Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
Tyler Matthew Dec 2020
I don't know about reincarnation
but after you died I saw
a little boy painting an elephant with his fingers
and I thought "there you are"
Tyler Matthew Dec 2020
The human ego is as soft and dirigible
as a child's balloon.
The pride of a poet is no different.
Criticize him and suddenly a hole spilling hot air,
watch him zoom about
deflated, adrift.
Please, can we stop bolstering poor work? Can we finally call a ***** a *****?
How are we to grow as poets (or as humans, for that matter) if we cannot give and accept criticism with grace and earnest appreciation?
If I write a bad poem, tell me, and I will try to improve.
I will do the same for you.
Let's have some respect for the art.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep
I'm with you, Robert Frost

The ocean all commotion
Where Captain Ahab lost

The library is quiet
The school all empty still

B.B. King has passed away
Long gone is the thrill

She does not remember
But I always will.
  Dec 2020 Tyler Matthew
Simon Piesse
Take me back to that place
Where dichotomies of
North or South
Right or Wrong
Become
Translucent
Ground Zero
Equilibrium.
  Dec 2020 Tyler Matthew
Elise Jackson
i.
i've met god
he's lying six feet deep
in the rare greens of chicago
where the trees make up for the emptiness
the loss
the silence

the grass seems so frightening for its purpose
but yet so full and comforting
i don't blame the slumber

i blame the normality of it all
i cannot keep swallowing grief and pretending it doesn't hurt me
Tyler Matthew Dec 2020
The desolation of artistic expression -
virtue signaling, mood pieces -
cheapens the message.
Daily I am deceived by what I read.
I thought not that I would struggle
finding comfort and truth in the house of poetry;
a house we all have had a hand in building.
Indeed, poetry is, at its foundation,
patient and playful, and honest
and yet, I find nothing more than disingenuity
creeping beneath the eaves,
pseudo-poets with no better avocations,
no real love for the craft.
It is a shame, in fact,
that one's concentration could be
so fixed upon the ego
that the heart lacks any good judgement.
Though, I suppose, every generation
has its fools, its phoneys.
Yes and even now, as I toil in my home,
persistent and earnest,
I can hear a window break,
see shingles strewn about the lawn.
Next page