ANNOUNCEMENT: Just to give you a heads up, I now have a new, non-poetry blog called "The Burnzo Papers" where I share my unique perspective on the world's current events. Please check it out when you get a chance. Thank you for your support and Happy New Year!
FLY ME HIGH by matt burns Red-tailed hawk Flying high Please take me to your sky Where I have a better eye I'm blinded by being too low The murkiness of this negative frequency Takes me out of the know Red-tailed hawk Take me high I am in this spell I'm in hell IN THE DESERT by matt burns I look around at what’s close to me There’s sand as far as the eye can see I am stuck in the desert here Do I maintain hope Or do I despair There is no path in sight To any new civilization I must remain in this place And be ok with the present situation
MALWARE by matt burns I’ve tried to reset I’ve tried to cleanse But it continues to cling to me The intense rage comes and goes The intense depression comes and goes One minute I think I’m ok But then I’m erratic again Illogical Irrational My feelings My emotions My behaviors Make no sense Almost like they’re not even coming from me But an external entity That girl gave me malware And no matter what I do I can’t get rid of it
THE NEWS DOES SEEM TO SLEEP by matt burns I've been trying to keep up with it all Every day is something big and huge It's all coming at me so fast I finally catch up And stay on top of it all And I'm really proud of myself for it Then Christmas comes I scour the news sites I scour And I scour But there's hardly anything It's not only a slow news day But there's hardly any news to speak of I feel a void I was apparently addicted to being on top of the news There's nothing! Curious it is That there only seems to be big news in the world When the news people are on the clock And they're around to report it And make it into BIG NEWS When the news people are on a holiday So isn't the news, it seems Thus, maybe the news only exists When the news people are around to fuel it Build it up Or maybe even manufacture it If there's nobody around to report on that tree falling in the forest Does it actually still make a noise?
Why don't we just take the news people away That way the news can sleep every day There will be no more crashing of trees in the world's forest The world will have less noise Quiet down And peace will be restored World peace can be realized Simply by ridding the world of the news people
2014 is almost at a close I look back on the past year Mostly about the failed relationship I think coulda, shoulda, woulda Coulda shoulda woulda I spend all my time thinking And rethinking Trying to wrap my head around what went wrong Trying to trace things back All the way back to the seeds of the destruction But I find no definitive seeds Or when I think I'm just about to find one I find more root And the root twists around and around In circles Tangling Webbing When it comes to a toxic relationship Finding out exactly what went wrong May not even be possible Yet I can't turn off the coulda shoulda woulda The endless racing of the mind Trying to figure out what went wrong 24 hours, 7 days a week Haunted 2015 is only a couple weeks away As it comes closer I see a fork up ahead in the road Two different paths reveal themselves to me A path where I remain haunted And a path where I transcend my haunted mind The choice is up to me But it's not going to be an easy one The Ghost of Christmas Past is powerful And will be difficult to rise above
WHAT MAKES ME HAPPY by matt burns I sit up late Drinking beer And listening to RUSH And I think about what really makes me happy Because that’s what the spiritual therapist said to do I’m supposed to arrive at this conclusion But I’m having trouble At first I think about strip clubs I am genuinely always happy there But I know the happiness is short-lived The next day, I’m empty And then I think about writing I’ve been doing a ton of that Tons and tons and tons But no matter how much I do I never really achieve any state of lasting happiness Or even a sense of accomplishment, come to think of it Maybe if I finally get rewarded for my writing With recognition And money But I’ve never received a penny for my writing before So I don’t know if that would make me happy And whether the happiness would last much longer than at the strip club So it’s all hypothetical And exists in a potential future that may never manifest I may NEVER get paid for my writing So happiness needs to come from some place else But I don’t know where I really don’t What I do know Is that sitting here Up late Trying to think about what makes me happy Racking my brain Does not make me happy In fact, I’m much more unhappy Sitting here Drinking Stressing my brain Thinking that I’m supposed to figure this out And keep coming up dry
So I don’t know what makes me happy And I think that’s fine for now I do not know What beautiful words I…do…not…know Eureka! The devil hath taken on a new guise That of a positive psychologist A spiritual guru therapist Telling me to go and meditate And figure out what makes me happy Knowing full well That I will stress And rack my brain And be convinced my unhappiness is all my fault And I'll hate myself for not identifying what makes me happy And that clever devil will laugh knowing he made me worse off in the end Tip of the hat to you, O DEVIL! You hath tricked me again! Nothing but reverence I give to you! Once again I am in awe of your tricky Clever Ways! Yes, the irony Sitting here stressing over what makes me happy Thinking the answer must be so simple But not getting anywhere with the answer Has made me all the more unhappy Brilliant, devil! So what really makes me happy? Not sitting here Busting my brain Thinking I should know what makes me happy What makes me happy Is knowing that I do not know And it's ok not to know That's what makes me happy Be gone, devil!
I’m sleeping Well, not really I woke up after about four hours I try to go back to sleep This has been happening a lot I’ll wake up after an initial few hours And can’t go back to bed The alcohol that knocked me out initially Has worn off While stress and reality have surged back into the bloodstream But then I hear the pitter-pattering of claws against the wooden floor It’s my dog coming into the room She mounts her bed She scratches around a bit I hear her circling Calculating the most comfortable position Then I hear her plop into a curled ball With a dull groan And then the relaxed exhale Oh, that exhale! So relaxing So peaceful Just her presence in my room Her energy Relaxes me totally And I’m able to fall asleep again
CIRCLING THE RINK by matt burns Drifting around the rink In circles Not even lifting up my skates Just gliding And pumping And drifting Around And around And around I go I enter a meditative state And I realize... This is my life again Drifting alone In circles In circles And in circles I look up ahead of me I see a young couple Probably high school age Maybe early college They're on a skating date They're so cute They're wobbling around Awkward with the skates They look so happy In an alternative reality That could have been us But now she's married It's only been a few months since we broke ties But she's already married to another guy She's entered a new chapter While I'm circling around Back to the old Haunted by the past I hear 'Uncle Matt!' My nephew's skating behind me He wants to race So I race him And he takes me out of my head This is what I need! I need to be out of my head! But my nephew eventually gets tired He takes a break And I resume my circles Around And around Around What happened? I'll never wrap my head around it All I know is that I'm back to being alone Going around And around In circles Desperately looking for the new But coming back around again To the very Exact Same Old
THE SERGEANT BARKING IN MY FACE by matt burns Isis Ebola Bill Cosby Ferguson CIA torture report What's after that? Back to Isis again? Isis is pissed and retaliates? Every day something new Can’t keep track of it all Hard to follow Hard to educate myself As soon as I get a grip on one current event Another one happens And when I barely get a grip on that There’s another one And another Like working the conveyor belt in an assembly line If you’re not quick enough You’ll fall behind And everything will just Whizz On By The “news” today is a Drill Sergeant Shouting in my face One trending topic after another Assaulting my senses I feel disorientation My head’s spinning So much that I'm paralyzed with overstimulation And sensory overload To the point where I’m confused Stunned Numb And more easily malleable Easier to control Like with a Marine in bootcamp The point is to break me down So that I easily take my orders Because I've lost my grip on what the hell's going on in reality I look for the government via the media to dictate it to me I don't understand anything that's going on I'm confused Just tell me what I need to do
This whole year of 2014 I've essentially been a pathetic pushover and it's time I draw the line. Like the poem says, sometimes you just have to push these people away and let them reap the consequences of their own poor decisions. You can't be Mr. Nice-Guy all the time.
THOUGHTS ON BEING A GOOD SAMARITAN by matt burns It's December 'Tis the season of giving But you must learn The fine Tight-rope Walk Of being a Good Samaritan God's idea of a Good Samaritan Is not a person Who cleans Up After another person's Constant Dumb Mistakes Sometimes people in constant distress Need to Rot In the gutter So they can learn And make Better choices in life
PSYCHOKINESIS by matt burns Boiling fears And loathings Fester in our subconscious And fester And fester Some people say These repressed energies manifest themselves Physically In the outer Three-dimensional world And cause actual physical events So when you watch the Reality TV with all the Jersey bro-dudes And the Hollywood Hillbillies And the Honey Boobies Honey Boobies’ mom was dating a sex offender?! Cancel the show! And you read the blogs about the “celebutards” And see Kim Kardashian’s big, greasy ass on a magazine cover Then come all the scandals Bill Cosby America’s favorite dad A rapist?! Disillusioned we are And enraged we all get! Then we watch the news And there’s Isis Ebola Then comes Fergusonola White cops shooting blacks Black criminals looting Burning down stores Beating down whites! Then comes Staten Island Another black strangled by a cop No indictment Civil war imminent?! The media makes us take a side Are you with the cops? Or with the blacks? Fear the cops! Fear the blacks! They pit us against each other Go and protest! Polarized we become And divided we rot We can’t unite and get anything done Frustration Rage! And collectively… The negative energy In each and every one of us Psychokinetically Manifests itself As more negative energy in the world And more bad events happen Bad weather – superstorms, quakes, tornados, floods! Bad disease More bad Kardashian photos (Kourtney just posed preggo and naked) Disgusting So gross! And the media reports on these events And we get even more loathing And more fear And the negative collective consciousness Psychokinetically Manifests more negative events in the world It’s a perpetual cycle of negativity A snowball effect A guarantee That there will be constant fear And loathing Absolute hell For all eternity There is a great, epic war out there Not good vs. evil But positivity vs. negativity Negative energy wants to win But will we let it?
