Introducing a new series of poems by Julian Matthews. Julian is a writer and Pushcart-nominated poet published in The American Journal of Poetry, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Borderless Journal, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Dream Catcher Magazine, Live Encounters Magazine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal and The New Verse News, among others. He is a mixed-race minority from Malaysia and lived in Ipoh for seven years. Currently based in Petaling Jaya, he is a media trainer and consultant for senior management of multinationals on Effective Media Relations, Social Media and Crisis Communications. He was formerly a journalist with The Star and Nikkei Business Publications Inc
Link: https://linktr.ee/julianmatthews
By Julian Matthews
When the waters run dry,
the river has pebbled and you come
down from the mountain, ready to slake
your thirst, and commune with humans
again–
is it necessary then to pander, grovel,
dismantle the deck, re-build
your house of cards, do the sleight
of hand, misdirect, make things magically
re-appear like every move was a performance?
Why must anyone conform to a society
full of itself and their inflatable egos,
rushing to obscure sky with hot air,
fill screens with their rabbit acts, the awe
of ordinary things lost to copycats?
The god of memes is a selfish temptress,
Loki in disguise, master-puppeteer, mistress
to no one; the missing, low-key hostess
to houseguests who overstay, and never know
when to say, When, and call it a day. Where
is the wonder and mystery? How were you sucked
into this vortex of voyeurism, exploiting kith, kin
and kinder to dance, strut and sing, mining
puffed dreams of fluffy schemers, a million
hopeful reapers, putting lipstick on pigs,
just to sow that one rare, viral laurel, hog
a headline, a soaring swine, or an ape swinging
from a vine, filters out of kilter, the night zoo
offering free stays so you can peek
into everyone’s cages, curl up with cheetahs,
bed the arctic wolf in sheep’s clothing,
be the elephant in your own two-star suite,
coach the penguins on the new wiggle and shake
or, perhaps, teach the flamingos a proper
one-legged pose? Do you suppose the end
of a million streams justifies the means?
Scroll down the menagerie of masqueraders,
lift the masks of these fakirs of fakery, poisonous
influencers of rivers of time with their effluents
of neediness, vanity-purveyors in search of their
own vein of gold within crevices of ones and zeroes,
capered heroes on top of their own itty bitty hills,
conquistadors marking out their own patch
of crowded cloud, the new A.I.dolized colonizers.
Are you then surprised you feel gutted –
even emotionally constipated – wanting to let go,
climb back up into the hollow of your own heart,
crawl into that warm cubbyhole, your cave of Adullam,
to rest, recuperate in stillness and hope,
where the flings and arrows of the past
no longer find their target and you are once
again the sole soul-seeker, just another body
under the bodhi, translating your streams of self-
consciousness into a staked claim,
these wriggly words that vex you,
your heroics as yet unsung
like a lone beetle rock and rolling
poetic doggerel into one big
mound of delectable
dung.
First published in Mayari Literature Journal, Volume 2 Issue 4, San Francisco, USA.
