Hide me from the horizon--
Its open skies
Burn my skin

And i don't want to look
At the end of the book
When i've yet to really begin

But the book was already written
Its plot was already played
So why am I so nervous,
If I already have it made?

Because I know a world of roses.

What's on the other side?

If there is a horizon,
I guess i'll have to hide.

Your fingerprints and footsteps make music in the disparate caverns,
Spaces where you have grown and continue to feed and prosper.

The rich can afford to play themselves little symphonies,
Describing to themselves something singular and secret,
Divining a way through the sacred vows that root them nowhere here now.

Full consequence envelopes you
Yes, sometimes with convenient skins of black,
Manufacturer plastic covers clean what keeps coming back
Black velvet gloves that feel so nice
Behind a lover's back.

Shovel dirt onto that grave and settle down with what you are,
Be a snake or an orphan--
Take care and be well.

You're a stone like the moon
Mottled with fated freckles
Nestled in her hand, feeling the vibrations of an alien language

We're talking about what an idiot you are.
Foggy mornings, lost in thought
Pizza and ranch dressing for breakfast.
Pajama pants, dewy grass
The cream and sugar coffee palette bath,
And...
Sink.

The wide plane of stratus drifting overhead
Like the biggest, silliest hat in the universe.

You're an ape wearing fuzzy socks.
And you're best friends with a dog.
You're a polyp lost in a storm of thoughts.
You're a garden full of moss.

You're a dreamer with a purpose.
You're a singer in a band.
You're a trekker on a journey,
You're a stone inside my hand.

Look around you
Other people have already lived their lives
And you are just watching them unfold
When their light touches your eyes
It is already old

Everything in the universe is like that,
All radiating out of your skull
But no it isn't--
Well, do you mean to be dead?
Or do you not consider yourself whole,

Interesting.

You are the only one alive,
You possess a great now
You are walking through a graveyard
You are making a sound.

You are telling me this
From your animate grave
I was living for something
Would that ever I save.

Remember me,
because i was an amazing average person
though they just saw what they wanted to see

remember me
they know
my love
remember me

I found my way back to your bed
Where definition crumbles
A place where everything and nothing can live inside the same body.

I am a bird in a tree
Whose branches are above me,
New as anything.

I've heard translations of you exist
But they're not as good as the original
And not worthy of the same frame of reference

My religion is like a stone idol
Your soul left it behind, but I sat and stared
I watch moss grow on the edges
I watch grass grow in the old fountain
But always changing, I hate religion

I'm only leaving to find another living love
I leave feeling like a vampire looking for blood

I see the myriads rise and meet destruction,
With two glass ***** I watch them glow and burst.

Like veins that grew and struck at nothing,
They choke and seize the tenuous sky.

My eyes do sip the harrowed splendor,
Which meets its end in total blindness--
The certainty of self.

They contain a substitution
Hooked up to their backwards cousin--
Across their surface
Swims admission.

Selfish, selfish.
Coming, coming.

Angels howling through the cosmos
Tore my flesh to shreds,
In time

I could never be this person.

That is why I have to die.

Selfish, selfish.
Coming, coming.

Thank you for that pretty warning--
Even that, a purchase for me
I will have to answer for it
Cancer, this equivocation.

///

I am like a cat, or virus
Curl up, cringe into a gyrus
One day I'll have nothing left
But I
Am many
Other things.

Conviction sits queasy
In my guts and bones.
My stomach is
A bag of bolts.

A bleeding brain with stilts for legs
Neglected tissue wilts away
Misgivings and mistakes--If I truly loved you
I'd be better able now

When the nausea turns to shame
Just give yourself a better name
God's tide still pulls my shoulders back
Even when my flesh has turned.

And God's tide lifts my spirits up
Even with some scrapes and burns

Your strength astounds me,
I will wait
For you to come
And seal my fate.

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.

I sometimes stare into space too long
I'm contemplating why I'd be so dumb
Why I'd deliberately do things that dull my brain
Or could give me cancer
But actually I understand why, it just gives me pause

So really I'm not dumb, just aware
That I'd manifest as something so stupid because to a large extent
This all is my big regret,
But only to an extent.

Meanwhile I feel like I should be lauding us
Or at least appreciating it for everything it is
All of my children, the birds
The animals and water
Trees, sprees, mountain goats
The whole lot.

But I can't reconcile one thing,
And that is myself
And how you always seem to give me ****
When I know what I am--
And if that were ever the case
Well I think that'd be very different!

I am thinking
that i want out

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

touch me any way you will
just don't take my queen
she's sleeping there in the bed
my heart laid beside hers in the other room
enslaved to her whims in the infinite. stars,
reaching out to her from
across the universe--

she works hard.
to give life to me and to her
she pours her cup
--of blood--
into mine

i smile

i almost can't take it

i start
to come apart

You watched them tear clumps of flesh from her heaving frame
Watched them inject the novocaine
And hired men bring it to them
Saw her silver eyes give out and fill back up with life,
Heard her singing in showers, ignorant of strife

You walked along the behemoth figure and found the other head
Saw them drop it off at the maw and saw him swallow pieces of her whole
His golden eyes afire with greed
Never satisfied, looking nowhere but inside and gleaming without feeling

Your ****** tantrums splashed in between
Heard by ears but never rising to a round
Your skin flashed white and then red
An S.O.S. call witnessed by multitudes but seen only by you
The music you made was swept up and fed to him too
The wave you swept across the sea falling to utter tendency

The raw conglomerate of our bodies left a small but true ***** of resentment for itself
And we were all stuck in our separate cells
Giving and feeding, taking and eating
Loving and bleeding in the black expanse.

Pieces of me are falling to oblivion, but I've got a nice view
Told the doctor my skin still tingles when I think about you
These goosebumps and butterflies are part of my disorder
I've been reaching for a distant dream I know I can't afford

But you're the hook to my song,
The only evidence I have that this ever meant something
I know it's crooked and wrong,
You're the hook to my song

My passions melt me when I think about you
I just can't help it, everything that I do
Is like a dance around you
What you mean to me is life or death,
Stolen breath,
Loving life because you're just the way that it is
Whenever I think about you,
I find passion and purpose

The other day I thought about what you would say
In this sticky situation, because I haven't been okay for years
And I realized I love the way you love
I miss the way you speak
And you radiate something ineffable.
But I'm not lost without you and I just tend to gush.
I guess that I'm just after a rush.

But you're the hook to my song,
The only evidence I have that this ever meant something
I know it's crooked and wrong,
You're the hook to my song

My passions melt me when I think about you
I just can't help it, everything that I do
Is like a dance around you
What you mean to me is life or death,
Stolen breath,
Loving life because you're just the way that it is
Whenever I think about you,
I find passion and purpose

In the animal dance we danced
In the sharpening of my eyes and heart
In the quest for romance
You're my aching shooting star

You're the hook to my song,
The only evidence I have that this ever meant something
I know it's crooked and wrong,
You're the hook to my song

My passions melt me when I think about you
I just can't help it, everything that I do
Is like a dance around you
What you mean to me is life or death,
Stolen breath,
Loving life because you're just the way that it is
Whenever I think about you,
I find passion and purpose

You have the power to condemn the writhing innocents,
Be careful with it,
Please.

This October is unseasonably warm.

I'm biking home from probably my twentieth job
Dressed up in yet another uniform
Arranging fruit, this one is easy.

Biking down the dark sidewalk,
I smell the rubber of a mask through my nostrils.

Fall out boy. Childhood.
I had an equal part in the garden.

It takes too long to explain why I'm here
And I only want to explain it from a weary ego.

But the universe ate out my insides, left just the mask
I let the universe take control of my body, let it do what it wants
The difference is subtle.

It seems to diminish my anxiety, at least for a little.

I might forget that tomorrow. Or maybe it could be a lasting change.
I don't know yet.

The universe ate me out inside, by forcing me to comply with America
By mistreating me as a child and a young man
And then telling me the offense I took was, in fact, stolen
It was just my ego. Move along. Stop complaining.
Or complain. But just know that won't get you anywhere.

The difference is subtle. It's not some dire matter. I let the universe carry my body, and my face is still. The emotions don't flicker and leak through my face so much. I'm suddenly fine with being Matt Shaw.

I just want to know where this goes.

My ego stops trying so hard. I might grow old and never get to be a rock star. I might die first. I can accept that. I'm already dead. What happens? I'm a social outcast.

My intelligence may have exploded in my brain. Maybe I WAS smarter than my circumstances, but the anxiety of not being understood drove me insane, and now I'm just not there.

Or maybe I'm just thinking too much, and the world will see one day what happened to me. I let the universe carry me.

You don't think I could write a good novel based on this poem, do you?

I bet you think I'm one of those sadsacks who just keeps complaining and blaming their circumstances, I bet you this and I bet you that. Because you do, you **** like that. Stop it right now.

There is a lot I can do. Watch me do it, you petty *******. I hate it when you judge me like that. Yes, I'm nervous right now. They are trying to control me. They don't understand. Watch, I'll get there. I'm still young. I hate you.

I can never wash my hands of this,
As sure as the empty firmaments in the sky,
Like rings of fire
Staring at each other knowing we are each other's deaths,
Our deepest identities.

We negate each other's purpose
Now in need of gates in heaven
And I'm a predator in heaven
I guess you're just a helpless Lamb.

We kiss too passionately,
Lifting up our *** as a bleeding trophy.

Now the clouds are pierced with a chemical fire
Sights you'd never want to see
It was the PB&J sandwich of five years old
Coming back, the action turning inside out,
Digestion coming back now from the sky.

The caustic gases singe your nostrils
And you receive an unnatural sensation
Now your nerves are all spiky and everything seems long, and reeling

We have brought this on ourselves
And everything that you called help
Takes a cruel turn when you realize you're actually alone

You start to slough attachment
Oh, I wish I could help you with this...
When you're crushed into the center of your head...
But no one else is there when it happens
No hand to hold, you have to
Do it
Alone

I'm really not
Anything special
I have smart or sharp edges
But that's just a shape
We're all just shapes
We all live and die
Dream go unrealized
Every day,
I decay.
Oh well.

It's the sharp smell of saturated soil
Watching a puff-chested robin pluck a worm from the earth.
Violet tickled feet hop the spring marsh,
And sharp yellow trills sound like the nearby
Rambling brook.

They come along in mostly threes and fives.

Time ensconces her like petals.
Scrolling through one life we see
Petals wrapping left, or right:

Flying forward, hear the chickies cheeping
She feeds their yawning beaks a worm
The cowbird, now, she's noticing

Rustling petals tell their story:
Macon is her winter home.
The southern air smells slightly sweeter

Flipping through the days and seasons
Petals welcome blackened fruits
The fetus of inimic feature
Is pregnant with shadows of the past.

It's how her collapsing body made room
For everything that has been.

And heading eggwards, backyard feeders
Summers spent in Pennsylvania
Followed rounds and first palms ever...

Waketh I, to pungent earth!

Baby robins are good-natured
I suppose in life, they must commit some grave crime
So say to all these blackened fruits of mine:
Trophies for participation.
Help me down into my place
Be the wet-nurse of my

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

My life is a seance
My organs gathered 'round the table

Just think of the terrible things
That led up to my birth

For now
I am not swallowed up,
And I am the only reason swimming in a sea
Of lost cause.

That's just the cost of a clause.

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

Wrought iron holds back the worst things
As I pass on by
Wrought iron that pierced the sky
And it rains
Rains down on everyone

These twisted wraiths beleaguer me
But they're held to their ends
By some fever living in me

And I pass on by.

Think you've been a cool snake, well I've
Incarnate love, all burning
The full weight of her innocence
Pressed against your burning neck

Thought she never felt that, you got
A whole lifetime to prove your guilt
Cancer is the iron rod
Now you'll learn from mistakes

Take it on the back end, you said
Take it in the long term
Next time I hope you wither too soon
Next time I hope you squirm

Hiding in the fumed ones never
Really hid yourself so well
You're naked
He sees her
You're crawling
There

Walk in on me
The ******* of the starlight
An everlasting feeder
He manipulates the world

A world of manipulation
Sees itself, gasping and gawking
Trying to shrug off
What my body is doing

But I cannot
And you always come to rest there,
A ghost in my eye

Like an encroaching needle
Like a soul on fire
Or like death incarnate--
Why?

A message i had to send to the blood in my veins,
Connected by music and metaphor to a special girl
Who showed me a song
The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot

oh coroner, coroner
a note from the boy in the corner
once someone looked down at these feet
and they belonged
now you can only see them from the outside
they are pale and empty descendants
from what was once in ways a thriving wonder

posthumously i work wonders
but they are mixed with dark poison
a poison for some, an elixir for others
and i have a deepset urge
to find it in her lips once more

a phantom that couldn't escape corrosive love
an eternal struggle i wish death--
or your hips--
could dash.

There's an old lady in your neighborhood who sits.
She knits and knits and knits.
And knits herself into existence,
She knits her aching wrists.

Her circumstance of birth
Is not like yours and mine
And the alarm of this discrepancy
Is sealed in strands of time.

It's odd, she never had
A mother, or a dad
But she knits them as she knits herself
And knits her seven kids.

Oh, ain't it strange?
Oh ain't life absurd?
It all checks out and comes around
But we only shared a word.

There's a man in Andromeda's sea
He's not like you or me
Because being that far changes you
Into something you can't be

But our thoughts could make him dance
On a giant knot of chance
And maybe all that space is full
Of books and beams of trance.

A tangent needs a touch,
And what could matter more?
Some dreams fall to obscurity
Cause no one's keeping score.

Oh, ain't it so weird?
Oh, but normalized!
Abstraction crumbled instantly
When it was realized.

I'm trying to figure out
Why he's this warped American mind
Sleeping through flowering days
Formerly an interested kid but now,
Largely cynical and forfeited.

Uncultured,
Resentful of those who work hard and make things happen
Because in his view, he can't right now
It must just be part of the cycle...

I guess there are things I can only do through you.

I guess we have to color in the reasons for suffering.

I guess if there is you and there is me, there must be things that I can never do.

Was it the best, the worst, or the only?
Or was just another another?
Was it a sea of sexless hydrogen?

Oh, Lilith.

Oh, that kid was so excited.
You had him writing songs
But he had such an overbite

And people were shaking their heads.

The yellowing potential makes me nauseous,
I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine.

Go have your party, I'm staying in.

I see how this is gonna go,
You won't get me like that.

Clunky
Awkward
Approximately
Poetry

can i be honest with you?
i am 100%
completely,
totally dead inside

living bits hang off
but the howling pit reigns it all
disorganized
maniacal
insanity

i am dead inside

i don't care how you take it

dead inside,
i am dead inside.

(Soft and whispered, as in some pop punk song intros)

(The circle goes round
The spiral goes down
You become what you don't want.

Who is the cent-eral figure,
Is he a beacon of hope?
I'd-shuh hate to be so blunt)

(Power chords)

(Shouted emotionally)

You go on and be a paladin, cuz you can be, I
I'll just take the obligation
You deny it's what you do to me, do to me, but I know
I'm a blatant disappointment

If you could make me feel, make me feel, like weee hyad hope
Even if it was a **** lie
You would give me the sensation
Well before you were indi-yeeted
For every wohn of yoah **** lies

Now Iyhh, deon't, bleame you
For lyen to me, lyen to me
Lyi-ennn is all we kyann doh
Frommh, theatt, vantage
It ohmost seems like allll we evuh dooo
All we do is tahll - the - truth.

(More vicious)

The circle goes round.

The spiral goes down.

You become what you don't want.

Who is the center-al figyuh?

A beacon of hope?

I'd shoah hate to behy sooo blunt!

Remember July,
Whose ruby red days brought you like swirling paint into my life?

Remember the park,
And the tacos I made and not being able to say a word?

I remember my gray,
Cold and vast beneath my skin
And finding love in tryina swim.

I remember how your kiss lit up my cheeks,
Lit a fire beneath my eyes!

Remember our trip?
We carried everything on our backs,
The tent, the rent, the tailing past
And now our tails are making out,
Now you stay over my parent's house

I remember that day.
I remember it like yesterday,
You were so cute
Like a little messenger
Announcing the end of worry
With cherry lips for my manhood.

I keep a garden of dead and dying roses
It reminds me of the time you died before you got it done

I water the roses of other worlds,
And those of demons
They're luscious and complete
Floating somewhere in my eye

I guess I could have tried
Could have tried to be an artist
But I am just an idiot,
I am just some guy

To know I could have done it
Is my ***** little secret
Dead and dying roses,
Dead and dying eyes.

Signals picked up by th'antenna
This guy John says hair's like antennas
Maybe he's right
Maybe that's why I wrapped myself up
In human bodies into this coffee shop

The universe flowed into my room
From all directions
And it slowed down kindly
Just long enough to keep it there
And now I'm tripping
What was the point of tripping
But even doing was tripping
So just don't think about it

I'm very intuitive
But I got the wind knocked out of me
I started acting crazy
No one believes me
I work at a Wendy's
They think I'm an idiot
Rip off my ego 'cause it never meant...

NOTHIN.

That's why I hesitated there for a second
I never explained it,
You would never understand
You'd call me crazy

I'm so chill I can accept y-- wait,
I'm a false judge too
But the vestige remains
And I wish you were an empath like me!

A dream, a dream!
Wrapped in a body
Why did I dream it?
Half-answer cancer.

They all think I'm stupid
They think I'm a dud
And I've got no money
And I'm forced to swallow their false judgments about me

They can see it through the webcam, they can see!!
That my life is the most depressing thing.
They know who I am, I count on them
To watch me all the time,
They know my love, WAIT
SO DO I.

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.

At which it comes together,
Organs heave and bodies weave for me
It all falls into a stagnant pool of blood,
Surrounded by a broken frame.

I surrender to depression--
Lay down another day.

Let's stop smoking cigarettes
Their weak high is not worth the cancer
Nor their flimsy little hooks,
Let's stop wasting time we know
Would be better spent
On a better life
Let's stop taking candy
And start a better diet
Let's stop all the things
We know we should stop.

I know I've had misgivings
The look on my face is called misgivings
Where I hope heaven has a string that's pulling on my brow,
Because if I'm just holding up this arch for nothing,
I'm gonna collapse way down,
Way way down without a sound

The fear of this becoming me stalls me out
Grows tumors of similar stories
And if I can't be king,
Then cut it out.

Oh, I...
I can't pretend I understand you
I run out of breath just thinking about
How far I let you slip, you slip
Away from me, well
Anything could happen.

I fall in love so dizzy
I break my heart for everyone to see
All the little pieces
See all these little pieces?

So if you dog-eared different pages

If you

Hold them in your hands,
While they don't burn
Admit it then, you love me
Oh, will we ever learn?

He's got
Some things to say
About me

I'm sure
The *** is great
That you'd be fine
Without me

But you brought that art from the other room
And there was a tear
When you set it gently in the wastebin in this one

I saw the shadow man
Sitting across from
The twinkle in your eye

Never apologize to a shadow man,
Don't send your love to the creaking depths of unknown places
Or don't heed my advice
And decide for yourself
Is this bravery, or ignorance

...Or maybe something else?

Our manners are English,
Our minds are like wild horses.

I didn't know what gravity meant when I was just a child.

But a man is tasked with responsibility,
And innocence is wild.

Of course this would mean there's something I can never be:
Satisfied by my own existence.
And by moving forward at all, I create a cavity I'll never fill.

I want you to understand how the worst parts of me spring from that idea,
But who are you, you say you're not me.

They just sink in from the shadows like rows of mathematical teeth,
In concert with each victory
We will run out of buffer space.

As I bite into chzbrgr,
I know I'm innovating.

You can help me,
And I can help you cross the street.
But no one can help my blood,
And no on

My ears were made for writing songs
How do you tell a wall that it's wrong?
Hackney a mural of Satan and God
In bold, bright acrylic, and set it on fire?

The torment of this true mirage
Is twisting his mind in indelible nots.
She sacrificed her only pawn
To lose the game, a one for one.

I gnaw at my flesh, and gnash, and claw
To find the meaning, deep inside
To take a step back's to witness truth
The horrid act of self-mutilation

To write this all ensconced in grace
Is a sorry act, but why act high?
I've noticed these days, when I do
You're true, in flat resentment,
And nursing your patients as I pass by

But I'd still long for what I'm not
The wellspring of corruption sings
You seemed to me, one way at first
But life's not what it seemed to be.

And it's not what we would want to see...

My ship wants to compromise low
Sail into storms for experience's sake
By physical law there lies some reward
In biding your suffering,
Rough hands take all.

My ship wants to float on top.
There's no sense in suffering, not for too long.
The rough hands of sailors
They're not like my own
I must be invested in some kind of throne.

Unexercised eyes grow narrow.
I kinda want to impress you.

Slump over,
Stifle my own fire.

I send my worms forth into the universe
They do it for me

Designed to bring a guiltless lunch
So I can dine in peace

We are the worms which we have sent
And soon we'll be their feast

But at least we are their masters now
And we've got something to eat

The blue sky protrudes into my eyes,
But the day's beauty is not lost on me.

I'm happy to have gotten through handcuffs and jail cells,
Happy to paint red roses along cranial fractures

It's weird knowing you're crazy.
As the world pulls my guts,
I just want to slide into my best body
Or grasp it quickly with a passionate hand.

Fine, it's everything
Whipping wind at my hair
Borrowed hair
Borrowed brown eyes
I heard they're filing a lawsuit against me
They said I stole this body from the wind
That is whipping my hair
Said it isn't mine.

They take jabs and wrinkle my skin
Cause callouses and incite mental breakdowns
They collude to bring me down,
The laws of physics.

Alright, everything
I'll grab a fistful of your hair and f you good,
Make them laugh and smile
Make them know it's mine

Make them music shine

And I'll give you something priceless,
I'll buy this forever, you can bite it
Take a bite if
You want

My *** is sleek and black
And it vomits ink,
I think gold is gaudy
I always wanted the attention, but
Did I need it

Love is just a chemical reaction just
A spinning catastrophe
A meal on a plate