Since I’m too hardheaded for a gunshot,
I’ll wait for these thoughts
to fade like phases of sunspots.

© Matthew Harlovic

I found my being,
my nothingness,
in a glass of gin.

© Matthew Harlovic

For the wistful youth
bitten by the wit
of the forbidden fruit,
loose lips strip the tree of its roots.

© Matthew Harlovic

As the only sun
dial in my family,
spacetime encompasses
the face of a fallacy.

© Matthew Harlovic

This morning,
my father and I
chased leaves together
after we argued for an hour
on relationship complexities.
And after a while of paved palms,
he bellowed with a fistful of yellow,
when you waver with the wind,
things will fall in your favor.
Since this morning, the wind
has been wavering Eastward.

© Matthew Harlovic

The Laws of Physics say
That Everyone Dies
And is Gone:
Every blade of grass, insect, man and woman.
Every sentient being.
From Big Bang to Big Whatever.
They all Die.

Yet is there more than this?
Something of the spirit.
More than ghosts
And poltergeists.
An afterlife
In Heaven.
Another Realm.

Some say that when you die
You re-join The One Being,
Let’s call it “God”.

Your individuality may be gone,
But you become part of that Super-Consciousness,
The One,
And thus Remain.

The logic of this is frightening:
It means that I am part of God,
Just going through a phase
We call Life,
In readiness for
For Ever.

You too are part of God
And logic dictates
That I am my own Mum and Dad,
My sister, friends and everyone else:
Mother Theresa, ******, Shakespeare
And Eddie The Eagle.

I am a wasp, a lion, a dolphin, a tree
Maybe even a germ.
Another poet
Commenting on my poems.
I’m even You.

Better get on with it then.
I’ve got plenty to do!

Paul Butters

You are a galaxy.*
From the way gravity pulls your lips
back into a smile when you laugh
to your *stellar remnants of Vegas.
I thought it would take parsecs
for two distant galaxies to even come
into visual morphology with one another
but we collided into an elliptical love
that is practically observable
throughout the universe.
And as we fall farther into space,
we grow closer together because galaxies
are gravitationally bound to one another.

© Matthew Harlovic

Once the positive trending tags
outweigh the negatives,
we’ll find continuity
within our contemplation,
our emotional state,
and our existence.
But as the negative trending tags
outweigh the positives,
our continuity will be conflicted.

© Matthew Harlovic

Ever since my birth,
her stretch marks
have caught my age
on sycamore skin.
If you were to
peel back her bark,
you could pin point
the years she spent
nurturing her saplings;
two fair oaks,
pitted like pine needles,
that ***** her fingers
every so often.
But she does not
weep like a willow,
she continues to give
her life away to raise them.

© Matthew Harlovic