Eureka
My thanks to the man who tasted
cyanide and voiced his last Eureka.
“Almonds”
To the man who saw dragons
to be slayed with pen and sword
in windmills.
To the Danish Prince who said
“What a piece of work is man.”
Well, man’s a piece of work alright.

Did you ever think about how
men wear their ovaries on the outside?
Or how you can always win arguments with yourself
in the shower?
My boyfriend traces the edge
of my chewed nails as he asks
me what I am thinking about.

I’m thinking about the consistency of jellyfish
and how it compares to human brains
and the taste of nectarines, overripened
drawing fruitflies to picnic tables.
Maybe I see colors differently
and will never know that my blues
are only a midnight shadow of what they
could be and if I’ve never truly seen the color red.

And how after nineteen years
I still can’t tell if I’m a good person
or just faking really well.
And if that Chinese Emperor
who strapped rockets to his thrown
to find dragons
ever found any.
Did the chicken getting crushed while crossing
the road get him to the other side.
If I died young, could I motivate people
to be nicer to each other?
When did my grandmother die
and when can I ask my mother without her
crying?  There was a little girls skeleton
found next to her donkey in the ancient ruins
of an earthquake. There were several
different species of human alive at the same time
and my favorite color isn’t really blue
And I’m really glad I couldn’t ****
myself when I was 13 because I tasted
my first plum last week.  AND FOR THE LOVE
OF GOD
WHAT
AM
I DOING
WITH
MY
LIFE.
My happy moments will always outweigh the bad
And are my ***** uneven because
when I look down—
What are you thinking about?
Almonds.  They
taste like cyanide.

I never really see you anymore.
It's not like you're a stranger,
more like a dark, faded puzzle.
Your words are filled with Socrates,
and your lungs with burning leaves.

For truth, and
For meaning,
We plead, and
We question, and
Reason gives birth,
Just to pregnant
Suggestions.

Socrates as well as Plato have nothing on my father.

© Matthew Harlovic

Two villages coexisted peacefully, no interactions
maybe some discussion on boundaries, treaties for peace and trade.
An extraneous rumor appeared in one of these villages.
No one was sure where it had started.
Someone mentioned they had seen beastly faces emerge in the night horizon.
The whispers made its way through
soon the town was mortified.

The others, they were observing us.
What could they want that they could not communicate overtly?
The villagers made a decision to protect themselves,
their lives,
their happiness –their status quo
that had been so well kept; now jeopardized by fear.  

Traders continued their interactions,
sharing goods and language.
The ignorant village heard the small-talk,
the covert operations the coinciding people had been ruminating about.

The newly-informed town magnified and mutated
the gossip;
the folk were riddled with anxiety.
If their neighbors were under threat,
what was stopping them from being the next target?  
This xenophobia was to destroy them.

The two ostracized each other;
initial misperception grew
to a common hallucination amongst the people,
they prepared for the worst scenario.

As humanity goes,
somewhere a zero-sum game emerged.

A council was held,
all that they had known was their own home
and the adjacent peoples.
There was nothing else in the known world,
it must be the others.
They are planning on something villainous,
why else the secrecy?

Cut trade, be vigilant, ostracize.
The other village noticed something amiss
Calamity must be in path.
Taking up arms, arranging a force to handle any offenses, and establishing a wall;
they would not fall.

Feud was conceived.
This is the drive of a mind
who incessantly wonders why and how
a devouring morality.

I digress from the story: the villages, armed and defense ready,
see the village that they once knew as peaceful neutrals
once tranquilly existed transformed to potential threats
for they could overthrow the opposing village.
I should be unconquerable
but I know the kisses stealing my breath come with every
inhale,
exhale; my kryptonite is facing life.

I choose to face that fiend
which wouldn’t let me actually give up when there is so much unknown out there.
It’ll haunt me with the damages that I dealt to the allure yet provocation preserves me.

The two villages are within me.
One is the soul depleting, ego-hunting energy ****,
the other is the false hope that I
can change things-
that things are within my control-
that I’ll fake a smile and a real one will appear.

Two hemispheres connected in a skull,
failing to synchronize
a miscalculating rational with a quixotic imaginative vision.

These two villages smoulder;
the clashes zigzag my intentions.
I just wish I knew
what that fictitious, fruit of the grapevine generated monster even was.
It’s been ages since this conflict ignited,
I don’t think any villager knows why they fight each other perpetually,
other than survival.