Desolation Chamber

Joel Bradshaw- public domain

One more night

in desolation chamber

the hall, slow walk

absorbing glorious

chaotic remnants

through the doors

night through the walls

through dark shades

maroon-beige spirals

geometric patterns

transmutation in dark

moments met, transposition

grace and disorder

sounds marking lust

on the soul’s imprint

cowing to loneliness

As structures stand

the earth churns below

unmoving, unknowing

marking a return

to the same place

with the same key

grinding the lock

peering inside

revelations held by

dim lamp’s shine

cut in desperation’s

glance, peering down

through holes marking

blackout shade’s monument

patterns of the world

the word uncivilized

Morning cuts through

laser-printed beams

casting out patterns

imprinted vision

backs of the eyelids

senses’ uncertainty

direction the floor turns

plan for its day

faces brought forth

anonymous gathering

momentum in movement

ill-gotten gains

places of worship

altars in lines

of faces downshifting

toward sleep

MM 6/2018

Addressing you in my dream

You came to me in a dream last night,

chiding my absence and perceived disconnection,

at least the version of it dwelling in the back of my mind.

The authority on all things,

all expressions and their validity toward full realization shown in stark terms,

defined in a quantifiable way.

Someone told me how proud you must have been before your passing,

or how proud you would have been had you lived,

in some perceived validation to which I aspired.

And at that time, I guess it meant something to hear it said,

whether from you or from someone else,

although almost a decade later it’s just a hollow form

shaping its way across distance traveled to develop its context.

Attaining that passing validation but never being heard.

Life on multiple fronts where some outweigh the others,

equalization envelopes the days and it takes distance to free them.

Yet distance challenges and distorts, making time an adversary.

While death fosters its longing regret,

I pine to be seen as your peer, your sibling.

In the same way the tumor stages across to our preceding generation,

it chokes and channels its path, eliminating aura.

Only the requisite states of grace are important.

Can you trouble the dying with your sickness and regret?

Where the courage of resolving meets its volatile indulgence,

discretion keeps them with me in its distance and its absence.

Matt Mauldin

Santa Barbara

3/2018

Missoula

I called you the first time
asking if you played guitar
Chad gave me your number
he told me you were just
getting your feet wet
but a lead was a lead
and you, so immersed
already in place

Your guitar all wild and jagged
its dissonant chords chimed
to angular bass melodies
primal scream drums
adding tension and urgency
to crucial words

Kindred from different worlds
old friends long and lost
you shared defining moments
and shed illuminations on them
through cruelty of close quarters
among young dudes in a van
through shifting ground, we walked
it was more than I deserved

When you left, I wandered
in my own direction, wondering
when I’d see you again
if here or somewhere else
the planets if in orbit

overcoming crazy accidents
shouldering their weight, moving
through in steady grace and kindness
sifting through its resolution
in finer strands of being

New worlds you bestowed
connected dots and bridges
through places, bitter mileage
context compressing space
on edge of a rocky brow
in mountains outside Missoula
an eagle perched and watched
us contemplate its stillness
in brisk sun, the edge of March

Those gravitational pulls
defied static between poles
clarified the noise of time
melting it away
warmly resolving its distance
frozen moments in places
where we’ve intersected
to call home for the day

Redeeming a world irreparable
dispelling cynicism, deeming worthy
of your life, and time, and days
breathing light into its future
brightening the mornings
shaking them off
optimism to carry with me
until I see you again

Gathered in your wisdom
knees in armed extension
to give lift to your journey
the sudden cruelty now cast upon it
if I can repay redemption given
along the line of distance and years
I’ll close that pain off cold
and bring it back with me

Matt Mauldin

Santa Barbara 

MM 4/2018

Patterns of Reconciliation - review in Razorcake

It's exciting to have a nice review of Patterns of Reconciliation drop on Razorcake today. The review is up on the website, and will also be in the upcoming magazine.

http://razorcake.org/patterns-of-reconciliation-by-matt-mauldin-88-pgs/#more-40536

Books still for sale at http://bobrobart.bigcartel.com/product/patterns-of-reconciliation

Eerie Morning Sun, Here

God what a balancing act

the news ringing out in siren call

cutting through static air

complacency

it’s too much to compete

with whatever else is going on

fulfillment before the desecration

the ground we walk

you and I we’re stuck

in a place where novel concepts

are worn like thinning

tread on the bottom of our shoes

every morning the sun

casts an eerie glow in shadows

glossing over

all sense of urgency and sedation

no one gets what they want

here – everywhere else the world

dies off around us eroding

it’s banks and rotting

where the water cuts

a line in sediment’s stain

drifting across the periphery

wafting across our vision

the road to hell

unraveling increments

paved with feigned nobility

soiling its wear in cracks of the soul

intentions creep in

and wear resignation eating

from the inside savoring

flesh of the host

Matt Mauldin
2/2018
Santa Barbara, CA

Originally appearing in Another Way Round

https://awrjournal.wixsite.com/anotherwayround

Payday Loan (Tom's Book)

Robert Greene, the First Bohemian - public domain

This earth is running out of water

I offer a twenty, but you’ll take fifty

in advance of forgotten payoff

solace is a four-letter word

we’re taking it to the bank

breaking it off into crumbling little bits

rumbling pieces

spreading it around

rewritten morals of the story

rising angst filtered through shame

lust manifested seedlings

pushing bulbs

sprawling roots

down drying along these racks

concentrating efforts withering

across time and in the sun

Matt Mauldin
1/2018
Santa Barbara, CA

Originally appearing in Another Way Round

https://awrjournal.wixsite.com/anotherwayround

Patterns of Reconciliation - now available

Now Available:

Direct with free shipping

http://bobrobart.bigcartel.com/product/patterns-of-reconciliation

Also available through:

Atlanta - Criminal Records https://criminalatl.com

Los Angeles - Beyond Baroque http://www.beyondbaroque.org/

Santa Barbara - Chaucer's http://www.chaucersbooks.com/

Bookogs - https://www.bookogs.com/b…/264151-Patterns-Of-Reconciliation

Amazon - https://tinyurl.com/y8fd2cd8

Tendons Holding Steady

public domain image

Provocation, always a dicey proposition,
sometimes best laid despite its wake
Torn pages, thou which dost protest,
lay in remains 
filling in the time lost

Along tides sweeping incoherently,
they don't drown 
as much as they encompass the uncertainty 
of a given moment's meaning –
places and names transplanted

The skin on your feet lurching forward,
tendons holding steady,
eyes wincing 
uncertain glances

Lifting the veil, materializing
forward into the grazing downhill slope,
illuminating its view 
in distant vantage

The circuitry of this moment, 
unveiled
buildings of a city distant,
carve a blight against horizons

Rock formation, 
endless forest, 
foothills cast in blue vivid skies,
slightly tainted by a haze 
of emission, sharply sped –
passing by, 

in detriment of motion, 
in monument of observation
Chaos roundly rumbling in silence 
from a distance

Making clear the scope 
of what is here, charting 
position of its calling

Shaping spinning clay, unrealized 
in the dignity of what it holds
Its shape, the way it feels 
on wistful hands
The melding of earth, of color, 
and aesthetic

Moments in its making, fleeting 
faith in the bounty 
of its creation, spinning 
out of control in resignation
of unworthiness of the craftsman 
It might slip away 
in dark and damp surroundings

But it moves, 
time's effortless motion
Waters circulate quietly, pulsing
around stones and limbs,
pushed from upstream

Materials, collection, moving life
headlong in quiet disarray, 
chaotic order

Downshifting tension's disturbance
into radiance of color,
warmth of ambient light,
slipping through reminders 
like clockwork

Matt Mauldin
1/2018
Santa Barbara, CA

Resurrection Wounds

Public Domain Image

            Twisting the ground,

walk upon the word –

crusted intervals, functioning

page breaks

            Born again, breached

idol, resurrecting wounds,

dress rehearsal parasites –

mincing meaning

            Bearing witness and cross,

Calvary, transfixing vantage

from sanctimonious high,

degraded order

            Infestation lies, scurrying

across blurred lines, bloated

pollution rhythm, worshiping

in gray markets

           

Matt Mauldin
1/2018
Santa Barbara, CA

first appearing in Free Lit Magazine
https://www.freelitmagazine.com
Volume 4, Issue 2

Receiver

Receiver, encased within

a matrix

interlocking fingers

Protection holds laced in cyanide,

laid at the feet

sedated will

Retaining judgement’s

reckoning

basis, we can’t look away

Paths of glass,

foliage dampening

cuts within weathered stains

Inversion’s information

drain, swept encryption,

malignance of conscious

Unglued, divorced

from Receiver, dying burial rot

in corrupted space

Matt Mauldin
1/2018
Santa Barbara, CA 

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