return

Tags

anything sounds like a symphony, bougainvillea, poems, poetry

Return

On a morning ruled by chainsaws
they cut off all your branches
right down to the ground

then carted you off to burn.
But you would not be dispatched
so easily.

Underground you waited, untouchable
by sun, and moon, and me—
but not the rain. You drank

and planned a bloodless revolution
filled with sap and life
all covered in thorns.

You never lost your dream about finches
singing in your flowers and cleaning
caterpillars off your leaves.

You never doubted, and you never
held it against me when I did.
You only proved me wrong.

This poem appears in the book Anything Sounds Like a Symphony: Poetry at Maximum Volume. Available on Amazon, Smashwords, and other major retailers.

painter

Tags

anything sounds like a symphony, legend of the frozen coast, painter, painting, poems, poetry

I haven’t painted in two years. But I recently rewrote a couple old memoirs as a poem about painting, and it felt like time to take some pretty colors and make a big splashy mess in the kitchen again. The blank canvases in my office won’t paint themselves, after all. The working title for the painting-in-progress is The Legend of the Frozen Coast, partially in tribute to the Frozen Coast painting I sold on Craigslist a few years back.

I don’t know what other painters think about when they paint, but I have been imagining The Legend of the Frozen Coast as a pirate adventure story starring Meteor Mags’ great-grandmother and read on a radio program. Explore Nordic debauchery in the icy wastelands! Witness the fate of a ferocious kraken frozen in a glacier for 10,000 years! Set fire to a fleet of brigands and mercenaries! Throw in some insults and salty language from The Pirate Primer that arrived this week, and the tale almost writes itself.

Painter

A storm hammers the forest.
The wind rips down his tent.
He can’t make any sense of it in the dark.

The painter drags his sleeping bag to a rock ledge.
It gives no shelter but is clear of the trees.
Electricity tears the sky to shreds.

The rain carries out its assault
not in drops but one continuous torrent.
He huddles in the soaked bag for nine hours,
powerless and small.

Stillness, yet never-ending motion.
The calm shadows of trees on a lake
draw lace stockings on a nightmare.
The struggle for life rages below the surface.

A bee caresses a flower intimately.
He cares nothing for the coming storm.
He is within her and she is within him.
They are one and the same.

Step away from industry. Obliterate
the underlying colors and textures
even when they persist. Use an avalanche.

Give them landslides. Drench them in
thunderstorms of black and broken skies
until they recede. The painter and the canvas
are the cyclone and the shore.

You don’t need to paint this canvas at all.
Do what comes naturally. The painting
will take care of itself.

This poem appears in the collection Inner Planets: 50 Poems by Matthew Howard. Available in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook.

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diaries

Tags

anything sounds like a symphony, diaries, poems, poetry, stars

art generated by Midjourney

Diaries

At the galaxy’s edge float stars no eyes will ever see.
You set them out thoughtfully like candles
in a bedroom, or lanterns on a river.

Some say you care for none of them
that you scattered them on a whim
forgetting all but the brightest
then one day even those.

What if they knew your delicate precision
how your heart ached to let each one go
how every orb was a part of you, shining?

You have named them all
to keep diaries of their travels
their ancient orbits and clusters
who spin in glowing whirlpools for eons.

All your stellar children, the solar seeds you planted
who carve their initials in gravity and burn
for your pleasure, someday they will all be grown.

This poem appears in the collection Inner Planets: 50 Poems by Matthew Howard. Available in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook.

drifter

Tags

anything sounds like a symphony, drifter, poems, poetry, wings

Drifter

You should stick around sometime.
When you stay in one place long enough
you get to watch people change.

Do you remember the girl too scared to fly?
She grew wings. You missed it.
Everyone goes too fast and drifts apart.

No, it’s true. She grew wings.
If you don’t believe me, then
go to the river any afternoon.

Call her name. You can see her soaring
when the clouds break apart.
Sunset is the only thing to survive.

 

This poem appears in the collection Inner Planets: 50 Poems by Matthew Howard. Available in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook.

mermaids

Tags

anything sounds like a symphony, mermaids, poems, poetry

art generated by Midjourney

Mermaids

Dead men in the summer. The loss
comes seasonally, as periodic as tidal
motion, and the townspeople understand
the tide. But they cannot stop it.

Every year, their men hear mermaids
singing on waves that swallow whales and
anchors and things we have not discovered.

The song has not changed in millennia.
Its chorus tells a sensuous dream, a hook
baited with a brightly naked lure.

Fishermen and husbands in a trance
walk into the ocean. The moon offers
guidance, but they do not need it.
They know where promises are fulfilled

in melody, in scaly embraces and breasts
which float like gravity has no power.
Men do not know they drown.

They feed at nipples below the surface
without questioning their joy,
and then oblivion.

The next morning, wives and daughters cry
over empty spots at the breakfast table. Women
know nothing of what their men discover
when they venture into saltwater and never return.

Then shells and gold and gleaming
treasures line the beach as payment for
misappropriated goods.

Summer, with your storms and madness,
your lightning cracks along the shore,
and no one can deny its burning.

This poem appears in the collection Inner Planets: 50 Poems by Matthew Howard. Available in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook.

cleaning

Tags

anything sounds like a symphony, cleaning, poems, poetry

Cleaning

A closet full of five thousand things no one ever loved
reminding you of people who never existed.

Out with the phantoms and the quiet spider
who never had a bite to eat in all the months he lived,
just building his parachute in the corner and shedding.

All of it’s got to go.
This ancient corner begs for light.

This poem appears in the book Anything Sounds Like a Symphony: Poetry at Maximum Volume. Available on Amazon, Smashwords, and other major retailers.