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
On stage, buzzing
You see yourself as a light being
How clever to uncover such weighty musings!
This your comfort zone behind live microphones
You thrive on it, you seek it out, you dissolve in it
Until you actually believe you are one with it
Off-stage, faces glowing
It’s all high-fives and heartfelt sighs
It’s a rush, a dopamine high
You are lit
But this shining – it is a selfish flame
It lives for no one
At least, not your warped star-crossed vision of it
You may see the beaming eyes, all the adoring
luminescence reflected and think: I am fire itself!
But you certainly are not!
You are just another moth—
A fluttering torch-bearer of motley metaphors
A conjurer blinded by your own smoke and mirrors
Don’t get too close and confuse it with appeal
Don’t believe the LOLs, likes or heart emojis
equate to how they truly feel
Yes, the words evoke, resonate, tickle, churn
Your very presence — freely given — fulfils something
absent in their fickle yearnings
Whatever’s missing may even turn into desire
But heed the parental warning: Never play with fire
Unless you want to feel the burn—
Think of it less as a flame but more a stone
dropped in a pond
It is energy multiplied momentarily
It fans out and lingers beyond
It’s a Mexican wave in a stadium that starts
purposefully but gets weaker over time
A long since faded rock star who passes
And just like the stone that plopped
The last ripple has forgotten you even
as you sink to the bottom
You see energy is a funny thing
It dissipates and moves on
And you have to let it go
You can’t bask in its glow
It may be the spark to get you out of neutral
A nervous livewire tingle that plugged you in
But soon as it is shared you need to step away
from the electricity long enough to be earthed again
You are not a light being–
At least not yet
But do not belittle the yearning to be one
Let the seed of your discontent be re-sown
Let it reconstitute in your gut
In the quiet dark recesses within
Until it bursts forth again
Uncoils from the soil
Drawn by that unerring, unforgiving light
And you grimly reap
Yet another
Poem
First published in Delhiwallah Poetry Collective Anthology 2026.
