Ten Poems by Matt Sanderson

Your hand was pressed against this page
flesh against wood

I want you to touch me like that

Write for me again
I want the font of your hand
your soft pretty hand
carving lines into paper

Name my desires

you want as your own 

Make contact, leave your mark
Press yourself

your whole self

against me entirely
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How empty is a life 

that does not dread

flowers on graves?

Love is despair 

at its own sunset

I will fight back the nights
bring you a daisy a day
to protect you from time

sing you poems of ecstasy

to shield you from silence

feed you tea and oranges
to celebrate your body

Death now seems a terrible injustice 

You are the reason I fear the end 

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Sound should sound 

like the desire in your voice

Violins

Now I hear the mystery 
Now I hear the longing

Hide with me in the old church

Moan

and listen for God
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I want to die with you

in a whiteout

drowning in deepest warm cold
motionless
pitched into black
the warmest cold calm

I want to die with you in a whiteout

Take me with you 

I want to be immediately
completely forgotten

The world we formed
was more than enough
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A voice is flesh
vibrating against itself
a throat on fire
with an electric hum

I love your voice
the soft bloom of your voice
swelling exploding 
inside of my chest

A heart is flesh
pushing back against itself
It doesn't know what it wants
frantic and frenzied
thrashing around in the dark

A heart is an endless civil war
flesh beating itself to death

I love the chaos of your heart
dissatisfied
arrhythmic
wild

We are flesh
a plenum of restive flesh
now stilled from within
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My hands smell like your chest
I fill my whole body
I’m at the edge of my skin
Everything
Everything is flesh

Why did it take us so long
to lie down and sink
into the mist and the clover?

Because your face can’t be pictured
and your name can’t be spoken

even when I take you in my arms
and we tumble backwards
slowly downwards
into the endless empty fall

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Laugh with me

that fearless laughter

deeper than the world
lost in the depths of all Being

We will dissolve

fall and die

into the first ecstasy

Let go

The Boundless will catch us
-----------------------------------------------------

We can learn much
from those who paint the countryside

just before the first snowfall

musicians who let silence
swallow the field of sound

Will I ever have lived
and loved you enough to let go?

Love is the terror
of time running out 

We are so young, my love! 

Much younger than we know

And yet we do not have long
Your hand will not

remain in mine always

We are not ready

to take the leap with joy

Let’s make love

to practice and prepare

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I want to come find you

push myself into you
pass through to the other side

find you beyond
waiting for me once more

But you’re never close enough
to even be out of reach

You have no real birthday

There's no way to sculpt you

You don’t dance on the ground

You float and you fade
in the city in the rain

The light in your eyes isn’t light
Your voice doesn’t come from your throat

You aren’t beautiful like a flower
Your beauty is that of dreams and ideals

and yet you are bone blood and tissue
wrapped in skin and hair

There's a skull behind your face
Your eyes are meat lodged in bone
Your hands are earth ash and dirt

I just want to hold you

So look with me in the mirror
and realize 
we’re here right now

But only one of us
will die in the other's arms
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I wish I could walk with you forever
wandering endless paths

But so much joy is unbearable
because I once was so chained
so lost in the Never without you

Now I feel colors and trumpets!
I know why there is a morning
always a new day

I smile with children and animals
I see my calm reflected
in the still waves of your mind

But so much joy is unbearable
when I am this new this
out-in-the-open
so exposed to tomorrow
and never as happy before

I love the past that led me here
and now as my future
to know what gives you ecstasy
and cross the limits beside you

But so much joy is unbearable

I once was without you

Now all I do is transcend