Matthew Putman: Poems

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 ruin more plots with love affairs tainted by jealousy,

or a mortgage backed security.

Don’t ride in that old Beemer and pretend it is new.

One day the dry drain from our faces will not be sorrow or fear

but emptiness.

Where Buddhists can boast and we do nothing again

and again

and again

for never to come.