MATTHEW J. LAWLER - POEMS

Matthew J. Lawler is a Chicago native and poet.  He has been published in numerous literary journals including, Eunoia Review, Dissident Voice, Scarlet Leaf Review, Caravel Literary Arts Journal, People’s Tribune, Visual Verse, Tuck Magazine, Sick Lit Magazine, Unlost, The Miscreant, and an anthology book titled “The Best Emerging Poets of Illinois” by Z Publishing. You can find more of his work at www.Facebook.com/matthewjlawlerpoet

​I SIT WATCHING
(for Kuya Marlon De Vela)

As you lay dying,
sifting in and out of light,
I sit watching the silence
of each breath scratch your throat.
 
I feel trapped in your living room,
like a fly caught
between the window and the screen
your flesh - a scream,
a road less traveled,
your moan – the bones of radiation
dismantled by the blaze
like the melted wings of Icarus,
thinning into forgetting
how to drink from a straw,
the fall came swift
like the bite of morphine
and September
never felt so melancholic.
 
Yet I sense an unearthly
peace about you
as you lay face to face with mortality,
a tunnel you’ve stumbled
through, but now see
the light filled opening
at the end,
like a moth to flame
unwavering in the comfort of dying.
 
A flower crumbles
and the petals crash
like trees struck by lightning,
I sit struck by the grief
of letting go.
 
A sense of solitude swarms
through a room of stone faces,
myself, consumed by the tomb
you bare upon your back.
 
 
 
Looking at you…
I’ve never felt so human.
I’ve never felt so powerless.
I can’t see you anymore,
body buried by the hunger
you feel for sleep
as you speak in a muddled voice,
a voice that was stolen from you
without permission
the poison cloistered
then spread its web
and now you lay dying
and I sit
watching – contemplating
life’s fragility.
How the moments pass us,
how each breath should be cherished
and each vanity relinquished.
How each word we speak
should be a fountain
to a scorched tongue.
Each deed – a seed of sincerity and love.
For time passes unprovoked
like a cold stream rushing over rocks.
 
I sit and watch in the quiet,
pondering the fly’s escape,
does it not know the window
is slightly open?
Perhaps freedom is found in that space?
 
Redemption searched you out
as you laid on a hospice bed
awakened through faith
in the God who hung on a tree
atop the hills of Golgotha,
divine hope of the ever-after
which fed you fruit in a cage.
You slipped through this life
like flesh on barbed wire,
Your body – a cave starved by cancer,
Your life came and went,
the hours, days, months, years
quietly faded into forever.
 
 
So I watch and pray that warmth
floods your being,
that you enter through
the gates of leisure
with head held high
shining like a million morning suns,
sheltered by love and mercy
the width of the boundless sky.
 
I sit watching humbled
like Moses at the bush.
I empty the hell from my heart
and witness the brevity of life
crack before my eyes.
 
The fly buzzes between
the window and screen,
finally
finding
the window’s
opening.
 

​I SAW YOUR MOM TODAY

​I saw your mom today
walking slowly down
Eastwood with a cane.
I looked up and saw
the rumbling passing train
that sped like your life
to a screeching halt.
 
We exchanged hugs,
embracing each other,
she’s traveled a long way,
alone,
without you by her side.
The look in her eyes
tells me you’re still alive.
We reminisce for a while,
sun beating down on us
like the loss we feel,
as we feel the bond
between mother and son.
Refilling my cup with memories,
I tell her, I love her, and hug her,
eyes welling up, about to gush
like a geyser, deep crying into deep
I tell her, I could have done more,
the guilt doesn’t seem to surprise her.
She feels the same sentiment,
and begins to shuffle through her purse
digging in to grab her phone,
she shows me an old video
of you from New Year’s Eve.
You were waving your arms,
jamming to Bob Marley.
I see your smile, your laugh,
your wacky Jah Jah dance.
 
She holds tight onto the phone
like she holds tight
onto your memory,
It’s just the two of us
standing on the sidewalk,
laughing,
weeping,  
remembering.
 

​THE DRIFTER

​I met a drifter
in Chicago’s Irving Park neighborhood,
he slept at the local Salvation Army
and spent most of his days
at the library reading poetry.
He loved Wilfred Owen, Emily Dickinson.
He was a speed reader,
and he would read
a couple books every day,
mostly fiction, Sherman Alexie’s
“Reservation Blues,”
was his favorite.                                                   
He was a stranger until I smiled,
opening the door to language,
giving back to me what I gave him.
I called him “Chief.”
He was in his fifties,
though appeared much older.
The harshness of an unsheltered life
took its toll upon his features,
yet he was full of youth inside,
pockets full of candies and mints.
 
We connected right away,
never judged each other
on how we looked,
we were real, unpretentious
like two children in a sandbox.
He dressed unassumingly,
second hand clothes,
but that’s the thing I loved about him,
he didn’t hide behind his attire,
no intention to impress
he wore a worn out demeanor.
Yet he had something,
though he had nothing.
 
One summer day I ventured off
to the library, looking
for him at the corner carrel desk,
he wasn’t there,
I checked the fiction section,
he wasn’t there,
lastly I took a gander
through the poetry isle,
but no sight of him,
nowhere to be found.
The next day I did the same,
nowhere to be found.
I asked the librarian if he had seen him,
he told me “chief” had passed out
from heat stroke,
and was taken to the local hospital.
 
I drove slowly, periodically glancing
at a poem collection book
on the passenger seat.
It was Emily Dickinson.
I came to a red light
and opened the book
randomly landing on the poem,
“The Chariot,”
“Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
and immortality.”
Time stilled like gridlock,
the summer wind blew through
the rolled down window,
I brushed the sweat from my forehead,
contemplating life and death...
 
We don’t have a choice in when we die,
but we do have a choice in how we live,
so I made a choice that day
driving to the hospital,
I made a choice to be a friend.