Poetry by Jere Matlock
All writing in this website, including these poems, is Copyright © 2008 by Jere Matlock. All Rights Reserved. Express permission of the author and copyright holder is needed to reprint, copy or distribute any of the written materials on this website.
If We Live Forever
If we live forever,
We do a terrible job of it.
If we live forever,
We should be able
To soar limitless
In or out of bodies at will,
Transcending the
Warnings of pain,
Unfettered in our
Romp through time.
Living forever,
We would remember
All
That we have been,
All that we have done.
Every sensation,
Every wonderful
Discovery.
If we were to live forever,
We would be thinking
Mainly of the
Quality of our survival
As immortals.
We would be protective
Of our freedoms,
Knowing
We would be
Forced ourselves
To live in any
Too clever trap
We created.
We might spend
Less time criticizing
Our surroundings
If we knew they
Were our own making.
We might hate our
Enemies a little less
If we knew they were
The children of
Our children's children.
No,
If we lived
Forever we
Would not treat
Each other so shabbily.
If we knew
That those we brushed
Aside or blew off
Would come around again
With long memories
Of ancient evils, ours.
If we lived forever
The simple knowledge
Of our living on
Might light our
Lives from within.
Cyclone of Affection
Here we have a
Creation of affinity
Building to a
Cyclone of affection.
We make a love
From nothing
Where there was only
Desire for love
And in our eyes
A love to live for
Rises.
We conjure it from nowhere,
Send it billowing
Upward like the
Stark white thunderclouds
Storming outside.
And here,
We laugh like lightning.
Blue. White.
Eyes or clouds in
Sky?
I place a bigger space
In her clear gaze
Than from here
To that soft moon
Camped above
The cumulus
Rising there.
Momentum
I
The Weather ---
Today I stood below masses of
Airborne water --
Clouds eight miles high and
All white outside
But black below.
From underneath the monstrous
Thunderhead, I watched
Huge eddies spiral outward,
So quickly I could track their progress
Easily by eye, could feel the
Hot air rushing upward
Rising in a swirl so fierce
I feared it would lift me
Up with its power;
Felt me weightless, unanchored
As it passed over.
The rising air pulled me outward....
II
I dread the whirling of this galaxy.
Since life came to this small planet,
Ten times have we spun entirely
Around the galaxy.
We have ten times been slung along behind
Our sun as she sails the hurricane
Of stars that twist within the galactic arms,
Swirling in their rush
Around the central firestorm
At the heaving heart of our Galaxy.
All this, spinning in a circle so vast it is
Almost, not quite, a straight line.
I have scribed that line,
I have pulled that central pull.
Our momentum seems inexorable
Yet we could stop it,
I would stop it all
By simply breaking outward.
III
The spinning skater opens her arms
Outward
And she slows and stops.
The cheated, grieving sister
Calls her brother
And her reeling,
Angry confusion stops
When he pulls her focus
Outward.
The addict with
His foot on the accelerator
Downward can break the
Circles of spoons and
Needles, candles and
Crack's desperate euphoria,
With a single decision to break
Outward from the hellish
Chemical pull, and be
Outward.
IV
The sheer size of those enormous
Towering clouds and the
Brilliant blue distance between them
As the storm front sailed over --
Their size and the space they defined
Filled all the atmosphere --
From the dirt below my feet to the
Faint wisps of vapor I could see
At their upper limits.
And the rising air pulled at me
Upward.
So I looked
Outward.
This Slender Moon
In this, the slender cup of moon
Which hangs alone at the horizon,
There rests a liquid memory
Of ancient love, of living free.
Before this life, before these eyes
That only false love ever viewed,
Before this form I colonize,
There was a moon, set just so, skewed.
And by its fragile horns we swore
However long that we might live,
Even if, as is, forever more,
To love that long and never give
Another what we promised then.
And all loves since seemed ghostly thin
Compared to what was sworn that night
Which you, not I, betrayed at light.
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Overview
Four poems by Jere Matlock.
