From the Depths and Through the Madness by Matthew Hall

from the depths and through the madness

a short collection of poetry by Matthew J. Hall

from the

depths

and through the

madness

from the depths and through the madness a short collection of poetry by Matthew J. Hall copyright ÂŠ 2013 by Matthew J. Hall all rights reserved first published on www.issuu.com, May 2013 this collection and more, available at www.screamingwithbrevity.com

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Dying on your own terms is highly over-rated. Living on your own terms is grossly under-estimated.

Table of

Contents

Blissfully Unaware

It's Complicated

A Different Time

A Long-Standing Battleground

Always Fighting

Moths Dressed as Butterflies

An Ocean of Ugliness

Only Those Who Fly

Procreation

The Strangest Connection

These Outbursts

Time and Space

Unlike Lightning

Blissfully Unaware Some poor souls seem to be born broken. Some poorer still seem to strive for it, throwing themselves at the ground seemingly believing that wisdom compensates the fallen. Some poor souls seem to sever the strings attached to yesterday. Some poorer still never know today, staring blindly into the past seemingly unaware that only a fool burns bridges he has never walked on. Some poor souls seem to be cursed with an insatiable thirst. Some poorer still practice abstinence, starving themselves of experience seemingly convinced that discipline produces answers. Some poor souls are damned if they do. Some poorer still are damned if they don't. Some souls are just damned, while other souls escape the daily horrors seemingly secure in a steadfast ignorance.

It's Complicated Love is the most complicated of all of life's mysteries. That's why we are so scared of it. Where as hate, like us, is simple and stupid. That's why there's so much of it going around.

A Different Time They were of a generation who married neither for love nor convenience, shared everything straight down the middle and had only the many years behind them in common. They embraced regularly and there was a rare truth in their affections. He had his tiny boats in bottles, she her embroidery. The first five years were the big ones, but they were of a generation who excepted neither excuse nor defeat. During the fullness of time they had learnt how to forget and how to remember. When he watched his game shows she sat silently in spite of knowing more of the answers than he, she allowed him his moment. Regardless of his disinterest in house plants he watered her geraniums and struck up conversations regarding their progress. On occasion she would catch a glimpse of something unknown in his eye, as though he were readying himself to make a confession. She would quickly steer his attention to the weather or a broken vase that needed glueing or anything else safe and wholesome.

She had taken to snoring in her old age and he would wake in the early hours and sneak downstairs to sit at their old kitchen table where he would eat crackers and drink a slow glass of rum. From time to time she would broach the subject of death and what the other should do in case of not going first, but he knew that she would live on. The thought of life continuing with out his stake in it was too much to bare. They were of a generation who outlived their time, the likes of which shall never be seen again and the loss is for the living and the generations who follow. The little leftover paid for their resting plot, paid for a stone where young and old crows land, take off, crow and breathe.

A Long-Standing Battleground Grace has bloodied her knees. Truth has shredded her vocal chords. Honesty has sacrificed her irreproachable rights. Murder, hatred and deceit hang out in as many churches and temples as they do in the crack houses and brothels. But Trust is yet to plummet to her death. Integrity continues along her path of recovery. She will beat the rapist. She will beat the jeering crowds who thirst for her to relive the many attacks. She will beat the insane masses. If you look you will see her, she does not hide. She crawls with rats and runs with elephants. She waits in dark corners where her gentle weeping regenerates that which was stolen by the tricksters and mobsters who have rewritten history. Who have placed importance in barren lands. Who have ordered and executed hideous plans. Who claim to know the answer. Who elude to the answer. Who secure themselves firmly in the centre of the answer.

Integrity has tasted the betrayer's kiss and she has kissed Truth's chapped lips. She knows the sun. She knows the cost and is willing to pay. Repentance sings of fallen cities. She breathes for them, pleads for them, believes for them. Along side Integrity she encourages and coaxes the sun. And if the sun chooses to catch it at a certain angle, the ugliest of creatures can become the finest example of once-in-a-lifetime beauty.

Always Fighting It was early and hot. I didn't feel like admitting to my hangover so we were yet to fight. My sunflowers were getting ready to flower. I watered them before sitting on the couch. You cracked the window, sat in front of it, let the breeze brush your hair. I looked at you. Looked at your hairline, at the thin green sunflower stalks, at the beads of sweat on your temples and I knew I had deserved every accusation knew I was wholly unworthy. I wanted to tell you so. Tell you that you were right, but the ball of beer and Irish cream liquor sat growing in my stomach. Languidly staring out the window, you gently scratched your thigh with finely kept nails and I wanted to admit defeat, but I knew you'd take me at my word. I wondered into the kitchen, poured a drink. Seriously? you said. You're drinking already?

Stop with the fucking nagging will you!? I growled, sat back on the couch, watched your shoulders slump a little and knew I was wholly unworthy.

Moths Dressed as Butterflies She was artistic and regularly cruel as it often is with creative types. She would present him with a series of paintings wrapped in brown paper, two square frames of a seed and a flower, three box canvases of moths dressed as butterflies. He would place them above the bed and after making love they smoked and stared at them. When her painter's hands were unproductive she would look at him and see summed up in his pale eyes everything sour in the world. She would let go from the ground up. Rip the paintings from the wall, destroy them in front of him, steal her love back from him. Accepting her ranting as part of her art, he had learnt the long lesson. Pulled silently at inner resources, watched and waited. Two or three days would pass before new brown paper wrapped offerings were placed above the bed. And they would make love underneath them, smoke underneath them, stare underneath them, and wonder how long they would last.

An Ocean of Ugliness An unpleasant memory, like an everlasting after-taste from kissing a toothless mouth filled with chewing tobacco. A living reminder that breathes, whose heart is content with pumping blood around an active body. If only wisdom were a gift from the gods, if only youth came with age, if only hindsight didn't leave open wounds to fester. Love can be the cruellest deceiver, covering an ocean of ugliness. A commitment ruined all too late, like the discovery of a testicular lump in the split second before ejaculating. Short-term intentions elongate and grip the neck. Snap the neck again and again. A death revisited, a daily execution, a ritual humiliation, a burglary, a robbing of the spirit. How can one action hold such consequence? Embed itself like a resilient virus. Feeding on guilt and disappointment. Soothing childhood wounds by creating new ones in those both close and far. The sharpest of teeth who leave the deepest mark often dine upon invitation.

Echoes of screaming forefathers bounce against the walls warning their younger selves to be wary of where they lay their souls at night. Even the devil dresses in white, concealing a poisoned clitoris. Woe to those who have lifted her skirt and tasted the slow death of innocence.

Only Those Who Fly God or no god, every man will see himself, hear himself, look himself in the eye and he will look small in the shadow of his own giant. Men with a tolerance for a brother trapped by unspeakable transgressions have walked through a hell of their own making. Have emerged from the far end of a raging fire. Know the secrets of an unexpected sadness. Are often reacquainted with the sudden realisation of meaninglessness. Have realised the truth hidden in the middle of a confidence crisis. The saved will have an affiliation with the prayer of a harlot. The rescued will empathise with the plea of an old sailor lost at sea. The one who saves will have remained true to the promises made at the depths of utter humiliation. Those broken by music will weep for the lost. Those broken by the cruelties of each passing moment will search for the lost. The man who has no need for mercy and grace is the man who gives out advice like candy.

He has never walked the long route in ice cold rain. He has never tunnelled through, up and out of the pit. He is miles from death and is therefore already dead. Forgiveness can almost always be attributed to love. Often the unloved have more love to give than those stuffed silly with it. Only the grounded will learn to fly and only those flying will see the madness unfolding below.

Procreation Who is going to answer for refusing children the right to be children? Who will take responsibility for dulling their eyes? For taking their skip step, shaking them down, forcing them up, showing them so much? Young clamber onto the backs of their parents, as it is with the wolf spider, and we show them the way. The way of age, the way to an early grave, the way of filial cannibalism. How quickly we forget the mystery and magic of cardboard and mud. How quickly we accept the brutal explanations of stars and doves. See how the carefree share their sweets and head lice. See how the carefree run for the sheer thrill of it. See how the carefree kick and bounce balls in random directions. Social status and fashion design, perpetually medicated and sexually aware. Bloated, emaciated, eating disorders and suicide are no longer exclusively adult pastimes. Who will answer for the broken hymens?

The gods? The devil? Evolution? The natural order of things? Bring a child into the world so your mother can become a grandmother, so your brother can become an uncle, so your first born can have a sibling - become a sibling. Bring purpose to otherwise decorative tits, justify the strange male genitalia. Bring a child into the world so the back breaking efforts of working the ground have meaning. Bring a child into the world and teach that child how to die and break that child as we all die together.

The Strangest Connection When in the moment that nothing matters- beyond instinct, halfway through the penultimate stage of intense intimacy, a loud-cum-shrieking-let-go, completely unaware, unabashed, uninhibited orgasm. Face pale, skin wobbling, inches from insanity, miles from all those imminent issues and problems otherwise impossible are forgotten as the nakedness is forgotten. Beyond trust, beyond beauty and or ugliness, beyond life - closer to death as the singular, as the moment, as the strongest and strangest of connections. Aware of your lover in flashes, pulsating images, sting the eyes, open the eyes, teach the eyes and humble them. Show them that all things seen are not certain, not sure, not fully understood. Sometimes for real, sometimes for keeps, sometimes interrupted by insecurities, by the years of learning how not to let go. By the years of straining for ground, by the years of pretending to be okay. Recklessness comes - a loud-cum-shrieking-let-go and all is undone. All is wiped clear, all is sent off to float into the ether until the strobe makes way for vision and the eyes re-adjust and life becomes confident in itself and the sweat is washed away and the singular is stretched and one becomes two and the other version of reality pours from a hot shower and is rubbed in by a clean towel.

These Outbursts I don't mean to embarrass you by the shouting through thin walls. Walls not thick enough to absorb a sneeze, let alone the howling of a half-crazed fool. The insincerity you see when you see through the hangover, through the next batch of twisted thoughts as I second guess the world and its intentions. As I second guess you and your intentions. But you also see me free falling from ledges I did not hurl myself from, thin ledges we stood on together. You surveying the land, weighing up its potential, pointing out various possibilities. Me balancing precariously, clinging on to myself, cursing the audacity of the tall order in front of me. So you give a come, sure of falling isn't the trees and

gentle nudge, confident of a gratitude to a fullness, sure of exhilaration. But flying - ask the birds and the apple. Ask the dragon fly. Falling isn't flying.

Please don't bring me to my knees and demand that I stand. I am already a worm - a worm and no man. The guilt saw to that as did those words in red. As did the teachers and the nay-sayers and the silent gods and childish faith. I know you have tightened the safety net, are sure of its destiny. But your wings are smoother than most. Your feathers vibrant and beautiful. The fire truly strengthened your steel. You have glided gracefully and long to do so again. And long for the one you love to soar by your side, to fly in your night, to jump into life - over life, just as the geese, just like the stars. You are romantic like the dancing flame, as the sun in its final stage. Sometimes I can't keep up with you and the rage bubbles up, creeps up on us, pours out and takes over. I don't mean to embarrass you, it's just I am used to burrowing through dark, soft mud and earth - tunnelling and hiding from the birds. Through you I have tasted the bitter-sweet blue sky and hope to again, but please don't expect it every time or your wings might get tangled, interlocked with mine and you are not ready for the depths - not in this lifetime.

Time and Space Towards the end his requirements were simple. He looked forward to Tuesday evenings when she would catch a bus to her weakly book club and he would slice up a grapefruit, pour sugar on it, eat it with his fingers in front of the window where he would watch the people and their dogs and the rooftops and the rain. She had found the spot on the bus where the vibrations were just right. Her journey was so well practised she could time her pleasures a few seconds from her stop. When she came home he seemed to her more tolerant, she seemed to him more tolerable. He asked her about the book discussed. She spouted some literary guff and they would linger a little longer when they leant on a long kiss goodnight.

Unlike Lightning The saddest side of marriage, and it happens at least intermittently, is forgetting that the person driving you crazy used to drive you to craziness. Distracted by the peripheral, forgetting through competition, dwelling on a few lost words. An undefeated record of wins is the record of a coward. The greatest prize of all is no record at all. First flowers of an overdue spring, crashing waves, even the whole ocean are dulled into insignificance by a bickering wife or a stubborn husband. A stale marriage is a stillborn child. Listless, lifeless and breaking the hearts of anyone coming close to it. And it happens, will happen, is happening all over and all around. But unlike lightning, love can strike in the same place over and over and over again.

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