Monday, May 18, 2015

Hidden Partner, the end


Inspired by the topical and earnest lyrics of crossover thrash, metal and hardcore punk music, I began to write song lyrics at about the age of 14. Armed with my lyrics, and hampered by a lack of support to play an instrument, I assumed the role of singer in the bands I would join and form in my high school years and beyond.

When I was 18 and 19, or in 1992 and 1993, increasing complexity of my life circumstances, along with experimentation with new music, inspired me to write within myself to create more personal and original words. I also began to try to incorporate basic elements of poetry into my lyrics. As the years progressed I found my rhythm and the writing became less of an exercise and more of an experience. Things just happened and I would often take stock of what it was and what it meant later on.

I took a hiatus in late 1995, but came back in 1997 when the opportunity arose to play music again. Using the same inspiration, I wrote with a little more clarity and insight, often more methodically and straight forward, but sometimes still riding that divine inspiration that would spontaneously occur. This period ended in 2002, and I entered into a dormancy period where I thought I was finished writing.

In 2007, in the throes of adult responsibility, I was inspired to play music again and joined some old friends in a seriously heavy noisy band. The lyrics took a darker and deliberate tone that expressed a loss of idealism about the world at large. Shortly thereafter, I started this blog as an outlet for a creative period of deeply personal poetry that ended in 2013. I'm not sure if I'll write creatively again, so I wanted to punctuate this blog by cataloging what I consider to be my best stuff, or at least that which doesn't make me cringe to re-read.

In order to do that I went back and added a lot of old stuff. I've tagged everything for easy reference. There's a tag for year written. There's a tag for the band the lyrics appeared with. The later stuff that was never used in music is tagged "No Music." There's also a tag for any album the lyric might have appeared on. Also, almost all of the lyrics I've added to this blog over the last month or so were re-written from memory.

Finally, I'd like to acknowledge and thank the musicians I worked with over the years that helped inspire me to be as creative as I could possibly be. A short note about each of the bands I was in- Venosity was a great start for me but there's nothing I could use here. There are a few Bloodspoon lyrics, that's where I started to catch my stride. Car vs Driver, pretty much everything I wrote is included (any omissions were probably Jon's or Steve's lyrics). All of Chocolate Kiss lyrics are here, and most of Sonn Av Krusher.

So anyway, thanks for reading.

Matt


Angel Dust 500


Spirit behind the wheel
Left turn designed to kill

Walk out the glass

Stumbled last good goodbye
Fumble for the keys
Headlights race toward
division of the sphere
Dead on target

Spirit behind the wheel

Left turn designed to kill
Intoxication orgy,
and death is on your breath

Walk out the glass

Stumbled last outside
Mirror of the fumes
Headlights race toward
division of the space
Dead on target

Headlights pierce the darkness

Lines on the road cut through you
One moment bleeds the next
Watch the path out of body

Driven this way before,

but the road ends now
All your roads end now

MM 2008

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

The Widower


The widower rides from Hell
Backs of unholy maelstrom
Lain shrapnel death machine
Kill glory from innocents

Manic stares down a barrel
Eyes pierced on fire tread
Inferno shaping blades
Wears remnants of the dead

This mortal trophy blackened by sun

Speed through shifting skin
Holding unholy message
Rid the devil his due
Cash bounty in their blood

This mortal trophy blackened by sun

Ritual encampment
Fuel-fed carnal detachment
Mirror of depravity
Full speed acceleration

MM 2007

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Snake Mountain Death Ride


Sweat 
heat 
shack 
rust
the anguish of sin 
expulsion
nest in smoky hills
sinister sound 
of jubilation
outside law of man
god protects us 
from serpent's tongue

    Feel the pulse of 
    electricity
    running through 
    the wires
    of your god 
    and demon.

Through 
distorted frames
of life 
everlasting
strychnine acid tongue 
proclaims, coming down 
of savior
exorcism 
in hand
the brightest light 
blast

The smoke 
from the trees
the sun 
from the fucking sky
deep into 
the black sky
venomous 
pulsating music
blood-poisoned 
true salvation

MM 2007

On The Backs Of Blitzkrieg


Form in lockstep march
Bayonet on shoulder blade
Crushing carcass beneath steps of
Filth soaked boots
Fight for fractured land
Rain blood running soaked ground
Forming sky of smoke
Rising from crater of Hell

Seeping on the backs of fellow man
Draining life from dying man 
Risen on the backs
On the backs of blitzkrieg

Cannon smoke burnt orange
Burning rotted flesh below
Tattered stitched gray uniform
Of cold starvation army
Demon watch on horseback
Circling around the death march
Impaling the climbing bodies
Rising from crater of Hell.

Driving on the backs of dying man
Snapping spinal column
Risen on the backs
On the backs of blitzkrieg

Bullet lodged free fall
Shattered bone over brow
Thinning forward over down
Ashes in crater of hell
Last hungry breath is drawn
Gasping for diseased air
Thinning forward over down
Ashes in crater of hell

MM 2007

Saturday, May 9, 2015

No Funeral


I’m compelled to remark about timing
as much as anyone we’ve known
After twisting years of this, I’m convinced
that there’s no such thing as order or organization
My high school friends watched me tie the knot
one Saturday between school days,
and I was sixteen

Late one night at a party thrown
by the employees of a local Taco Bell,
I was sneaking around
behind my parents back

The first taste of freedom that summer - unbinding
Fucking for a blind moment too long
on a rubber that traveled in my velcro wallet,
just a few salad days too long
with a girl who needed anything I could give her,
and I needed someone too

Somehow discussions turn in circles
How could we be parents?
It wasn’t a question

Her home broken into pieces before we met
She told her aunt and her uncle, they said
the only logical choice was to abort,
“You’d never even have to tell his folks”
But how could she give up something she’d always needed?

My mother had tears in her eyes for three straight days
She’d never known what teens would do
My father was silent, he said nothing
They were good Christians and what else could they do? 
They offered us one choice,
it was their help for our matrimony

And there it was,
a sixteen and seventeen year-old,
with my shaved head and her nose rings,
exchanging vows at a church on a sunny day
in the October of my junior year
I was back in school on Monday

MM 2001 (original)
Revision- 1/17

Cooperation


Marked for life with circles, 
longing for circular motion - movement in time 
Swinging around, 
run around again, 
repeating tender moments, 
and the same mistakes 

Still I ponder at the sunlit window, 
but cannot separate the blinds 
to look outside, 
if the circle is complete 

And there I am, 
my love for you goes in circles, 
it’s never stuck on points of a line 
Its tide rises and falls, 
but never subsides 
It rides like a Sunday drive, 
or through minefields in a war 
It never stops turning away, 
if the circle is complete 

Days will turn in circles, 
from the alarm that sets you off, 
to the frustration, the comfort, the restraint, 
to the love, the hate, the fear, 
to the compensation, 
to whatever puts you to sleep, 
rise and fall within it 

MM 2000

Two Rooms


Another room away from me
Wondering where I came from tonight
Wondering if the distance makes clear
The things I could tell you
The ways I could be to you tonight
The ways I could be right
Take the shit I took today
And bottle up and throw down

On cement watch it blow up
Into my last three days
I can amuse myself with this
You're just a bystander

Can I help myself and who am I
To complain about anything? 
When you are just a room away
And in and out of sleep
I'm wondering about timing
And why it takes so goddamn long
To pull together
The things I could tell you

On cement watch it blow up
Into my last three days
I can amuse myself with this
You're just a bystander

Concrete to crack my skull
And bloody my fists
The sympathy I could win from you
 It's all I wanted
Concrete to crack my skull
And bloody my fists
The sympathy I could win from you
It's all I ever wanted in the first place

MM 2001

Arkadelphia


Roll the window down
I want to see the wind mess up your hair
We'll play another silly game
Laughing deeper down into my seat
Rolling around I see you laughing
So hard tears are in your eyes
Will you wake up and get the coffee?

Walk outside to feel the morning
There's dog shit outside the door
There's a car in front of us
That's being driven by no one
Hey pull over here
There's a better view of the river

The lady there in Paso Robles
Whose kids were trapped in a tornado
Just close the door
You know that we could not care
I never had to think of so many
Nouns or verbs or adjectives

Whoever thought that it was something
That had been there long before
To the point that I kept thinking
If it would make it off the ground
I want to roll the window down
Propel this thing forward
I want to drive into the sun.

MM 2001

Television Soundtrack


Watching the pictures on TV
going out with no sound,
life illustrated so clearly- 
these are my most private moments
I am sitting on a plane,
I wish I had the window seat,
this moment so turbulent- I know
it is certain death.

Next to you again,
told you i had my fortune read,
and was told again and again
that the world does not move fast enough 
to hide its flaws

Riding through the city
all day with no direction,
stuck with these people
in the middle of their conversations
The least comfortable seat
trite bullshit scraping the chalkboard- 
they should fucking take me home
if they want to do me favors
why don't you do me a favor?

I watched it happen,
doors that closed behind them
Is this your intimacy,
or the shit you dragged behind you? 
Did your world move fast enough
to keep your shit from dragging the ground?

The world does not move
fast enough to hide its flaws

MM 2001 (revised 5/2017)

Friday, May 8, 2015

Both Ways


Got no way to grow out of my skin anymore
Implications are too much and growing everyday
          I'm walking away
From when I thought it important enough to have it both ways

And you don't know
not to hear every layer- it's not there 
to discover, not unfolding for you

Got no way left to circulate my old smoke through,
filters the clean air just circulates, the circulation spells relief from trying
just to clue you in

Every mystery's not true, or not how you think it should be
It's different every time that you rummage through it

MM 2002

Hissing, Pissing & Buzzing


The circulation is speaking volumes
on what is stuck in your brain
The air is thick and splitting
with all the vague analogies

They're vague because I do know
that we've heard them all before
Everyday is vague
so that you can just get used to it

Stuck on our tongue and buried,
hanging around in the air
Released and snatched away
to consume and call your own

Retreads like an escalator
on up to the next floor
An unconscious escape,
just coining the moment.

The air is splitting in my ears
The space between everyone
The distant conversations
to play on or withdraw from
Hissing,
          pissing, 
                    and buzzing.

MM 2001

Thursday, May 7, 2015

We're All Monsters


We are all monsters here
out to destroy each other
Looking for holes in the surroundings
Breaking from the inside ---------- sickness!

You are someone else's thought
lying there all broken and bleeding
Give us a chance to catch our breath
Wait for someone to pick you up-

All there in pieces marked with
labels and categories
Claws tear and reassign -----
you are nothing without subtitles!

We will wait right here
We will destroy ourselves
Before we take a step around you,
we will stomp you into pieces

And don't know that you are being picked apart? 
Why don't you know that you are being picked apart?

Listening for too long
Bite your tongue until it bleeds
Selective response -----
you are being torn apart

What you have in hiding,
unspoken but always there
All words now are true
We want to give them back to you

MM 2001

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

You're So Involved


You're so involved with everyone's 
life. You will be some 
solace for someone
who feels alone, estranged 
from someone else
It's just a total insight you've got
for being between a rock and another rock

Too bottom-heavy to budge, you're so comfortable
between them. You want to talk to 
whoever answers
You want to hear their words again and again,
to have similar conversations with different people

It's like you can feel the pain of their days and moments
They know you can hear them now
calling out to you
You're like a pillow to their headaches
You're like a sedative 
when they're restless
You spread the waves of calm and collection.

You have constant breakthroughs 
in understanding and empathy
You're so involved

MM 2000

Self Preservation


The dive goes with your thoughts
racing right through your head
weaving inside and away
from thinking yourself out of sanity
A mission statement is written 
Can you inhibit the movement
from one emotion to the next subject?
In conversation- you're thinking yourself out of sanity.

Keeping your ass in line
is what this is all about
Keeps the opportunity alive
for growth in your market. 
Keeps the opportunity alive
to collect your thoughts
You have so much,
you have so much perspective

Powerless is so powerful,
only a misunderstanding
It reads just like a manuscript of preservation
You're thinking yourself out of a state

MM 2000



Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Small Victories


It's never daylight anymore
  never just passing time
  never means as much as it used to,
and it's always hard to find
the moments that you could ride along to,
the best days lasted forever,
and I don't even have the pictures to prove it

And you know I'm just inside my head,
looking for something real to complain about
I guess I don't even have that,
and that's why it's not worth talking about
And you know that it's not you.

Good days are never good enough,
or else you forget them
Bad days are never bad enough to scar you anymore
The cool people who don't talk to you
are not as cool as they used to be
They're hanging on
and it's so obvious to me

And when there'e nothing left to save
  when there's nothing left to prove,
you are one of them,
they are one of you

MM 2000

Great Minds Suffer


You think it's a fake-out
Through the song and fever in your eye,
you're faking happiness
Out of your monotony, undercurrents flow

Simultaneously seeing through it,
I've a bid to see right through it
It's got to be to see you
and your hidden partner

You've got a word on everything,
delivered first and last
You will nose your way
into an inner circle

Love and hate are not a part of your interaction
I'm a part of your interaction,
and I'm just dying to see
who's hanging around with you

MM 2000

Eight Years


Eight years gone by so fast 
Never felt able to totally put it together 
Chapter by chapter – piece by piece, 
you look so complete to me 

But it seems 
we are tearing you apart, 
lining up allegiance and reasoning 
It falls apart, 
but someone has to pick up the pieces, 
like they always do 

Even shattered glass was once a window, 
we looked through it together and apart 
Day after day – why be surprised? 
I’ve never been able to fill in the gaps 
Eight years on, 
the gap is widening 

Moment after moment 
          Hot and cold 
                    Turned on and turned off 

MM 2000

Monday, May 4, 2015

Pollyanna

A snarl with headstrong eyes
that dilate against the white light
Fury has an awakening
and water has a boiling point
This is a condition of reckoning,
this is a rule of thumb
I hold hands to test my confines,
confines you regain again

This is about space and timing,
even when I'm cooling out
I feel your tension inside me
and see its gaze fall from your eyes
that tear up when you laugh or cry,
it sometimes has the same effect
I could harness it or smother it
or make it explode
I could regain it

MM 2000

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Recoil


Laughing with a surgical grin,
wrinkles cracking the paint on my skin
If I had something to say I'd a said it
If I had a still-life instant I'd forget it

Like a graceful train wrecking,
it's a beautiful accident just waiting to happen.

I can't call for action or cuts
it's too much
I call my hands to the crutch,
I've got a motion in flux

I've got time
but I don't have no money or potency

MM 2000

Smoke Harbor


Smoke harbor – new day 
Curl up and uncoil, 
deflower and reload, refresh 
in crawling under my skin 
Under my toes the ground caves in 
Rethread and replace the grace 
of that moment with sleep 

Replace the increments 
of darkness with morning’s questions 
about the time, 
because the light finds its way in 

But don’t ask because I wouldn’t know 
Unfurl my outstretched arms  
to beeps and rings, to let them in 
To keep them outside 
the window, cars in line 
Harmony with their direction 
Objects of my affection 

keep their distance 
Distant grumbling, they whisper 
this need and that 
Always clocks to be punched in 
Not ever too much 
It’s too much 

MM 1999

Friday, May 1, 2015

Snake Eyes


What's there to think about? 
What's there to know? 
Wherever the stars end up, 
you'll go 
What's there to fret over? 
You look so nervous
Wherever the days wind down,
you'll be there
     hands in the air

What's to talk about? 
Your heart or your mind?
Whichever one wins out,
it's fine. 
Can you really argue? 
Control is so boring
It's all been scripted out
to ride
     hands in the air

And if you fight with fate
you'll miss the boat, my friend
You wrote the book to prolong
it's bitter end
Fell by the falling numbers,
sifted away intentions
Wherever the dice turn up,
you'll be there
     hands in the air

MM 1999

Porch Lookout


It's crazy like a dingo
Restless feeling just creeping along
Up from the bottoms of my feet
Light up and take heed
Just another excuse to go outside,
the frames and foundations.

Drive yourself like a truck
over the edge into the deep
Inhale... exhale... 
Breath dissipates

Fading like existence... 
Feeling like bionic... 
Stuck inside 
Wondering into vapors... 
Clouds of desperate measures... 
Crossing lines

It's crazy like a desert,
only chilling dry and frigid
Up from the bottom of your lungs
and blown away
Just a second excuse to go outside,
clinching and crawling

Fading like existence...

MM 1998

(artwork by Bob Rob)

Impurities


A mystery is abound
I was never accustomed to... 
I had never spoken of... 
Have you ever just walked away?

I had never seen those faces
They whispered in the receiver
They sang you to sleep
They were featured in my dreams

I found a key in my pocket
The door to heaven swung
off its hinges it fell
into a hole in the ground
I threw dust in the sky
It scattered out far and wide
Its soil filtered in the water of my eyes

Take a vow of silence
if your words betray you
The better thoughts and moments sit
idle with your time
and motion sifts away impurities

(artwork by Bob Rob)

MM 1998

Halfway Around The World


You're sitting on a plane,
your eyes are on the ocean
I'm wondering what you're thinking
I'm wondering where you're going
Halfway around the world,
is that would it would have taken
for you to figure out
if you could still love me?

I couldn't go there with you.

You're sitting on a plane,
your eyes are on the landscape
Landscapes of time and space
rose up to stand between us
I could cover my eyes and ears,
but its promise was clear
I could see you running
halfway around the world

I couldn't go there with you.

I couldn't have imagined
pushing you away
It couldn't have been scripted
with such a sudden end
I couldn't stop the bleeding
just begging for forgiveness
I couldn't have imagined
losing my best friend

I couldn't go there with you.

(artwork by Bob Rob)

MM 1998