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