There are stories in your eyes.

I never told you how
sometimes I fell asleep
with the thought that you
were perhaps the moon-

always disappearing
with the dawn.

The past is the past
The future is the future
This is our suture

© Matthew Harlovic

Sometimes my nonsense makes sense
and sometimes my senses are senseless.
But I relentlessly try to make sense,
all the sentences that I’ve sentenced.

© Matthew Harlovic

Darling, forgive me for my wishful thinking,
but I’ve been passing up a lot of pretty pennies lately.
Ever since you caught my eye in between those box seats
I’ve been tossing you pick-up lines as worthless as the
gum on my shoe. Silly me, for thinking that you gave
me another chance after you wished me well, and
well, I wished that we were more than “just friends”.
Darling, forgive me for my wishful drinking,
but I’ve been trying to pass up a lot of heartache lately.
All the times that I’ve paid mind to you, aren’t well spent.
So, this is my farewell, but let me tell you it isn’t fair
that you lost interest in my expense. Then again, shame
on me, for wishing for change after I threw it all away.

Curiosity
it kills and conceals the keep
Generosity
it fills the mind up with cheap
talk, think cautiously

© Matthew Harlovic

Across the kitchen’s smudged timber,
twin tomcats with limestone irises
sit and wait for a speck of salmon
to fall from my Mother’s cutting board.
One day they’ll snag a scrap.
If these floorboards could think
they would know when to warn
my Mother of their swift actions.
Noses prodded up like steam,
they could sense that today was their day.
They traced the lemon-soaked salmon
to the sunflower-slick pan.
They stalked the smell of
low-cholesterol cooking.
They hung on my Mother’s, “stay back”, tone.
But they never backed away, they sat there,
soaking up the sight of her setting down the plates.

© Matthew Harlovic