A lie you never did take too well.

They're not on your side
And you're learning more about what it takes
When you catch those certain eyes

...

Don't exceed yourself now,
And never change!
It always seemed like something
Was deeply wrong
Expensive distractions, that's all we are
But get out of your head
Because you know it's more than that

How many books have you never read?
How many songs fill your empty head?
When will you see that it's not that bad?
Strange as the sky, and twice as sad

Cut it in half, cut it in half
And half again, and half again
Until we're so small that we touch the ground
And nothing is right in the world of men.

I spend my days educating Lilith
And feeling proud about it
You see, my love
There are reasons to love humanity
And we are all just the tears of the world.

The crooked-toothed,
Filter-born demon speaks
Into my left ear

Saying, if we all **** ourselves
What do you think you are seeing
In the world?

But I don't think it's so.
Worth ignoring, he is weak.

And I can spell "capable" backwards.

In a field somewhere your voice is smooth glass
I can trace with my finger and feel you sing
That thunder crashes all around
That lightning from celestial fingertips

And volcanic drums echo all around.

That's what my soul can be.

It's all my fault
I shouldn't have come here
What if I am my own mother?
If choices don't exist
Maybe it's just another demon
Please just let me feel safe, and warm
Please just inspire me to move
And share something beautiful from way deep down inside
But no, never keep shining

I consider this broken.

Free will and destiny have collided in a blinding catastrophe,

And I just can't make sense of it anymore.

Is the past not just projection?

Real and imaginary numbers trade places while I sleep.

Rational and irrational blackbirds laugh at me.

It would have to be characterized as immoral.

We exist in a tension loop,
We can't decide if we are deciding to suffer
We don't know when to rejoice.

I don't see myself as the driver,
But that doesn't matter.

I don't matter.

I guess I'll just dissolve.

In a way, this didn't make sense
My automatic writer
My anarchic disembodied chemist

How could they all be smarter than me?
I've seen you before
The ******* demi-urge

It feels so tenuous!
I need you to mean something.
WAIT--
As if you don't mean anything!

And something started to unravel in my head.

Yes, we know. That was where it started to end.

Do we rip it faster or pull it slower?
I guess it all just depends.

Necessarily, I would take my role and you, yours.

Necessarily, I would be something evil.

Necessarily, I might be said to require a savior.

Necessarily, sometimes I wouldn't find one.

Emergent phenomenon.

Glass house.

Tickled pink, then red, then black.

White people. Tan people. Black people. Red people.

Rainbow death man.

Accused of contrivance, no kid that's just bold reality.

Going to bed.
Forfeit.
Calling in sick.
Feels like we could have, should have, would have done more.

We were foxes
Hiding away in a shed in winter

Snowflakes falling through the amber lights
Of your apartment complex

Sparking brown and hazel eyes
Tiny jaws that harmonize
Searing your incessant cuteness in my brain forever,

How evil...

A dash of chaos from the manifest
We're filling in the blanks
The eternal dream, these rolling eyes
Falling through rotten floorboards

I miss when we were cute
Now I can see
Memory's just a vain attempt
To declare victory

But I fall asleep in angels' arms
Held sweetly in their gaze
Vaguely poisoned by inverted reasoning
And falling down with laurels

I can already hear the tide
Coming round the other side
"And you will have this all again,
All you need to do is die"

But deciding death wasn't easy
Most often it's a surprise
And spending your remainder
Well, does it even matter?

I pick at the skin wrapped around my whatever
It scares me, it feels too delicate
I miss when we were cute,
If only once
I'll see you again yesterday

Oh, send your roots down
Down deep, into the earth
Past the rocks, into soil
They won't mind if you move them a little.

Set your sprigs in the air!
Let instructions do the work
We have seen what you do
With the drops of rain and light...

I like to think of you alone
Growing tall somewhere without me
A perfect hero of my imagination

But in the fall it's all too clear:
The colors of your leaves
Are wrenched out
By the gravity of a witness

Because they do nothing for you.
A happy grace for my eyes
They are like dinner plates

Went crazy
Picking at a tiny piece of skin
Between the stars

Between my scars
You built a living castle
Then played the tape in reverse,
We're cursed

When I go to sleep
I know, I know
I know where I go

When I listen to your song
You told me something
I already know

This is not some contrivance
This is reality
This is the spectrum of the rational
And irrationality

This is all you wanted
All you ever wanted to be:

Me.

Cascading,

Me.

The ripcord pulled through in me,
And that's not to say that I'm some vacant man,
Just that things have changed
And I'm off on the next leg of my star-spangled adventures...

I certainly hope I get to see a bit more of the world,
But I am scared,
And I ought to be,
Because no one can protect me from the demons aside from using bits of my flesh like *******-up little human shields,
And I want to stay safe and warm here with you,
Curled up inside you in your messy room.

I don't want to blink,
And yes, that's right,
I don't want to move.

Don't fall apart.

Don't have a need to fulfill every possibility.

Please, just... let's skip over that part. Please... I remember everything

You cast out stars from your body
The moment you were born

Their exuded world fractures
And your body travels along the cracks
Like a dreamer's bead

You never were truly that impressive
Muted by your own repetition
A chemical whorl spinning aimlessly in space

These fissures, they find you
They are howling doors to nothing
And scream out their blame and charges of ineptitude
Of negligence and apathy
With tales of abuse

But you know the truth
It was never your fault
Reality had to go a certain way
And yes, you are reality
But it's just not your fault.

That's the main thing I want you to know, Matt:
None of this is your fault.

You make it so bad
You make it so bad
You make it so bad
Stop acting like I shouldn't be upset
Stop acting like I shouldn't be upset
Stop acting like I shouldn't be upset
It's not my fault
It's not my fault
It's not my fault
It's always like this
It's always like this
It's always like this
I don't make my own decisions
I don't make my own decisions
I don't make my own decisions
Then who does
Then who does
Then who does

You can blame me
For being a black hole
But that wouldn't be prudent

Well, my worries just dissolved for a moment,
Because you find so much happiness in the grass
And we chased each other around
With pieces of plants

We're wild fairies buzzing through the garden

It's hard to manage two rivers at once
So we just make a big splash in the bath

Up, out, and over the mountains we'll go
Away from the city and into a strange world
Where the wild tangles shift and turn
And we bow to them and walk through like two kittens

But break all the sticks and play in the mud
Because I believe you're a steward, if there ever was one
Oh, I could lick your teeth a thousand times in an hour

If only I fell in your eyes when you smiled