POETRYEric and the Holy Exit SignsEric Mattson
A kingdom of clouds
Stencils a volatile
City sky and receives
Colors as a sacrament
From impending night.
The air is wounded
And laced with a
Fractured spirit.
The wind’s giving
Streets directions.
Sit in on an empty orchestra
playing ghosts invisible
songs that linger
Like spectacles of memory.
Pass an artist forever
Painting self portraits
To understand his face.
I write an autobiography
About a mask and
An unknown shadow
Melting into a true
Self.
It was only after I stopped
Caring about sense,
Did I make any
(Besides, it’s only what we learned).
In these days,
We all want
Our piece of chaos
When, more than ever,
We accidently encounter
Our angels.
I see halos around
Exit signs
I praise them holy
Eric Mattson was born in New Jersey and graduated from Rutgers-Camden. After school Eric took up working construction to focus on poetry and music. He has been accepted in drunken moneys, carnival literary magazine and red dashboard magazines. In the two and a half years since then he has lived in 5 different states and continues to chase a dream.
spider up her thigh in the dimly lit room
held down, stared down
embers of the abyss snap around her
My father sexually abused me.
When I got married,
I hyphenated my name.
No one questioned it at the time.
But in the middle of my parents’ late divorce,
everyone wants to know about names.
Nietzsche warned us not to look
long into the abyss, or it will look long
into us.
It was finally
his home until
abruptly
his mind flashed
all the times he had entered a
boy
i was depressed,
and i wanted
to take a
walk;
you said you'd join me—
didn't mean i wanted
netflix and chill,
it happened before words came
to tell me how to feel about it
newly connected neurons torn apart
or perverted—
forever firing blanks into the microbiological air
As a child
The lessons taught
Can bring a pain never thought.
The lessons on trust
And heartache
Sear the soul.