i’m broken
i tried holding it together.
but i don’t want you around when I break down.

© Matthew Harlovic

i never had a one-night stand
and i probably never will
because i tend to
get ****** over by guilt.

© Matthew Harlovic

I pack the bags beneath my eyelids, off to sleep.

© Matthew Harlovic

We were walking down Adam’s bend,
stumbling on sweet nothings
that sprouted up in the spur of the moment
in between the cracks in our conversation.
That evening seemed as sweet as the
second-hand secrecy we shared.
She turned to me,  
with a bottom lip white-washed  from nerves,
and slowly asked, “Matt?”
She let a breath flutter
like those ivory black lashes,
“Should I really be doing this?”
In spur of the nerves, I laughed, “Doin’ what?”
she shyly spoke “This...”
I felt lips press against my collar bone
It was chilling. I froze up.
She kissed up my neck,
and my heart thawed.
She kissed my cheek,
and it began to drip.  
She kissed my lips,
and a note that hung on my lungs read:
“Slippery when wet”.
Alas, it lasted a couple of seconds,
with a couple of baby’s breaths in between,
but this wasn’t my first kiss.
It was my first kiss on the lips
of a woman that I knew I loved

© Matt Harlovic

Let’s take a long walk in a short run
on Adam’s tongue, on Adam’s tongue
where I tasted the barrel of your gun
when we were young, when we were young.

© Matthew Harlovic

Love is not fear, and fear is not love.
This belonging to another, being psychologically
nourished by another, depending on another -
in all this there is anxiety, fear, jealousy, guilt,
and as long as there is fear, there is no love.

© Matthew Harlovic

Before you help me,
you better help yourself first
because they tell me it’s unhealthy
for you to be my nurse.

© Matthew Harlovic

Distance didn’t make
my heart grow fonder,
it just gave me a reason
to wander.

© Matthew Harlovic

Let us pretend that our saviors lie in cloud cover.

© Matthew Harlovic

I am just another
dumb ****
dumbstruck
by dumb luck.

© Matthew Harlovic

You mixed together
empty promises, white lies,
false hopes, and half truths.

© Matthew Harlovic

My younger self; he,
as hard-headed as a ram
takes life by the horns.

© Matthew Harlovic

Each and every* form of art
isolates me from reality.

© Matthew Harlovic

Smoke rings around the rosie,
a pocket full of posies,
ashes to ashes,
Ashley fell ashen.

© Matthew Harlovic

I urge you to object your permanence
for nothing in this world is permanent.

© Matthew Harlovic

I swear your wingspan can bring man to his knees
but I’ve learned to withstand what it does to me.
We used to be in love, I used to hold her hand
till someone told her fly free so she left me for better land.
She said I love you like a friend. I hope you understand.
No I don’t but I see how you took a younga’ man
unda’ your wing and pulled a couple of strings
like it was all according to plan.
Now I’m not the biggest fan of your antics
but I gotta stand up even if I can’t stand it.
******* it. I know I’m at a disadvantage
but I’ll manage when haven’t I been up to a challenge?
Time to put your hands in. No I won’t be a stand in
but don’t panic man it’s so outlandish for you to think
that I’ll go ghost and vanish on you in a blink of an eye
before I can wash up what you can dish out
oh my gosh I wish you would just quit now while you’re ahead.
I’ll explore the ends of the Earth for my friend.
I’ll return to her once she earns it,
once she deserves it, once upon a time.
Never mind the prior line just discern it
like you did the verdict.
Yeah you heard it and I’m sure it sounds absurd
but at first you found a thirst for the last word.
I heard you mutter ‘*******’ under your breath
and honestly, I’m flattered
to see how much I mattered to you nonetheless.
But promise me that once this all ends,
we’ll still have the strength to make amends
because I said it once before and I’ll say it again.
I said I’ll always love you just like a friend.

© Matthew Harlovic

A thought about physical aggression;
A problem on the brink of *******.
To think one owns another is possession
but the path is often taken.

© Matthew Harlovic

at a certain time and space,
the density of absence
threw me off my axis.
i felt like atlas,
bridging the gap between
theory and praxis, text and world.

© Matthew Harlovic

In the name of the Zenith,
the Nadir, and the Meridian.
I’ll follow Vivienne
to the waters of oblivion.

© Matthew Harlovic

You sugar-coated the truth,
only to get a sweet tooth.

© Matthew Harlovic

Grab a barrel cause,
if life is like a river
then there is a cliff.

© Matthew Harlovic

Aphrodite.
Ocean girl.
Bleach my bones.
Make 'em look like pearls.

© Matthew Harlovic

Good Morning, Good Morning, Good Day Sunshine. The Night Before was A Hard Day’s Night. I, Me, Mine, I mean, I Feel Fine, Better, than I ever felt In My Life. I spent midnight in the Strawberry Fields down by Moonlight Bay. I was Searchin’ for Maggie Mae but met up with Penny Lane so we ran around in Circles till it started to Rain. Yesterday was Something , but I can change I promise you that I Will. From Me To You , I can be more than The Fool On The Hill. Yes It Is, a little silly, but I Just Don't Understand. Why you constantly lose faith in this Nowhere Man. But We Can Work It Out, Because, well I Need You, but all you got to do is believe Like Dreamers Do.

© Matthew Harlovic

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

© Matthew Harlovic

I imagine your mind, imagining mine,
as we imagine yours.

© Matthew Harlovic

she cried havoc when chaos spilt from my mouth like milk.
i sunk fangs in her tilted head then i bilked.
i was drunk on pangs of guilt and debunked the whole lies,
the half truths you told Matthew from time to time.

i built a silk pursue from sow's ear but she jilted the gesture
so save the lecture because i won't pester you like the jesters do
because my wounds fester when i'm next to you.
i'm not here for you rescue

when you abandoned ship
from a boon companionship
so exsiccate in the canyon which
i excavated you from.

you grew some ovaries
when you said you were over me
so don't bother overseeing me
overseas.

© Matthew Harlovic

That porch was where we returned during summer’s twilight
to plaster another memory into our childhood chronicles
Where we sat next to each other
while ice cream drizzled down our lips
And we clashed philosophies like Socrates and Plato as
fireflies sputtered their light in the gloom
Where she delicately hemmed BFF into my skin
and we thought that our friendship couldn’t, wouldn’t rift.
But, when the school bells rang
our friendship became a scalpel in which we
twisted incisions in, together, for the last time
to retrace the alphabet. Forever isn’t to be.

© Matthew Harlovic

I like my women like I like my flowers,
down to Earth, and she’s rooted to the concept.
From her orchard, orchids cry out that she’s
a beauty. A beauty as bold as baby’s breath
but she’s not soft-spoken. It’s written in her
blue-eyed, irises that she’s a stargazer
with a heart made of marigolds, laced together
by Queen Anne. She sprouted out of that cracked
cement with tulips curled to the cosmos, greeting
morning glories with a stellar smile, that I fell for
like a shooting star. She’s a bloomed-beauty that’s
bound to this Earth, and well, I’d pick her up any day.

© Matthew Harlovic

Ever since my birth,
her stretch marks have caught my age
on sycamore skin.

© Matthew Harlovic

Yesterday, she caught her curves
in the center of her palms.
She cuddled the skin
and coddled the effort
that she put in
to make it shrink
but she still thinks
it made no difference.

© Matthew Harlovic

I bottle up my emotions
and then ship them downstream.

© Matthew Harlovic

you can call it self-help
but all's relative in kelp
when you tell it like it is
and whelp give up
what you lived for
sedatives that have yet
to set in so you betta’
help yourself or let
someone else into
that little capsized world
of yours before you hurl
or wash up on shore
so take the boardwalk home
when you wake up in the
morning toward the nearest
port that is still storming.

© Matthew Harlovic

I don’t know*
your pain,
I don’t know
how you feel.
I can only infer it
from your behavior
and the time it takes
for you to heal.

© Matthew Harlovic

There’s always a little cloud cover on the brighter side.

© Matthew Harlovic

We live
            to learn
                       to crash
                                     to burn
                                                 to earn our stripes
                                                                ­                 as the world turns

© Matthew Harlovic

They say I’m a burnout,
they say I’m brain-dead
but I’m proud I turned out,
with a light above my head.

© Matthew Harlovic