Entrenched Age

Traipsing through an entrenched age,

roots driven subterranean

in search of hydro-enlightened

enchantment of one’s inner-workings

Comments aligned in columns

feeding into loops, a continuation

through where opposing circles conjoin

in vexing intersection

Discourse is relegated to damaged

primacy expressed through the visual

instinct of regurgitation displayed and repulsed

in bizarre mating rituals

The circuit of solemn gestures

gestating full ranges of rationalized existence

through screens of measured response

through uneven channels of despondency

Struck chords resonating archways

into radioactive trenches, the sanctimonious tide

versus the festering stench of caustic

reenactments of the past eternal

Borne on the backs of displacement, dead tides

receding beyond common comprehension

litigated, explained away, justified

in common line formation sway

Through hackneyed points of reference, marked

and linked back to the most recent frame

drawn to the stench like flies circling

tragic exploitation conflated to agendas

Disturbances of this sort are well

established across the landscape, ranging

the scope of tragic myopic monuments

erected in anxious displacement

To the unlikely redemptive dreams

managed from small hours of dwindling night,

through drawn time anesthetizing its way

in light through wandering days

In free exchange through middling layers

we’re entrenched in impressions driven in cast

at surface level and defined in theory

rather than nourished in being

Matt Mauldin
6/2017
Santa Barbara, CA

Appears in Patterns of Reconciliation