2 poems by Matthew Clinton Sekellick

living a dystopia is a lot less fun than the movies make it out to be

 

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I read the news last Sunday and I cried* for a good fifteen minutes

I composed an eloquent commentary for facebook

neat prose with fine rhetoric and without any inappropriate flourishes

but nobody read it anyway and besides

the news was ten months two weeks old

it is always the same

real same, same shit, same real shit

could’ve been five ten fifteen fifty one hundred two hundred three hundred days weeks months years ago, tomorrow

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AS A BOY I IDENTIFIED WITH THE DYSTOPIAN LITERARY VOICE OF ORWELL

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I see you, system, I thought. I see you, power, I thought. You are not me, power, I thought. You do not look like me, I am but a child, you are large faceless of many faces and televisual communication networks

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I guess maybe I was too young to really understand metaphor when I first read Orwell for the first time? Maybe I was a child and read like a child and thought like a child and felt powerless like a child and was powerless like a child and now here I am, grown, giving up childlike things and

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I am grown now, and I look like power.
I do not look like power when I weep.
so
i weep

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*although one could more appropriately say sobbed, or more appropriately wept, or more appropriately bawled my god damn eyes out because in those brief moments they are too busy mourning to see more

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what washes

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i’ve invented a new kind of drain catch

it is enchanted with several herbs and

especially designed for use in the shower

so far it has only caught stray hairs

but i swear it is slowly accumulating poems