You Will Surely Live Forever Now, Right Two Prose Poems by Matthew Smart

You Will Surely Live Forever Now, Right

So I’ve seen God run against the traffic like a cheap thriller car chase villain. God runs like a bitch and I’m not surprised since jokers win way too many contests of chance. All I know is our true love waits for our eyes to drop on them like a Siberian wolf in winter. We steal everything until we get trapped and caught. We all want to be Bonnie and/or Clyde. Kids will be kids oh, us kids. So what if we eat off plastic plates and rent our couches. Our ideas will burn the world anew. We will rend our rented furniture and slay our captured loves and damn this ocean looks large in this magazine compared to the dirt I can see around me here. My joker, that insult wasn’t intended for you and I’m sorry you were caught in the crossfire. Yesterday I invested in a factory that makes lifelike fake foam rocks. I’m rich now. I suggest we each seek our highest viewpoint. We all have our personal Everest, and my height is not your height. The earth is curved away from everything, steeply. This way you’ll see further than anyone else unless of course the Siberian wolves took your eyes. But anyway I read that wolves are poor climbers. Still I hope you follow my advice, right, and you will surely live forever now, right.

Come the Inner War

Taxidermy classes are starting soon and I’m hunting for a new career, all we do here is lean against things and knock other things down. I’m a strawboss sucker hired to spit the loudest shit. It all stinks like a hurt infant, tender and alone but something we have to get through together. Once again I catch myself composing a soliloquy for the Head of Holofernes between mandated union breaks. By the end of the break I’ve forgotten what we’re destroying. Such a way to make a living, fighting with other people making lives when we’re all already alive. Without formal training I cast my own demons out with Goodfellas quotes and guesses at scripture. Keep ye soul safe at this font of bullshit. Keep ye arms and legs safely inside at all times. Just admit that we know fuckall about fucking everything. Other people lose their heads over this kind of drama. I am the foreman of this personal wasteland. I make the rules and an extra ninety cents an hour. I reside in rushes I fill a blood-soaked basket. Another vulgar victim of a Vulgate villain. None of the guys react to that one, or maybe never even hear me. My severed head rambles, a holograph in dead weeds.

Matthew Smart lives in a part of Michigan often overlooked by amateur cartographers. By day he works as an information technology analyst. In his evenings he writes poetry, fiction, and computer code. His writing has appeared in Vestal Review, Rawboned, Smokelong Quarterly and elsewhere.