Author: Matt Holman

Iron Maiden

Safely I sit
Inside my iron maiden
Metal spikes line the walls
Resolute and waiting

The lock is on the inside
I could open it and go
But this prison that surrounds me
Is the only home I know

I don’t even need to stand
To escape this fear-soaked cell
Just have to reach my hand out
To enter into hell

The world outside my home
Fills me with such fear
My hand near the lock falls
Now my future’s clear

And so I sit
Inside my iron maiden
Knowing that I’ll never leave
Resolute and waiting

End To End

A life, torn from end to end, 

Pushed apart from itself

Asleep on my worn desk,

A splinter shoved into my finger. 

It does not bleed but embeds

Deep into the flesh, an unknown wound

Until the infection spreads

And I am left with gangrene

Amputation is the only solution

So cut off who I used to be and 

Use it to feed the roots below

Green pushing its way up through the silt

Rot makes fertile soil

The person I was can no longer be

What I was is no longer possible

A limb cauterized at the stump

Blackened and fire-touched

Who will I be? 

Track 3 – I Am Easy To Find

Regret always pulls me back to you
Like two pieces of shit
Whirpooling around the drain
In a flushing toilet

The National – I Am Easy To Find
As I grow older, I find myself lost in the past. Not nostalgia, but looking back at the choices I’ve made and wondering if they were right. This song to me sounds like two people trapped in a cycle. They’re unable to break it and keep turning what went wrong over and over in their heads. They think they can come back to who they used to be. But we can’t go back. As much as we may want to.

Too Close

When you get close to me, do you see the regrets traced across my body?
They wind through the top layers of my skin like dried-up rivers on a faded map

When you touch them, the waters start to flow down the empty canyons.
The dust surrounding the banks grows green and fresh. 

The wildlife revives and nestles into the protective mud. 
Life blooms. 

With that comes predators,
Lurking in the shadows of the foliage,
Mouths filled with heat and sharp

With that comes rot and decay,
Penetrating through the dark soil
Poisoning the bright water 

So when you see my rivers of regrets traced across my skin,
Just pretend they are scabs and scars instead. 
Better left alone and not picked at.

Who Am I Without My Weight?

No longer a slave to a niche,
The easily-understood cliche
Of the jolly fat man whose laughter
Masks the pain eating him from the 
Inside-out, Chris Farley waits in the wings
His cocaine-caked nostrils flare with the 
Delight of some company in the cookie-cutter
Coffin constructed for comedians whose eyes
Glaze at the thought of boredom and withdrawal

So I eat, I drink, I sit, I sleep, I wait
Because at least I can look myself in
The eye and say that I am the latest
In a line of less-than people who looked
Up at the ceiling of restraint as it moved towards
Their skulls and said fuck it

Now, I am the jolly fat man who every day
Has to see himself in the mirror, the hate steaming
Along its edges, an unrepentant gut hanging over an 
Elastic waistband praying for release from its agony
As I stare down, all memory of my toes lost, I know
That at least I fit into the shape of the world
That my figure-8 form is an impression that people
Before me have fallen into and will fall into when I am gone

The Space In Between

I remember reading once that we never touch anyone
We only feel the pressure of air molecules against our skin
You may think that you and your love are holding hands
But all you grasp is the space in between

Infinitesimal distance can never be erased
No bridge to span, no rope to bind
Loneliness hardwired into the atmosphere
Closeness manufactured by misfiring neurons

How can you truly know someone if you can’t touch them
To feel their dimpled skin against the pads of your fingertips
The heat of their arms as they hold you against their chest
Wet splashes of tears trickle down your cheeks that
Pool in the soft curve of their stomach

All of that is imagined intimacy
Better left to the romance books
And the lost, lonely dreamers
Pining for the hope of love

I know now you can never truly touch
Or be touched in return
There will always be the space in between



Wither

Something inside me,
fragile, withers
Like the last light
Of a summer day
During camp when I was 16
My breath, fresh and undiluted
By weight, was light
In my chest

When the light dies, so fall
The last leaves dangling off
Of skeleton branches, scarred by
Heat and rot, the wood pulp has
Become a feast for termites

But I sit on the shore of a frigid mountain
Lake, taking in an Appalachian sunset
Unaware of the death around me as I
Marvel at the last light of a summer day

Track 2 – Boxing

Every day is a fight and you are Rocky
Put on your boxing gloves, your weapons
Feel your the crack of your weary knees
Get up off the sweat-soaked mat

When the punch comes, lean into it
Your bruised shoulder will take the blow
When your head can’t anymore
Spots of blood dotting your vision

The bell rings, the crowd cheers
Howling for your blood
Don’t give them the satisfaction
They want you to fall and stay there

Every fight ends with a loser
In life we all lose someday
So get up and shout
“Is that all you got?”

Brace for the next hit
Because it’s coming

Ben Folds – Boxing
This song creates the feeling of a fading boxer at the end of his career. Ben Folds actually wrote it as a dialogue between Muhammed Ali and Howard Cosell. Although I will never be a fighter, I think we can all feel like we’re going down and that we have nothing left. What resonates with this song the most for me is that in the end, it always fills me with hope. The piano thunders back in at the end and the music come to a resolution.

The Corona Quiet

No one warned me about the Corona Quiet
The way that the world sounds now
A lessening of background noise as civilization settles

There is an empty in the world’s air
I inhale the outside, exhale the inside 
Trapped breath escapes into the heat

Hollow beats are the new soundtrack
To lazy late-night walks, there’s a song
In my headphones playing white noise

The lyrics hiss and create the feeling of
Popping ears, the drums thump in time
With my panicked heart and crash into me

The guitars reverb with my anxious thoughts
Dread screeching down the fretboard, my feet
Hit opposite to the ominous plucks of the bass

No one warned me about the Corona Quiet
The way that the world sounds now 
A lessening of background noise as civilization settles
And my brain gets loud