Four Pieces by Matt Finney

definition

the memory of it
13 years later

and all these
poems have
too much me
in them
to mean anything
to anyone else

the wound
and how I
wouldn't let it
heal

how being broken
came to define me.

c.

Dust and echoes under a sky built by tanguy. Crosses made from electrical tape. God's face in the falling snow. The houses without lights. The trailers lay in warm ashes. The drowning boy pulled to the shore. Blueprints for a new america and the original design of the machine gun. Landscape including the corpse. The air is too heavy and what all of this comes down to is how much I miss you. What I realize is that it's too late to save anyone but myself. The idea of escape becoming too hard for me to understand.

Theme

The way there's nothing or everything. No one wants your empty hands. How running was a great idea now we're back where we started. Near the edges and they caught fire. And all we do is stand there looking lost. I found out my favorite word was 'escape' and I used it in poems until no one wanted to read anymore. I went into my own cathedral and hid underneath my beliefs. What I found out was there was no lesson to be learned.

Eventually

Everything else smells like doorknobs. The scent won't leave your
hands and it's worse
than St. Anger. The house you grew up in was eaten by flames. The
fish drank up all the
water. The hose pipes are drained. Jesus's hands were fed to the
town's children very
early. Barren fields. Rusted cars. The monsters that November
spawned look straight out
of Where the Wild Things Are. We're all too tired but we'll make a home.