Show Do Tell: A Reading Series & Art Review Matt Waters

Paralyzed
At the crosswalk sign
And it’s telling me to move

In this Balkanized
Corporate paradise
Consciousness is a fool

On my way
To a date
With the anxious apparatus
To plead my case
And amend my mistake
Of writing that ending
Tragic

Do you have an empty feeling?
Can you play the part of hope?
Was their dream worth believing?
When you already had a coat?

Satisfied
By a momentary high
After signing their contract

Unrecognized
Walking the Highline
Alias intact

We were running late
To a play
That was about our lives
We did not know ourselves
Everybody is somebody else
And I still love the way you
Survive

Do you have an empty feeling?
Can you play the part of hope?
Was their dream worth believing?
When you already had a coat?

Last night,
They handed out awards
To the sell-out whores
God, I wish I were one of them

At fading light,
We wandered past stores
With plywood front-doors
And products we had to pretend

Season of loss
Season of tears
Season where seasons
Of the past truly recede
Season of fury
Season of doubt
Season of quantifying
What we can no longer
Live without

Last year,
The unlucky and unsaved
Were dropped in a mass grave
Before an anonymous witness

I could really feel
My coping methods fail
As the Molotov cocktail sailed
Toward my sense of justice

Season of loss
Season of deceit
Season where seasons of
The boom met defeat
Season of pity
Season of rage
Season of the ten-block radius
Feeling like a cage

Yesterday,
A stranger said to burn down my neighborhood
And many good people agreed they should
While old reliable considered buying a gun

I couldn’t say,
Whether I’d die for the reform
For victims and villains unborn
Or if I’m only riding out the storm

Season of loss
Season of faith
Season where seasons
Of action had to hesitate
Season of disaster
Season of strength
Season of being thankful
For your shoes, your pen,
And the pavement

My body wakes at dawn
Always obeys the first alarm
I do what I’m told these days

Automize to eliminate the doubt
Rehearse the purpose they can't live without
This is the kind of gig that pays

Nobody’s in charge or wants the job
We can’t elect a new god
While still hauling biblical names

World War pain
They teach us to be sane
When I train my sights on you
It’s me being free

World War pain
What’s your favorite game?
If you shoot me through the forehead
Would you wonder what I dreamed?

We’re each other’s targets tonight
Only one will see the sunlight
Seem to bless his lover’s eyes

Soldiers don't question null
Our local car was totally full
Of political hacks parroting lies

Do you also have empty night streets?
Where distant traffic hums sweet relief
From the vengeance born in our minds

World War pain
Has nothing to do with shame
That’s for civilian life, where it is
Essential to forgive

World War pain
Did you cauterize with flame?
I wasted a second wondering
If we’d let each other live

I Get to Live

The sun hits my head
And the depth of the rainbow
Seems aligned in my eyes
With the head of my shadow
It is a summer afternoon
And I have a handful of time

To walk into stores
And buy what is needed
In the name of the hunger
Which must be defeated
I could have more
The lenses of my sunglasses shine

I hold my wife’s hand
While we move through the darkness
My accounts are in order
But she’d love me regardless
We look in each other’s eyes
And kiss beside the street sign

I get to live
Isn’t it a privilege?
I wasn’t a child in Rafah
Whose innocence was given
Zero consideration
Upon detonation
No one decides

A forecast of rain
And the sky is gunmetal
I’m buying flowers
With red and white petals
The bouquet overflows
I must hold it to the side

Color which dies
Is a compromise with beauty
For we betray the principles
That uphold love truly
In the name of order and empire
Repelling the killing tide

My wife opens the door
Softening the world with a smile
She shears the stems from the roses
In a neat green pile
We talk about November
Upon the couch entwined

I get to live
Life’s a funny proposition
I wasn’t first over a trench
Upon the command of a whistle
Negotiating mustard gas
In a plague mask
I am alive

A touch of the tragic
May be conducive to magic
But it’s a rock in the shoe
Of ordinary life

Never wanted it to happen
Our branch bent before snapping
Saw reality as an anomaly
As our little tree struggled in the strife

Upon the polished bar-slab
Rests an old head who can’t pay his tab
While his pocket chimes, a music box
The last gift from his wife

Well, life may be short
I may be numb
My country is
Governed by a gun

Hey, maybe it’s simple
Maybe its not
I could not work
The way that you want

If there’s a god
If you’re a friend
If there’s a story
With an end

I won’t forget
When things were good
I’ll someday figure out
What I never understood

Plinking my night symphonies
The Detective wants his car keys
Originals and standards
No spotlight

Couldn’t learn how to quit
Months before you split
Should’ve held you harder
After that last flight
Your father offered a good job
And my pursuit’s run by the mob
Why not grow-up, own property
And bow out from a rigged fight?

The sound of the keys
Sends me, sends me
The sound of the keys
Sends me, sends me
It was a lot like your touch
Leaves me, leaves me
A lot like your touch
Leaves me, leaves me
A sanctuary from the snow
Where I know, I know
A sanctuary from the snow
Where I’m one with the melting
The sound of the keys
Was the only thing, the only thing
That noticed me
Noticed me
The sound of the keys
Noticed me
Before you
Before you
Before you

What to say
Another day
Not crashing
On the highway

To surmise
The compromise
They’re idea
Is somehow mine

Salaried saint
Ambition quaint
Lift the mask
Before we faint

AM alarm
The Knicks held on
Against future Kings
The worker trods

I saw such lovely
Colors
In your
Pictures
Wondering
If you escaped
This shade of gray
We earn
money
For the teenager’s
Forgiveness
Wondering
If you drank the rain
Without having to pay

Ice-cut air
Frost in your hair
Kiss in the cold
Beside the State Fair

Where we visit
But never miss it
When home sweet home
Discussing better business

Then you’re out with friends
And before it ends
You’ve posed for photos
And pressed send

Our bedsheet seal
Exclusive feel
An electric pulsing
Capacity to heal