Go to sleep
Go to sleep
Little trazodone kids
Your dreams are calling
Whispering soft stuff
About a nice, quiet end
To self harm scars –
Replacing that bad
With cloudlike good
Go to sleep
Go to sleep
Little medicated ones
There is a day coming
When monsters like depression
Are slayed by a great warrior
One who is cloaked in light
And brings the sun
Into each new dawn
Go to sleep
The words are from a poem I wrote last year for Christmas. Always cool to see the marriage of my words and design.
The sky is light gray.
The ground is dark gray.
The trees have no color,
Because there are no trees.
The fields are muted,
in both senses: sound and sight.
The cold’s color would be gray as well,
Though it is colder at night.
Machines run treads into the earth,
Cleaving mounds of mud and grass.
Pressing seeds deep
The farmer hopes to sow.
City dwellers look down their nose
Feigning regality, stuffy mood.
What happens if I tell them,
It’s out here we get our food.
That’s the scene I set;
Drab and uninteresting.
Winter fields as flat
as thoughts of nothing are long.
The pools of shallow water
reflect up, looking like voids.
All you hear is your head,
Because there is no noise.
I lay on my back, at loss and wonder why,
Staring, I look up; underneath an Iowa sky.
Contain,
Contain
You-see-through-glass
Bring the water to my lips again
The molecules are more focused in the glass
Than they are in the water
And the table has even more
And then there’s the floor
On the foundation rests the house
And that house sits on the ground
Which is as dense as the earth is wide
He pulls the molecules aside
Contain,
Contain
You-see-through-glass
Bring the water to my lips again
Loosely fitting pieces
Sit atop magma and rock
The ground sits on top of the shelf
And I sit on top of it all by myself
Oh, where does the earth rest?
And how does space sound?
Maybe the earth is a glass
To the beginning, alas!
Contain,
Contain
You-see-through-glass
Bring the water to my lips again
Contain,
Contain
“A glass can only spill
What it contains”
Jade green
Mahogany brown
And glistening chrome
A band of dark and light
A rim full of brightness
Slick, sharp tongues lapping
Yeah, the night wishes
to be so dark and brooding
and have that mysterious octane
The jade blisters
into the brown
and all the chrome can do is bleed
A see-through membrane
A pool of gelatine and liquid
The glowing orb, behind, the soul sits
I’d give up all my green
And trade some black for brown
If I could just steal your shine
I’m wearing my dad’s shoes now and giving him advice. Or is it his necktie? I don’t know for sure. Boys will become fathers and fathers will become boys. Mothers will cry to their sons for hours on the telephone and sons will cover up the receiver so their mothers don’t hear them crying. Because now they’re the man.
Sons will leave long pauses in conversations. Thinking of chess boards. They will look right past you, through you, to the house where they grew up. They will be distant.
They will have trouble sleeping. They will realize some things about marriage. Mostly, it is choosing to love.
Sons will fumble through prepared speeches basically written on note cards to their fathers. They will say things like, “I hope you know…” and “I’ve been thinking…” and “For now…”
I hope you know I can’t bear to hear my mother cry like that. I will die before I let that happen again.
I’ve been thinking that you probably feel like you’re under a microscope. I know it will feel forced and awkward. Nothing you do will feel right.
For now, you got to get back to even. For now, you have to learn to be a man.
For now…I guess I’ll have to do.
My view this morning. Standing on top of Longworth Hall, with Cincinnati’s skyline behind me. I preformed a spoken word piece in the freezing cold (my hands were shaking) and with the help of my friend Christine, I hope it will become an awesome poetry video. Be on the lookout!
Tyler Strittmatter 