Rooftop Poetry Club - Matthew Braun

Matthew Braun

Bio:
I reside in the village of Depew, NY where my family has lived for 120 years or so. I am the fourth generation to live in my house and to gaze out the windows at the same land that my ancestors did. I greatly value the place that I am from; its features have always been an inspiration. I enjoy watching the wealth of the region decay atom by atom to the sounds of trains all the while the birds and the bees keep on whizzing past. On good days I can even hear a possible whisper or two from buried ancestors amid the village noises. It is in this place that I built a desire to write poetry from time to time, placing my voice among the echoes in the walls.

Poems:

An Ode to a Single Quark of a Single Atom of a Single Thread of the Fabric of Time

Eyes watching you watching me as I pass.
Two focused lines of vision cross to create
a frozen moment in time like
two bullets striking one another head on
Both stop and fall, no longer moving.

Acoustic Resonance

A less-than-attractive 1980s jukebox sits across, bubbless.
Cigarette smoke mingles densely with coffee steam
here at a table with no elbow room.
All three people in the café sit without words.
All three hearts accelerating or decelerating in a rhythm
according to coffee dosages.
A sigh of boredom, a drag exhalation, a throat clearing
cause a buzz in the overly thick coffee-tobacco air.
Vocalized breaths turbulate off the tin ceiling in vortices
not heard tympanically but felt.
Molecular hum behind plaster and lathe,
All that is still moves.

Cellar

Loam seasoned water seeps through cellar walls.
Saturated stone, mildew and mold,
a silverfish haven below living quarters.
There is no storage in the wet cellar,
no need to brave the dank depths of home’s comfort.
Home’s root ball, where the hearts of utilities reside
metering consumption,
quietly ticking
like deep submarine sonar
in the cool cellar.

Evening Shadows

The evening shadows of the trees are long
and stretch out to the dark east.
Before me a child plays.
Laughing, running, tagging its
shadow
shaped like the child
but eight feet long.

The front porch floor
of my antique dwelling
rumbles with the passing of a train,
howling horn warning the beyond-sight future
of its coming.

With the train gone,
The distant bells of St. Mary’s
toll their deep strikes
pealing a melodius moan.,
mourning the dying of the light,
reminding us the Church is there
before it is night.
Like motherly nags
About toothbrushes and warm jackets
As a son packs his bags.