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| Matt Burns thinking about poems and stuff. |
PISS ON THE TIGER
by matt burns
I am here in my space
I’m cool with my space
Here comes the tiger
He circles around my space
His space is somewhere else
And I’m not interested in that space
But the tiger circles around my space
He growls
He shows his fangs
His eyes look all crazy and everything
Then he slowly creeps into my space
I unzip my fly and I piss on his face
He’s kind of shocked
He’s taken aback
Still pissing, I stomp my foot down hard on the ground
I scream into his fucking face
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!
It’s a war cry
The true coward surfaces from behind the fierce facade
He backs off and goes back to his space
This is what you need to do
When a tiger comes into your space
HOME SICK
by matt burns
There comes a point
Where you're not feeling quite right
But maybe you're on the fence
Maybe you're not that bad
Or maybe you are
And you have to decide
Whether you need to call in
And you can't give the decision any more time
You call in
And actually hope you get sicker
To justify your decision
But then you start feeling better
And you laze around
And you sound weak in the voice
You’re not really that sick
But you subconsciously play the part of sick
But then there is that moment
When you realize
Wait, I could be fine right now if I wanted to be!
If you never had to call in sick
There wouldn’t be anything to justify
You would be up and about and fine
Work consumed your life energy
Even when you weren’t there
Your reverence for the job
Made you play the part of sick
And laze around and not do anything
When you weren’t really sick anymore
Because you respected work too much
You felt guilty for letting work down
So you sacrificed fun and life for it
You need to choose another God to be reverent to in life
SICK AND WATCHING TV
by matt burns
I am sick, tired, lacking energy
I feel helpless and I regress to child-like habits
I am on the couch watching TV
Sick TV is the best kind of viewing
I watch all sorts of stuff I never knew existed
I'm sick a couple of days
I'm alone in the room, on the couch
The TV becomes my new best friend
Or maybe even kind of like my mother
It takes care of me
Nurtures me
And all the shows on the TV become my new friends
But then I start feeling better
And I get to the point
Where I no longer need to be on the couch
And I kind of get emotional
Knowing I have to say goodbye to the TV
And all the shows
They made me feel so much better
But I must go
And then eight or nine months later I get sick again
And go back on the couch
And my friends the TV and the shows
They're there waiting for me
It's a wonderful and emotional reunion
THE GUY WORKING THE DOOR AT HOUSE OF BLUES
by matt burns
10pm
I walk down Lansdowne in Boston
I see a familiar man sitting on a stool outside the venue
He's about sixty
Wearing sunglasses at night
And a bandana
He used to work the door at Club Axis
But Axis got sold
Torn down
And up came the House of Blues
They must have felt sorry for him
And hired him at House of Blues
But he's out of place
A relic from a lost era
A time when clubs were about the bands
And not about the money
He's a dedicated indie rocker working at a franchise
A dinosaur in the wrong world
One of the lone survivors of the cataclysmic meteor event
He’s smiling and joking
But his overall demeanor exudes sadness
Like he's clinging to the lost world
Pretending it's still alive
But it's hopeless
His world is basically extinct
And, by the looks of it, he'll soon be extinct, too
NO AMBITION
by matt burns
There's a difference between having no ambition
And naturally not wanting to conform
No ambition sometimes means
Not conforming to the norm
I have plenty of ambition
But people say I don't
What they're really saying
Is I don't join the dead society
MILITARY FLYOVER
by matt burns
I am at the football game
And they’re singing the national anthem
And they have invited some troops
And they’re waving American flags
And there is a flyover
And the insinuation is this is America to them
This is what being American’s all about to them
Football
The flyovers are free
Paid by taxpayers
It’s considered good public relations
More cost-effective than a corny commercial on TV
Tomorrow I am releasing my first book of poems
To me, it’s a big deal
It’s what America is to me
Being able to write freely
Express myself freely
And put my work out into the world
I call the military public relations department
I invite some troops to come out for the book release
And then I ask for a flyover
They hang up
They think it’s a prank call
The troops don’t show up
All I can do is wave the American flags
Which I proudly do
Because this is my America
This is what America is to me
MONEY CAN FLIP A WORLD 180 DEGREES
by matt burns
Yesterday I found a weird rabbit hole while walking in the woods
I jumped in and it took me to some sort of alternate reality
I saw myself just the same as I am now
Everything I had done with my life was the same
I had written five books
Hundreds of poems
And dozens of screenplays
Etc.
Only there was one difference:
I had been financially rewarded for them
The books had been published and sold
Same with the poems
And the screenplays had been purchased
And produced
And there was another difference:
Because my efforts made me money
I was considered by others as ambitious
Prolific
Intense
Hard-working
While my productivity in my former reality was the same
There was no money
And thus no respect
In the world I was used to
I was a bum
And what was the difference between worlds?
In one world I had money and the other no money
That was the only difference
And it was a 180-degree difference
Needless to say, I’m glad I found the rabbit hole
I stayed in the reality where I wasn’t a bum
WRITER'S BLOCK
by matt burns
I don't understand writer's block
Because I don't get a person
Who would want to write for the sake of writing
And not out of need
You write because it's being pushed out of you
You shouldn’t be pulling it out
It's being forced into you by the universe
Or wherever it comes from
And all you really have to do is loosen the faucet knob
And it gushes out with strong flow
And then you screw it tight
Until the pressure builds again
And you loosen the knob again
For people who have writer's block
Or need to buy books that give them prompts
Topics
Subjects
Prompts and topics and subjects to write about
It's like turning on a faucet to a sink
That's not attached to any water pipes
Nothing comes out
And you really shouldn’t be writing
You’ve just somewhere down the line
Fell in love with the idea of writing
And I don't mean to sound snobby
But I would just say to you that you're blessed
Run away from writing
Feel thankful
Because being compelled to write
Having that writing forced into you by the universe
Pushed through you
Is tiring and painful
It hurts
Like nasty birth pangs
It can be hell
SNOW FLUFFS REALITY
by matt burns
I like it when it snows
It blankets reality
With its fluff
It fluffs reality
For at least a few hours
If not more
Maybe sometimes even a full day
Or possibly two, if it’s a big storm…
Reality is fluffed
And the snow sucks in all the noise from the world
So there is more silence
And peace
But then it starts melting
Salt and sand soils the whiteness
Dog droppings appear atop the snow banks
And if it melts even more
There’s a lot of mud
The dirtiness of reality reemerges
But at least for some amount of time
Even though it may be ephemeral
Reality has been fluffed
SAGGY AMERICAN FLAG
by matt burns
I parked pretty far back in the lot
So it’s a long journey to the superstore entrance
I walk down the aisle of cars in the lot
I look up and see a flagpole with an American flag
Down here in this man-made valley
The wind is weak
And when the wind is weak, so isn’t the flag
It also rained earlier today
So the flag is moist
And drippy
Mildewy
Moldy
Saggy
And sad
SWALLOW YOUR PRIDE
by matt burns
If there’s one thing I should have been taught in college
One thing above everything else
It would be to swallow my pride
That would have been the one useful tool
The one tool I would have needed to take on this life
But I had to learn it on my own
After college
And it kind of took a while
Other people never learn it
It was never taught to them and they never taught themselves
But once you swallow your pride
The rest of life is easy
Because without pride
There is no concern with outside judgment
And you do what you got to do
NEW VIDEO GAME
by matt burns
There’s something about a new video game
That almost makes your mouth water
The thought of escaping into that game
Getting lost in the virtual reality
A more fun reality
But then you pop it in
You play it for maybe twenty minutes
And you feel some void inside of you grow bigger
And bigger
And bigger
And then you can’t take it anymore
You have to shut the game off
And go do something else
It wasn’t like this when you were young
And you want to feel how you did when you were young
But it’s no use
The void is there
And as an adult you should be doing something else
Unfortunately
I PRESS MY LIPS TOGETHER
by matt burns
When I walk into somewhere
Like a store
Or a library
I often press my lips together
And suck them in a bit
This is my friendly face
I always fear that my regular face
My stoic face
Looks sad or angry
So I play it safe
And press my lips together
And look nice
NEEDLESS PRESSURE
by matt burns
I don’t like being shown a new TV show or movie
Nor do I like showing someone a new show or movie
There is too much pressure to either laugh
Or make the other person laugh
So if somebody has a recommendation for me
I tell them I have to watch the show alone, without them
Or if I have a recommendation for somebody
I tell them to watch it by themselves sometime, without me
I don’t like needless pressure in my life
It’s pretty easy to avoid
Sometimes people don’t understand these things
They doom themselves when they show shows to people
Or allow themselves to be shown shows
I think they need to know better
AWKWARD SHOW ON TV
by matt burns
I sit down to eat dinner with my parents
We usually watch some TV while we eat
The news is loud and obnoxious
So we turn on Seinfeld
The characters are having a contest
To see how long they can go without masturbation
It’s only a few seconds before I realize this was a mistake
I should have just kept the news on
The topic of the show is awkward around my parents
But if I turn back to the news it will be more awkward
The show gets dirtier and more crass
The dinner becomes painfully awkward
I want to get up and just eat in my room
But that will appear even more awkward
I’m stuck here in hell for the next half hour
Finally a commercial comes
I’ve never been happier to see a commercial
I nonchalantly get up from the table
Grab some water at the fridge
And distance myself from the situation
But after a while I just say fuck it, I want out of here
So I grab my dinner from the table
And go to my room to eat
I don’t care about any awkwardness I created
It was impossible to become any more awkward
Things were so doomed
CLAWING MY WAY UP THE DITCH
by matt burns
I can’t crawl out of this hole
The sand and soil is loose
I keep on crawling up the sides
But the soil is so loose it brings me back down
I crawl up again
About halfway almost
But the soil crumbles beneath me
And avalanches back down into the ditch
All the way down to the bottom I go
I can’t get out of the ditch
The sand is too loose
It can’t support my weight
I’m stuck in this ditch
WRITING IN PENCIL
by matt burns
I had a good idea that came into my head
The nearest means of documentation I had handy
Was a piece of paper
And a number-two pencil
I grabbed the paper
And the pencil
And I started writing
I went back about ten or fifteen years
I was maybe in math class
Early high school, maybe middle school
I was writing fast on the paper
Because the idea was coming to me fast
But I felt like I was having some sort of pop quiz
Maybe a spelling exam
Or math exam
After all, pen wasn’t allowed for quizzes until the later grades
So pencil makes me remember the earlier grades
It was brief
But it was a memory
I was there, back in the early grades
Maybe middle school
Or maybe even elementary school
I was there, for a little while, anyway
And it was kind of traumatic
Because it reminded me of stress from a quiz
But it was also enjoyable being back in that time
SHE’S OK WITH ME NOT WANTING TO WATCH THE SUPERBOWL
by matt burns
Most guys will want to watch the Superbowl
It’s kind of like an unwritten rule
And most girls will want their guys to want to watch the Superbowl
Even though the girls aren’t very interested in it themselves
They want their guys to be normal, typical guys
And feel uneasy when their man doesn’t want to watch the Superbowl
Because it means their man must have a problem
And will create babies with problems
And she doesn’t want her babies to have problems
She wants her babies to be able to fit in with society
So she gets rid of that man
And finds another man who will watch the Superbowl
There is, however, that rare girl out there
A girl who has no problem if you want to have
Lots
And lots
Of sex during the Superbowl
As opposed to watching the game
And when you’ve found that girl
Search no more
You’ve found love
So don’t blow it
POETIC INSANITY
by matt burns
Sometimes you have those nights
Every thought that comes into your mind
You think could be
A potential idea
For a poem
Your dog coughs a certain way
And you go, "That’s gold!"
And you must write it down
And then it looks like an image of the Virgin Mary is in your burnt toast
And you say that’s gold
And you rush to write it down
You don’t want anything to get away
You must write it all down
Lest you miss an important idea
This is poetic insanity
And then you get the idea
That you can write an idea about poetic insanity
This is more than poetic insanity
It’s poetic super-insanity
