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matt d mattson Feb 2019
It was visceral
My gut clenched like I was falling in a dream
Deep in the core of me
Where the parasympathetic neuron bundles coalesce
And tell you to be calm

They were yelling
The wave of their signalling swept across the whole of me
I tingled and itched from my scalp to my toes
All the tiny blood vessels expanded
Fueling the sensory nerves of my skin,
My pupils dilated
My mouth salivated
I wanted to reach out with every bit of me
I wanted to expand to consume and experience every part of the world
To touch everything
To feel everything
Taste and Smell and See everything
I wanted to invent new organs of sensation
To better understand it, to experience more, to feel all of it

I jumped up
Like a dog
And reveled in the pure ecstatic joy of the sensory intensity
Every smell, the ambient humidity, the warm breeze
The color, the warmth of the sun,
The sounds of all the biologic engines of the world
Each of which was individually responsible for an infinite joy
And together were even more

It was a feeling that lasted only moments
And faded in soft turns
Till I became acclimated and in time oblivious
And the grass was once again, just grass
And the flowers were just weeds
And the dogs, and the children and the people in the town
Were just local residents going about their secret lives
And not the heaving mass of cells and life,
Climaxing in the moment of their existence to become more
matt d mattson Jan 2019
Life is a battle,
You are fighting for your life
Every day
In subtle ways
I don't know why
But I do know
When you stop fighting the battle
It will **** you
If you let up
If you give ground
It will eventually grind you back to dirt
And life wouldn't be here
If not for a vicious tenacity
And a will to win
A will to keep fighting every day
Every animal in the wild
Goes up against ridiculous odds
Just to eat
Just to breed
To live even the simplest life
I still don't know why
But I do know that if you don't fight
You die
matt d mattson Jan 2019
Minutes are counted in sneezes and coughs
Hours in trips to the bathroom and mealtimes
Weeks are the time between sunday brunch and sunday brunch
I could ask the sun what he thinks of time,
But he just sits there smirking
Spinning in aimless circles while the clouds dance around him
Someone says something
Someone laughs
Someone else farts
The same person laughs again
Has a few minutes passed or an hour?
How's the weather someone asks
70 degrees inside and dry,
The flurescent light flickers like a dead moon
Sometimes i go outside and watch the planes take off and land
Their large grey girth heaving in and out of the sky,
Like rhinos who know where they're going.
Can I do this for an additional 6 months?
matt d mattson Jan 2019
If we tell each other a lie
And we both know its meaning
It's like we are a telling the truth in a strange way
It's ok to lie to me on some things,
Tell me you don't want to be together
Because our lives are going in separate directions
It's ok
I know why you are leaving,
I'll accept it eventually
But the lie helps ease me into it

Another lie is one I tell to myself
"It's better this way"
It's better to soften the sharp edges of reality
With some soft half truth
But the truth is
The truth will set you free
And you can't come to terms with reality
If you don't know what it is
Tell me a lie,
Tell me the truth
It will eventually become the same door.
I have to walk through it either way,
matt d mattson Dec 2018
I've carried his body many times this week
I carried him to the helicopter
From the helicopter to the hospital
I lowered him into the coffin
And carried him to the cold storage
And to the waiting plane
I carry his body in my mind when I try to sleep
And think if there was anything I could have done better
And there are lots of things
And I carry that to
I know I will eventually set it down
But it is very heavy right now
matt d mattson Nov 2018
In a moment
Or an hour or a day
We feel the incomplete nature of ourselves
We perceive an incongruity
Between desire
And reality
Reconciliation of the incongruity
Does not happen in a moment
In an hour, or a day
Some say the incongruity will always exist
And to release yourself from desire
Will make you one with reality
Consider though
The dead become dirt in the cool earth 
We all become one with reality sooner than we desire
Perhaps we should appreciate the incongruity
matt d mattson Oct 2018
When it rains
I like to go running
In the cold dull November
In the late afternoon
When the sun is low
The fields and forrest are empty
And the whole world is inside
Pretending not to care


When it rains I imagine that I'm a fish
Sleek and wet and strong
Gliding through a cold wet world
I imagine that I'm the animal that I am
Without a pretense
Without an expectation beyond the physicality of the ambient conditions
I am an animal in the world
Surviving, breathing, being

I look at my damp slick hands
and the mist that comes from my heaving breath as I pump my legs, through the mud in the dim forest,
As I splash through the puddles and the streams,
And think to myself I'd swim the river itself if I had to.

When it rains
I imagine I'm the animal that I am
Running through the world unmoved
Strong and fierce and more alive
knowing that the world could **** me
If I laid down.

When it rains
The world doesn't care
It doesn't care even when it's sunny
But when it rains,
I remember

I'm the animal that I am
Running in the cold wet world
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