Matthew Says

Must I always concede to the world?

Ask, often you do not receive ---
like the time she caught you peering from half-lidded eyes:
half-wanting, half-shy to start something of meaning
or the time she held out her hand to you hesitant to claim what was given
and so you lost the opportunity, drowned yourself in wine and whispers of reproach and longing, bouncing against a wall of ambivalence, her not caring. Anymore.

Seek, what have you found?
A felt-tip pen buried in a book to mark a page
filled with words that sparked a dozen exchanges over time and space;
a feeling, intense, demanding to be felt yet nameless;
that incident in the bathroom fading into memory,
fading into Must Forget.

Knock, who opens the door?
Choosing to keep it closed, deferring to Archimedes and buoyed by blood
displaced by the organ, which has lodged itself between lock and key,
every twist and turn
vomiting words instead of what you drank for dinner.

Again, must I always concede to the world?
Perhaps there are battles that mustn't be fought
nor beliefs that must be taken with a grain of salt, i.e., the silly belief in the stars
and what they tell us about the past and distance,
radiating from the dark expanse of night ---
how conceding, sometimes, is just the thing you need to get you going.