Many moonless nights
I spent staring at the stars
Spinning spurious meaning
From my messy mind

I’d make my psyche spit
Salty and sour sayings
At me, hoping to be happy
Having no idea how to get there

The page brings me meaning
Helps my messy mind mend
Sanity sinking into the skin
Makes me more like Matt
And less than Matt

When I sit at my desk
Type-type-typing away
I wish I was in the mud

Pulling and straining
On your fluid-soaked hooves
Hoping to see you born

I miss the smell of manure
So sweet and naturalistic
Reminding me of the earth

I need to be back in the stable
Helping a cow give birth
And when its all over

I’ll get back in my car
I’ll drive back to my house
In the heart of the city

I’ll remember what it felt like
To bring life into this world
And will sleep soundly that night

What greater joy can anyone have?
Then to make the world just a bit
More alive and although it may not change

Change anything in a big way
I know that if I die tomorrow
That I helped make it a better place

I wear my passions on my sleeve
Most of the time literally
A comic book logo on my chest
Some obscure reference as well

I feel like a child, trapped in their own world
Imagining impossible shapes and sounds
I let my child rule me, shaping who I am
Even as a corporate drone 30-year old

So when I see the array of statues above me,
I smile at the faint memories of superhero fights,
Nights spent reading and hoping my parents
Didn’t see my light peeking underneath the door

Running through my neighborhood with a fabric cape
As the wind rushed past and I believed I could fly
When I look down from the statues, I can feel my feet
Hovering and when I close my eyes, I am soaring

Wow! Look at the water rushing
Down the streets. Pretty soon
It will be high enough for us to
Grab our floaties and swim our way
Down to the ocean.
Took out Charlie’s house, but it
Needed renovations anyway.
Oh well! That’s life! What can
You do about it? No agency or
Control, when the hurricane hits
It doesn’t matter whether you accept
It or not, your house is still going to
Get washed away.
Looks like Canal Street is actually
A Canal! Wow!

So here it all begins

My brain is such a mess

The walls draw me in

With a song of slumber

To close my eyes and 

Forget about my job

So just sleep and wait

I can’t remember the last time that
My bathroom mirror wasn’t a funhouse mirror
Distorting my perception and twisting my spine
The distant laughter of children ringing in my ears

I’ve built a tenuous identity on the edge of a cliff
Tiptoeing my way along a crumbling slope and
Plugging my ears to ignore the rocks disintegrating
Beneath my size-14 shoes with no arch support

I have no belief that I have any good left in me
Maybe I had a finite amount of being good at something
A jar full of self-belief that I was given the day I was born
My doctor told me to ration it out, it had to last me my life
I didn’t listen. Gifted kid, huge scoop. Musician, huge scoop.

So now I clutch an empty jar like a life preserver
Floating along in a blue-black ocean
Hoping that someone will pick me up or
Hoping that the jar will drag me down with it

I came here the first time that my heart
Transformed into plutonium, agonizingly
Heavy and ready to explode

I miss everyone that used to know who I was
The people that would look through me like
I was a cadaver on display, my skin replaced
With transparent plastic and a protective coating

Those are my footsteps in the sand
My shoes floating out past where the waves break
When I would come here and dance in the shallows
I realized that I didn’t need my plutonium heart
I could render it inert and then refill it with what it was missing
Life, blood, energy, passion, power

The beats fell in perfect rhythm with the waves
A pounding that shook through my being
And made me something more and something less

So here it is, my true self
He is offshore, fled from my body
Swimming unceasingly towards
Whatever he will find