No One Has E-Mailed Yet!

I can't believe this blog hasn't taken off yet!  It should be soaring through the prevailing winds of cyberspace at this point, invading people's creative minds and conquering their empty souls!...

Haha.  What did I imagine this thing was supposed to be again?  I've only told my girlfriend that this exists, and I'm pretty sure she hasn't read this in a long time.  Partly because it hasn't been contributed to in forever; partly because she reads anything I've written well before it goes on here.

Well, she hasn't read any of this.

The Dream
by Matt Catania

Soul is known in the hole
the time it takes to travel
It's a crime to e inside my mind
Dreams do not unravel.

I thought myself a poet once
Arrogance, Ignorance bliss
I was so much cooler back then
When I knew what I'd do with this

But now the road ain't so clear
Traffic jacked up other minds
Some greater, some later discovered
Most are farther behind

The crux underneath my dilemma
Crutched weakly with wry foundation
Starry lenses stand on a glass fountain
Balance light of lilies and strangulation

Oh, where am I supposed to go now?
I'm years behind earning it
If I start now, how long do I wait
If only I knew, if it was worth it

Stay in stasis in statum oasis
Static and stoic, a stalwart complacence
Statuesque faces sleep in stone cases
What world I live within

An hones hope; mine is simple
enough.  And yet, so hard to believe
In screams filling still rooms to blank faces
Do they clap just to make me leave

If I write for simple, merely my soul
what affirmation do I need
from hollow eyes, empty faces
the heirs and heiresses of the crossroads

And the cheers, they may satisfy
if well wishes fuel the soul;
Boos, rejection are contemporaries
in the halls of the honored dead.

When I stand on stage
and I ask you a question
answer my question
don't applaud me for asking

Your cheer is the opposition 
to what I want the most.
Your lax is my arch rival
but keep the host

For my dream, my dream
to play one warm summer night
in front of a hundred thousand fans
in the park seduced by the city lights

I need you to love me just enough
to make it through one night.
There has to be enough of you
out there to make this work.

Right?  Love is not required
like I require in my life.
Who is the apportioner
of my wife?

Age has come, a coming of age
the age I've reached avails no coming
Fronting the stage, the stage is a front
for a coming of age aging ages in coming

Curtain closes on stage alone
Opportune fortune reaps the reeking
Blind to my backside the band keeps playing
Blasting, air brush, gain wreaking

Delay to the curtain displays an uncertain
relation made of tenuous plans
Lucky for we - we like to agree
we shadows held in shy hands

In high school I learned of vectors
rays, lines, line segments
At infinium is still conjecture
rays aren't always straight.

Rays of the Sun are never unified
yet not one complains of inefficiency.
We make music, diffuse, and grow mystified
why fans don't fawn at the food of the door.

I startle myself until my time comes
My mind will laps and dreams fall
from my blushing mind into my hand.
My greatest mistake was to suffer withdrawal.

Gold is a silly metaphor
in a state of lethal taste
this guy's too kind, he's a killer
with that skin-eating smile on his face

I would alter the deal of my dream
had I not run the others out
My mind is regressing so successfully
an inevitable basement of doubt

Counting heartbeats is not way to live
imagining my organs isn't either
Steeping in the dread of my squishy design
is causing a common fever



(TO BE CONTINUED...)

My God

It's been too long since I've added anything to this.  Too long since I really wrote anything I've liked.  I've fallen into a pattern of efficient life/time-wasting in Michigan.  I can't wait until I get home.  This place is robbing me of the thinly layered, already shaky sociability foundation I had created back home.  I am becoming more and more like the people I hate here, and it is mainly due to my utter lack of interest, my pure resentment to any social interaction here.  I can't bring myself to engage with any of the people I have met here because they lack something entirely essential that I need in people I can respect, and wish to associate with.  They lack self-awareness, humility, intelligence.  When I can't care enough to provide what I really need to make myself as effective a social entity as I can be - desire - then I come off as an idiot. 

That drives me crazy.

I want to put two poems on here, one from Dylan Thomas and one from Charles Bukowski (real stretch of creative influence and a strong representation of my interest in expanding my library of poets, I know) that have been in my mind the past couple months.  I will do that soon.  Maybe tomorrow.

For now, I must go to bed.

I'm glad to finally be back here though.

This Is My Poetry

I wonder now why I didn't just call this whole thing "This Is My Poetry."  I have grown to look at this and understand it as one little corner of the internet that is all mine, that no one goes to - one where I can be completely honest with myself.  I like that a lot.  I can be honest, and explore the writing I like, love, and even hate.  I feel like I want it to stay this way.

Sometimes I feel like my references are too simple, my poems too plain to be worth much more consideration than one reading.  However, I see too many poems today by too many intelligent people become too intelligent for their own good.  If there is a message you wish to convey, to a simple audience, the simplest way to do it is the best way.  Smart writers, I feel, get bogged down too consistently in trying to exhibit their own cleverness; their own abilities.  When this happens, the tone, mood, message, climax, structure - everything about the poem is in jeopardy.  That is, unless, they are writing for a different audience.  If this is the case, then they can be as fearlessly arrogant as they wish.

My initial intention with this blog was to create a place where the world can restore poetry to an art form that is wonderful, beautiful, and still easily accessible and vital to everyone.  Of course those goals are a little lofty, considering how impossible it is for even the most powerful people in the world to get people to unite about the simplest of things...but this was my dream nevertheless.

Poetry has become too exclusive.  It has become a sanctity reserved for only those who think they are smart enough to use it.  It is the most upsetting thing about poetry today to me.

But let's forget all that for now.  This place is for me.  I will treat it that way.

So now, I will put up another poem, simple in its construction, but still poetically justified.


His One Night
by Matt Catania

A boy was born this night

My boy

With freedom in his eyes

Near wrecked

Ripped from his mother

Mottled with blood

Ready to ascend

his crystal stair.

You remember that night well

The celestial ocean split apart

wave upon wave rushing aside

to open the universe

I left the ward

went outside

to call to them

for him

Bursts of light reached across the sky -

- Such lights!

The stars burned with reckless abandon -

- A chorus of lights!

I called to them

cried for him

they carried his name

to where it burns forever:

you remember it well -

remember that night well

for Inside I found my woman alive

where tears shatter peace –

where free eyes

never see again

You remember it well

remember that night well

the night the heavens carried his name

my boy’s name

to where it burns forever…

in the heavens

and the heavens alone.