MATTHEW J. LAWLER - POEMS

Matthew J. Lawler is a poet and Chicago native. He has been published in numerous online journals, including, Caravel, Unlost, Dissident Voice, Sick Lit Mag, The Miscreant, Visual Verse, Eunoia Review, The People's Tribune, and The Best Emerging Poets of Illinois, a book anthology of 150 Illinois writers, put out by Z Publishing. He can be found on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/matthewjlawlerpoet

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A Mirror’s Imperfect Reflection 
​

(For Andy “even” Alvarado)
Seeing you in that casket
was like seeing myself.
You were worn out
at thirty years of age
torn apart by a world
of humiliation.
Every day you dealt
with a black hole
steep, deeper than roots,
the heartbeat of your youth.


For so long we had shared
the disembodiment
that comes with youth,
for so long we were young
running around the city
lunging into the leisure
of weed smoke,
wavering from the monotony
of adult life.
Our struggle was the bond
that brought us together,
sealing us as brothers,  pealing
the layers of pretension
like the sun lit skin
people bathe in.


We met in the 7th grade
and then I was hospitalized.
I was alone in a room
with doctors and nurses
pricking my skin.
You were alone in a dungeon
you called home.
Two weeks later
when I was released
and ready to go back to school,
you greeted me on the playground
with your John Lennon
black mop head hairstyle
and crinkled coke bottle glasses.
I never felt judgment
only acceptance from you.
We were different
and we knew it,
the pigskin we threw it
in the play lot of a new season.
The abruptness of dead things
coming to life
swallowed in an exchange
for youthful exuberance.
A time for forgetting
and turning the page.


You and I had this ethereal bond
that formed in our adolescence,
drawn to each other
by some sort of light
like fluorescence, connected
through an outside force
to form a friendship.
We were equals.
We were brothers.
I remember your emotions
spilling
when you talked about your father
and how he abandoned you
and your mother at the hospital
the day you were born.
Looking into your eyes
I could see
even at the tender age of fifteen
the strain and shame you felt.
It wasn’t your fault.


Seeing you in that casket
was like seeing myself.
A mirror’s imperfect reflection.
I touched your face…
The face that lit
your mother’s face with smiles,
I touched your hands,
hands that braced
for the teenage joy
of hopping turnstiles,
I touched your heart,
the soul of you,
the sacred place
of which the door was opened
only for a chosen few,
and I was one.


Skipping rocks
by the Wilson riverbank
drinking St Ides malt liquor,
talking about the courage it takes
to survive with gaping holes inside.
The holes of abandonment,
mine, the holes of lost health,
yours, abandonment of a father,
so we were both tied
down to the ground
of dealing with the same monster.
Two voyagers
searching for paradise,
two aimless teens
trapped in fear filled nights
of lost identities
and imaginary plights.
You talked about the future
and how you lacked ambition,
I felt the same qualms
about facing my anxiety,
so we were together in sedating
our feelings of marginalization
from society.


Seeing you in that casket
was like seeing myself,
the day you took your life
a part of me was taken with you,
and a part of you was left with me.
When we were young
we both dreamed of the “Tree of Life,”
finding paradise.
So in our youth we searched
and searched, and searched,
unwitting of the paradise
we had in each
other.

Dichotomy
​

​I sit here at the dining table
front door ajar
while perching light is peeking,
birds bringing songs to porch,
my children falling asleep
on the couch.
Glass of ice water beside me,
I’m drained, dry to the bone,
I can’t help but think
how fickle this life is,
the unpredictable outcome,
the subtle reminders
of the entropy in our universe,
the ice cubes melting in my glass.
Yet I see the sunshine
and birds whistling
by the window,
and in that I feel a grain of relief,
fleeing momentarily
from the burdens of life
into a moment of foresight,
an interval of nonlinear form
stretching my mind
into the realization of paradox,
the dichotomy of existence,
my two children dreaming.
ice cubes dissolving.
 
 
 

How I miss you
​

(for Andres)
 
I wandered through your yard today,
pretending you were still alive,
I knelt down
to your basement window,
knocking,
as to awaken you from slumber.
I knocked again,
but no one answered,
so I stood there…..
leaning back to brick,
my body caught between
a ghost and a gangway.
I stood frozen, broken,
by memories of us late night
stumbling down Wilson.
How I wish you were here
to see what I created,
the joy of heaven on earth,
my children would have called
you uncle,
a sage of the Krylon can,
a mystic of the mural,
how I miss you,
the language, the candid conversations,
the dreams we shared,
the death we spurned
at every turn around the corner,
the bicycle peddles that burned
down Cullom and raced to Eastwood,
where nights felt like days
and my heart was
full.
How I miss
you.