Half Generation

A half-generation’s footsteps scuttled

prints dampening in foliage

unkempt lawns next to her

monument of a photo collage

where figures etched in stoic

frame leer back in jettisoned eyes through

panes of glass so cold to the touch

Streets thrown into grids of limbs

partially bare in the onset of winter’s

chrome-casted light mixing the warm

nostalgia of days with blanket fits

unnerving of night stills and morning

stumbles its way across before settling in

to carry the way home

Peering as if through rash of mind

back to you in droves of words and wishes

rewritten as if arranged ad hoc in frame

of paralysis of chart or nature in seeking

to explain its passion or purpose charted

through windows puddled on pavement

graded through red clay flesh

Matt Mauldin
12/2017
Santa Barbara, CA

Reconnective Drift

from http://iopscience.iop.org

Dimming pitch reconnective drift, re-creating

fevered arisen, stirring

around enraptured disconnection

from this soil

To which we stake,

foundation walls – sturdy truth, always

standing, returning with roots to mark momentary release

on crumbling gray-ash bricks,

to demolition’s day

Witching unwit clutching silken pearl, fine

and finite, twisting

beads into moments’ comprehension

of knots and mangles pulled, in collapse

along the floor boards

In natural light pulling shadows

across reflecting casts

Matt Mauldin
12/2017
Santa Barbara, CA

Thomas Fire - Notes from Santa Barbara

Winter Wonderland

Day 4 (or Day 6 if without my early week business travel)

of living under a cloud of falling ash

from people’s lost homes in Ventura,

oak trees and chaparral from the national forest,

petroleum excavation sites,

burning rings on palm tree trunks,

drifting like feigned holiday cheer

same color as the snow fallen

on my friends, back in Atlanta,

dusting our parking lots

with its surreal dementia

I drove the other day, home from Los Angeles

along the 101 toward Carpinteria,

greeted by the pinkish lunar haze awaiting

at home, like a stray disturbing houseguest

you just can’t shake. Days later its tension-familiar

glaze still disturbs the dawning day,

so you sigh and resign

away any remaining dark novelty

Along the road that day, the burning

palms near beachfront homes along the 101, a sort

of dark bid at humor from the forces of the fire,

after running out of future hellscape to scorch

as it reached the ocean,

somehow surpassing green oasis citrus groves nearby

The next morning, I woke up with haze in my head,

faintly aching and feeling like the sky surrounding my eyes

and nostrils

I texted Melissa to find out if the university had masks,

they did but so did the tent in front of Costco- teal blue,

annoying the bridge of your nose even when bending

the thin metal sheet at the top

I got two and went back again for more to take

to Becky and the kids, who ended up bailing for Oxnard

by Sunday- she said like coming out of a cloud of trauma,

seeing the sun again once clearing south of Ventura

She sent me a picture of the mushroom cloud behind her

that we are still sitting under, Melissa and I

We’ve driven around the city,

noticing the slow drain of people- wearing masks mostly,

less and less of them and their cars

Any novel concept of living among such a mind-blowingly expansive

natural disaster, eroding as a new day unfolds with more haze and smoke,

and lingering advancement of fire

I hesitate to say natural disaster,

I don’t think it started itself

Every day the school systems text, call and email,

cancelling the next round of school, until the time runs out

and they’ll just have to cancel until the new year

But work must go on – I heard official notices have been emailed

in some circumstances, requiring vacation time or unpaid leave

even in evacuation

I can work from home, but others should go in,

or take up to three pretend sick days before a required doctor’s note

People’s homes and lives, hundreds of square miles of habitat, destroyed by this and others,
so unwittingly pervasive this year
among other myriad starts darkening days,
we remain fortunate in the acquisition of the past,
safe keeping of the present
with nothing owned or owed from the future

Matt Mauldin
12/2017
Santa Barbara, CA

The Walls Have Ears

This foetus form of disquieted love,

a precipice from which it is flung

I thought –

retracing footsteps swallowed in the carpet,

lifting my feet in quiet concert with, or between

gaps in a junior grade inquisition

Confession of first light

Beams creeping from under and around

a crack in a door, down the hall,

transfixing themselves across my position

Ears tuned to voice, vulnerability

seeps out while turning inward

Inducing urge or instinct overarching,

the need to protrude – to comfort,

to feel it yourself,

in lessening another’s pain

Lying so close – behind a door,

your darkness pierced by device-led portal

locked in hand, broadcasting sequestration

against one’s mocking torture,

into another’s comfort

Lapsing time shrinks the distance,

duly noting the reveal

while choking on the indictment

This is Saturday night

Matt Mauldin
12/2017
Santa Barbara, CA

Signs of Progress

From weathered hollows, gray and orange
outcroppings sharply elevated along twisting pavement,
ascended in failed formation behind,
just waiting for the turnout, moving beyond
too quickly for the sake of others

Fallen canyon, edges into surreal haze, framing
specks of dust bearing repetition throughout lanes,
fractured from or rooted to a spine, flowing below,
currents of static cargo, sweeping the imagination’s
dreams that siphon their impurities

Glancing left within distraction, derricks protrude,
twisted ships lurching toward the shore
unencumbered by miles of sea retaining their majesty,
undisturbed in the channel, tricking the eye
into believing, signs of progress

Beyond all means of vision, horizon bent giving
way, purely discerned in the sharpening light
rising gods beyond the channel, impending reclamation
lying on the shore, blinking eyes re-framed
in the mist of their retreat

Matt Mauldin
11/2017
Santa Barbara, CA 

First appearing in Event Horizon Magazine
https://eventhorizonmagazine.com/
Issue 3

Abigail

It must have been a strange sensation

navigating tension neuroses, from space

unoccupied

Flesh and blood appear alike,

at least enough to be identifiable,

with some of the odd

idiosyncrasies

            Continuations

Amorphous without clearly

delineated courses, spinning cones

shape clay into something

unrecognizable

The day, shifting into hazy dusk,

drifting into Fall, sullen steps,

tracks uncovered

You bought me a tape,

King Diamond’s Abigail, when you took

me to the driving range

at some weird little record store

adjacent to a gas station in exurbs,

still in the 1980’s,

Sandy Plains

The weird little ways to make

connections

with those who are thirteen

Oh, the horror spared you

in the lyric sheet

Lines compelled to cross,

inverted

Despite all sacred text, best laid

inversions stare back oblivious

to righteous origins

In brooding emaciation, the years affixed,

ungrateful and unknowing

lacking comfort and dignity

in your generations’ passing

Matt Mauldin
11/2017
Santa Barbara, CA

Summer Camp

We drove long treks- indifference and back,

from the armpit of Florida’s Panhandle

to higher grounds in Tallahassee

He told me the day before, they’d met way back

in the early 19^th Century

halfway between Pensacola and St. Augustine

breaking ground on a capital city

Peeling off miles over marshy rivers,

with docks penetrating an easing flow,

past random houses on pilings

embedded within pine trees, solitary

across vacant lots, unsold

Solemn ritual, stopping to shed light on the mileage,

biscuits and gravy at a Hardee’s with senior coffee

and a flimsy plastic cup of water for the road,

exacting timing of the chemo pill 45 minutes before

the radiation treatment,

despite the fact we’d arrive an hour early

The waiting room of the cancer center

sitting watching the space before him dissolve with time,

somehow without a screen to burn his eyes,

before the calling back, before the mask directing

waves to the tumor shrouding the right side of his brain

to slow the malignancy

You asked me in hushed tones if I’d noticed anything unusual

in his movements, his quiet dignity

Pleasing October sun, the way home with tiny breezes drying air,

hints of autumn away from the Southern California heatwave

Unaware of my state’s impending secession,

you brought it to my attention after I mentioned

my civic pride to drive a hybrid

The personal connection to the lens

degrading my livelihood and passion,

much less the world around me

Stopping for lunch in a ramshackle building

nestled in whispering pines near water,

dirt in the parking lot, dusting up and stirring

the remains of the drive

Blackened gulf oysters on a bun with Louisiana hot sauce and iced tea

His glass of wine you didn’t want him to finish

Settling the differences between us when the check came

Matt Mauldin
11/2017
Santa Barbara, CA

First appearing in Event Horizon Magazine
https://eventhorizonmagazine.com/

Issue 3

Wax Casting

Your voice pleading,
heaving on the other end of the line,
sucking up the air between
this episode and the tension you've razed

A tic away,
the disorder, books are strewn about the floor,
scissors in hand, inanimate objects lying
in defense of gravity

Everyone pleads,
their voices pitched across octaves and back,
with contingencies against what hope
remains lost

Cleaving the plot
into an idyll manor and scorching charred frame,
disparate parts seem unable to be made whole
in their defense

Scavenge in grasp,
we circle the pattern, elevating twisting symbols alight,
carelessly shifting away the calm of containment
into craft dysfunction

Gritting teeth through
the fallen hours on the other end of the line,
unable to signal motion ending
as if it never began

Matt Mauldin
10/2017
Santa Barbara, CA

First appearing in Event Horizon Magazine
https://eventhorizonmagazine.com/

Issue 3

Terminal

           The moon tonight

a small sliver of the sky, mournfully

mounting an end of the day’s

funeral song

            Whispered through wires

connecting radio speakers to God’s ears

humming below audible bounds

subterranean distraction drones

            Uncovering

recovering daylight hours shine,

their shadows lurching out of morning’s

disjointed colors through surreal filters

            Cold settling

congealed solid particles bonded grief

stabilized in solution, isolated impurities pull

through resolve’s uneasy impact

            Throes ingested

they magnify all hope swayed into favor,

bleak yet brimming in consciousness

terminal drift cum obligation

            Tidal decay

movement en masse measured in sediments’

malignant and parched encroachment

carved through archaic frozen fortresses

Matt Mauldin
10/2017
Santa Barbara, CA

Wavelengths

Our wavelengths

comingling,

jagged lines to frame

crucial axis

Points in cold fusion

divvied out

tension ‘cross intersecting minutes

Scattered foliage dissolves

wistful and crisp,

borne of shadows

Pale feedback loop

carving the course

we walk, divergent interests

conjoining

in some form - boilerplate

indifference

confined in the waning

spaces drawn off,

driven throughout

its dissolution

Sucking sounds,

drying finish

deadened in its hands,

in flesh arisen,

a ballast in regulation

of damnation’s determinate

flow, seepage muddled

in the surface

sinking aground

wrapped asphyxiation

Matt Mauldin
10/2017
Santa Barbara, CA

Birthmarks

This mortal assignment
drawn from images entrapped with time
lapses, like tin pan layers 
snapping back in blinding retreat
of a tape measure 

From distance a mind's eye 
only sees the black-lined quarter reaches
The edges of space determine
the depth to which the air can breathe -
it's happening in real time

The interest of reverence 
determines the full range this hollow bow
can chart fulfillment from
tacit understanding of the sacred ordained 
arrangement of order

Come forth from the space
craved and carved and created to covet
one's silken steely skin hardened,
lined with firm twine tension imprints,
binding the circulation

Blinding the movement of days
or the arrangements of isles owning
the differences, built out lifetimes
of knowing or not knowing how to fasten
a stake in opposing fields of wisdom

Matt Mauldin
10/2017
Santa Barbara, CA

First appearing in Event Horizon Magazine
https://eventhorizonmagazine.com/

Issue 3

Steady Hand Guides

Take this bread it’s my body

Drink this wine it’s my blood

Extend a trembling hand snatched away,

stirring up dust in a darkened space

lying behind creaking doors

rotting off their hinges

Offered in intervals bounded in service,

like sponges soaking saturation,

seedlings nurtured turning earth,

or bile regurgitated in sickness

from seething parasite

Returns remain in question

Matt Mauldin
9/2017
Santa Barbara, CA

Stalking Seeds

Planted stalking seeds behind me

to watch years grow unfolding

in volumes, surrounding time

Subservient graces to upper reaches

in the arc of the shadow,

repelling light

Put miles on tread and between,

draining time from cold affronts

Awkward instruction quelling impulses,

tempering inspiration, bound

with laces of necessarily cruel choices

and judgement rendered

In living deliverance

Placated in rhymes finding

spaces to dwell the lines in validation

Redemptive finds pushing and pulling,

they drew distinct marks

met and fostered in quiet corners

shining on the surface

Journeys portended wedges

moving away from knowing places,

arising unknown or unrealized

A little surprised when expectations

held and gleaned in uncertainty

faded in the picture of years

In finite incompletion

Matt Mauldin
9/2017
Santa Barbara, CA

Sons and Ghosts

How do you hold sands’ streaming

tiny irreverent beads?

Containment irrevocable- paths etched

casted out of idealized space

filled by sons and ghosts within

their movement- fractured bounds

of wayward conviction

Staring across the table

an abyss of expectations unfilled

steps taken in haste and backed off

in words not said nor met

in immediate formations

Their foundation laid in parallel

fragments defrayed

Borne of static spaces

lying between containment and engagement

and resting restless within arrangements

disjointed discomfort’s

hush falls over its scene

heads bowed in grace

clearing of the throat

Cut from the same genes

but not the same colorful spaces

they remain largely unexplored in sorts

like demilitarized zones

Staring now at depth and limitations

illuminated down into your numbered days

I see my own mortality

Matt Mauldin
9/2017
Santa Barbara, CA