Five Poems by Matthew Freeman

 

What We Are 

 

I was drinking next to a depressed professor

at Dressel’s, the lit hub of the STL,

and no one knew me and this was when you could still smoke

so we were chain smoking accordingly with our pints—

I’d come back from New York and suddenly

everybody was drinking pints—and the professor

also had a very low self-esteem and I myself

was scarred and defeated and he then started talking

about how he hated his car and it was like

his car was out to get him and the chairperson

of his department had given him a class in the honors

program but he was pretty sure it was an act of irony

and he talked about how he’d messed up and ruined his life

but he didn’t really get too specific about that

and I just didn’t have the energy to ask

and then he said incredibly that his blood had stopped flowing

and that’s when I really

wanted to say something

because I used to think that as well

and then he was talking about some off-campus

meeting or party or something but how he couldn’t go

because it was at a bar he’d recently go thrown out of

and I’m sitting there politely listening and thinking

damn if my drive

comes back perhaps I could be a professor too

and pretty soon I got compliant with the big

paternal metaphor of St Louis, BJC,

and I never drank again but started to hang out

with poets and professors and got my MFA

and I never again

saw the lonesome professor depressed with low self-esteem

and sadly I went my own course and never became a professor after all.

 

 

Numb All Day 

 

Heaven is you just finally met

a cute OB/GYN at Starbucks

who smokes Marlboro Lights and

 

hell is when you passed by the trash chute

you heard the loud accusatory

sound of heavy heavy objects

dropping down

in a menacing manner

 

and purgatory must be shell shock

and the murky intuition

that something happened

a very very long time ago

and it’s messing with your experience.

 

 

More Charity Needed 

 

I’m trying to listen to the early Beatles

on my old sad iPod

but drunken Lou insists on

mumbling something about all of the

various cars his relatives have owned—

and I am terribly sorry.

 

When Red came back from the hospital

the first thing he did—after bumming

out the requisite cigarettes—was to

inquire about Diana. None of us

knew where she was and on top of that

the patio was trashed and littered

and no one was at the security desk

and four or five more residents

had made their escape.

The most wretched thing I’ll confess

is that while I’ve never really known

what Red has

I am a bit sceptical about the whole thing.

 

My own whole stupid thing has been

I’m supposed to be thinking and feeling

something else, and I’m supposed to be

somewhere else.

But—I’m not supposed to be someone else.

That I got right.

 

 

Who Cares

 

Everything’s perfect but

the lapsus in a conversation gone awry,

the repeated trips to lockdown,

the inability

 

to make amends to a city, to an Ideal,

as an infinitely gentle cloud of smoke

wafts toward you

from the expensive-looking pipe

of the young homeless wiseman.

 

Some people do get better

and some of them seem to know so much

and once that might have freaked you out

but not now that you know nothing

and can perceive very little

 

and hey, I’m just happy to still be here.

I haven’t ever been able to develop a doctrine

and I’m filled with ineffable sympathy.

Yeah, right.

But if I got arrogant again

I’d wake up at the front desk

without a shirt,

without my keys, without tobacco.

I’ve yet got stuff to regret.

 

I’ve had my last cavity! My teeth are really classy now.

My analyst hinted that I might pass for a hipster.

I run into stuff in my sleep still and bruise my legs.

I can’t remember anything!

But there was a punk rock guy at MoKaBe’s

who said I had a really dope look

and when I expressed

my fear that it might have been ironic to my analyst,

she was like, “Who cares?”

 

 

 Heartways 

 

I can see now

that I’ve been less than charitable

to all the derelicts

who live around me.

 

It’s true that I’ve been gifted so much

and I’ve tried to give some of it away:

Clothes, cigarettes, a little money, a little food.

But I’ve been condescending. I recognize

it probably has something to do with

my being sober for so long.

 

I did know a couple of dudes

at Forest Park Hospital who were faking

heroin addiction so they could

get a check. One of them told me all about it.

But, you know, I can see

That some people are sad and afraid

and just trying to remain strong, and some are filled

with crippling interminable anger,

and I know that malingering itself

must be some kind of symptom.

 

We’re all of us

getting checks of some sort,

and we’re all paying for them

in a variety of ways.

One might proceed

with this in the heart.

Matthew Freeman's new book, I Think I'd Rather Roar, is soon to be released by Cerasus Poetry. He holds an MFA from the University of Missouri-St Louis.