Matthew Putman: Poems

 
Don’t stop me screener for the perfume I bought for her?You extinguish synaptic fires with fears of terrorin an age of enlightened blight and lost bliss.Bargaining you saw your generationunlike mine of the sober and suicidaltrying too hard to break commercial malaisewhich Google did nothing to satisfyand spotting myself too many timeson small screens straining my eyes.Seeing you too little breaks me.Where implants of pride and prejudicea warrior of peace when I clingonto your skirt and pull.The moment dissipates into the sea of skybeyond the midwest winterswhere mars looks with looming at a love set to last.
 
 

Whose time did we borrow to be living a little longer?
Traps are made of statements of sadness
when grief gets in it too late for us to escape.

Just a narrow corridor in the mansion
of the recurring nightmare of a playful child
lost and alone.

I would like to find the lender to see what he is offering
and at what interest rate.
For anything higher would break me
 pandering in the street for hours
by Popeye's Chicken, pulling at Wishbones
with my girl who slides seamlessly
from one book to another and I
just stare at the rush of traffic and hold out my hand for a cab.

We sometimes wore ribbons
now rubber around our wrists
for fashion.
When Struggle is an elastic strap around the
inner arm that is too tight, and the blood too light?
Too White?

Those snow colored dreams
during the day are only dark shadows
of binary equivalence.
We are more light than pigment.
More porous than paste.

We vacuum our symptoms
to relate to wine, women
and wanting of regular fears, not mortal ones.

Don’t [...]

 
Beggars and Bribers mix only at celebrity book bashesand on beachesbombed by old warsand new money.Weakness waxesthe sculptures madefor Posterity of Prosperityof charity for charming A girl just nowa woman for only  two years more.The savior of the world stays the martyr of riskbut not now.Where rewards are write-offsand wealth wastedwhen no blood is shedIn New York or Nice anymore.
 
 

It has been 8:56 for 20 minutes
as the atrium fills
with second rounds of soy whipped coffee.

Relatives, relative to myself
in relation to a fixed point in midlife
when tears come slower
only from Valium
and repression
and fantasies of my infant to cuddle
and deals to make
and fears of debts to pay.

Time lines disturbed by drenched coats in December
where the sun shines only long enough
to burn rods, cones and panic.

8:57 now.
Only unknown minutes of watching and waiting
to see the next storm of uncertainty
creep through the buildings of Park Avenue.

Why Is my coffee still hot?
Why is my pulse still fast?

Motion control is malfunctioning on a broken boy near 40.

 
The Battery Tunnel is a fast drivefor such a long and deep holeas $6.50 drops drivers offonto the sea of stifling congestioncoughing in the winds of anxiety on the BQE East.We  count LEDS of bright blueso powerful that the toneoverhauls the loud horns andthe baby’s cry.We marvel in glint and glow of something more perfectthan we can explain.The world gets small in that momentbefore Manhattanpops with purposefulnessposing for us.A picture of the 1%,while we stop our songblink our eyesand wait for the next game of life.