Poem 1

It makes sense to start here.

I wrote this when I was eighteen (1999), and it won an award. Basically, I exaggerated my own experiences of feeling frightened in the presence of my grandfather while I was a toddler. Abuse of any kind was never an issue, but the place and the man scared the hell out of me even so.
It reads as a little bit over the top now, but some lines still surprise me with how good they are.

Haunted, a Sestina (April-May, 1999)

Suddenly a creak startles the silence of the house,
one of those creaks that sounds
exactly like a footstep. A thirsty wind
rages through the fields of Pasco tonight.
When the dark comes to this land, I want the lights to stay
on until the sun fills the empty

sky. Even though family fills this place, the emptiness
I cannot shake; fear lives in every corner of this house.
Grandpa has invited us to stay
here for the week. While the others sleep soundly
I lie awake by the open window as the desert night
rides in on the back of the wind.

This place of ghosts, wind
and deathbeds has emptied
itself of tenderness. Grandpa’s tears dried-up long ago in the nights
and deserts where he and Grandma kept house.
Years of cigarettes made his voice sound
like the earth where Grandma permanently stays.

I was two the first time I stayed
here. He stood taller than a radio tower, with wild wind-
blown hair, shoulders of a tractor, and boots that sounded
too loud on the green linoleum floor. Empty
of little-boy courage, I could not hug him or love his house.
Grandpa, God of Night,

Spoke the language of fear: phantasmal grumbling in the night.
I imagined Grandpa as a ghost, staying
on earth only to scare me. He roamed the forsaken house
opening rickety doors with work-rough hands. The wind,
especially to a boy like me, made the empty
halls even more desolate. But any sound

is better than silence: the death sound.
I am still alive. The gaping mouth of night
hasn’t eaten me yet. Older now, I know Grandpa emptied
his youth into expectant desert soil. Wind-
torched fields and farm machines forged his soul. In this haunted house,
perhaps the ghost of his innocence is me, condemned to stay.

When I become a grandpa, I will not stay
in deserts, watching my child-self ride away on desert wind
and wearing out the boots of my hope in a suffocating house.

Welcome to my blog. Would you mind having a few questions answered?

What the hell is going on here? -A surly inFAQ

Who do you think you are?

My name is Matt. I teach eighth grade in King County, WA. I write poems in some of my spare time.

How long have you been wasting time with this?

I wrote a very bombastic poem about AIDS when I was in seventh grade. It was shitty, and I knew it. Since then I have tried and succeeded in doing better in writing poems. The poetry here begins when I was 18 (see “Haunted”)

What’s with the title?

Since I have been fiddling with these poems for the past year and am now only releasing them one at a time, they are not really done in my mind. I could and probably would revise them until I die, but that would keep me from writing anything new. Eventually, I have to declare some things done.

Don’t you realize that no one wants to read a white, middle-class poet anymore?

I’ve heard that, and my poems are certainly from an outdated and perhaps boring perspective. I am not a minority, or female, or gay (no matter how many times you call me “fag” in the comments section), or a victim of rape. I have nothing new to say, and that might be my only saving grace. I hope my poetry can resonate with as many people as possible and that I find my own way to say things that have probably been said before in higher quality by better writers.

I would apologize for adding more data to an already burgeoning internet if it hurt people in some way. But as long as any old schmuck can post any old trash on a blog, I’ll continue to drop my two cents into the vast digital void. (I am actually a fan of those two sites.)

If you want to hear some poetry by marginalized voices, by all means point your browser to it. I’ll probably join you.

What do you hope to accomplish with this?

Not much. The market for poetry is definitely a buyer’s one these days. If I somehow get published, it will most likely not be a result of posting here. Like I said, I am posting here to declare some work done and build momentum for other projects.

I’d also like to share my work with more friends.

There’s no way all this stuff happened to you.

That’s not a question. The poems here are autobiographical in the sense that, as Vonnegut says, this is how life feels for me. I do not guarantee the objective truth of any of these poems.

How much of this crap am I supposed to read?

I don’t know how many I’ll post. I’ve got about twenty-five poems lined up.

Who else is responsible for this?

My friends Brieanna and Georgia are the two biggest instigators of my writing. Otherwise, I blame e. e. cummings, Li-Young Lee, Sharon Olds, Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, and Marvin Bell.

No Bukowski? You write a lot about drinking.

Not especially.