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

At least I don’t have to pretend anymore
I know what I feel for the person next to me
Not love but obligation and fear of my pain
There is nothing swelling in my chest as I
Stare into the rising sun, just graveyard ash
Mixing in with the dust lingering in the morning light

I was told to stay by the whining voice in my head
Why does it only speak when I’m trying to ignore
Truth? The Lucifer of the Morning. He seduces me
With a sly tongue, quick and dexterous, as he tells
Me that I am wrong and cowardly and I need to stay

So I roll back over and go to sleep, my arms snaked
Around one who I don’t want to be with and I sleep
With the peace of a man who knows he is a liar

I lay on my side, trying to get my aching shoulders to relax
I relax my jaw, trying to release the tension from my day
I still my mind, trying to calm the California freeway of my thoughts
I close my eyes, trying to shut out the spotlight from my neighbor
I am finally comfortable

But now my pillow is warm and my head itches and my thoughts race
Through the traffic jam and my shoulders are sore no matter how I hold
Them and I can’t sleep on my stomach or my side or my back I’ll just
Have to sleep in a chair and what if I never sleep anymore that I have
Insomnia and this is just the beginning of that and then I look like Christian
Bale in The Machinist and would that be so bad at least I’d lose some weight

Wait

I haven’t flipped to the cool side of the pillow yet.
Ah, yes. That was exactly what I needed.

The final song on my favorite album
I heard it for the first time when I was
Contemplating dropping out of college
I understood it the first time I realized
That I was going nowhere, my cage
Of conformity had sprung up around me
To become nothing more than a condo
Of convalescence as I waited for it all to end

There is a joy to giving up and resigning
Yourself to your flaws, knowing that you
Carry your burdens with the same resilience
That you carry your strength, although the world
May strip away everything you are and leave you
Sweaty and shivering in the sewer, you are still you
In all of your majesty and all of your mania

I had dreams of myself trapped in a mosh pit
The people around me slamming left and right
My glasses flew off, snaked by a surfer’s foot
But I could see so clearly, blurriness no longer
Surrounded my every move and inaction

So when I hear the silence before the outro,
A moment in which I hear my blood in my ears
I feel more in touch with my body than I have ever been
There is this stillness and for once, I am able to see past
Who I am and have some hope for who I may be
Because right now, I am both of those things
Present me is not real, the only real me is
Future me and Past me, regret and potential
Swirled together like a nihilistic Neopolitan

So when the silence hits,
I stop and linger in that feeling
And I wish it could go on forever
Then the snare drum hits
And I become who I’m going to be