Matthew J. Lawler- Three Poems

Matthew J. Lawler is poet and native of Chicago. He was raised on the city's northwest side. He has been writing poetry since his teenage years. His style of writing is uniquely philosophical. He has been published in numerous on line journals, Visual Verse, Unlost Journal, Caravel Literary Arts Journal and People's Tribune. Find him and like him at facebook.com/matthewjlawlerpoet

The Heart Painted Tree

Nails and scars of dripping love,
Break these bars and burdens great,
Arms are open as sin he hugs,
Gasping desert lungs of serpent taste.
Clashing skies of night above,
Smashing lies with death of love.
The tree was full of paint that dripped,
The night brought black and blue
while back was ripped, spit
and plucking hair from face of war.
This love so rich it saves the poor.
The moon did cry when darkness reigned,
Truth despised by beating fist of lies
Eyes blind by minds that were hypnotized.
Rip your side with slashing spear,
My hand was there to crack the day,
Yet light it came through an open vein,
The dusk is dead and distrust is starved,
Through a broken brain and body scared.
Beaten bruised from within,
Open wounds of a wretch’s sin.
Infinite love, bottomless mercy mangled in misery,
You took the weight and swallowed the shame,
Burdened with iniquity and walloping pain,
The tree you bore with sleepless eyes,
What’s worse than this? The speechless cries!!

The heart painted tree, it captured me with weeping blood,
Loving the unlovable, in your demise still speaking love.

The doomed wombs of women now redeemed,
And from a naked tomb the wounds of glory gleamed,
Spilling hope like gushing running waterfalls
This life to light the way, death’s door no more,
For the worm and storm and stone are gone
The pressing price was paid
The Christ was slayed, my sorrow slain.
So trumpets blaze and eagles soar
from mountain tops
As fresh rain pours like fountain drops.
So as long as the sea flows,
No love will be greater than the love he shows,
For this heart is his and this he knows
This heart is his and this he knows.
The heart painted tree, it captured me with weeping blood,
Loving the unlovable, in your demise still speaking love.

To you I owe my life and soul,
With you I know the night is gone,
The day is bright with light you give,
You gave your life that I might live,
To dwell with stars in eternal repose,
To hell with scars were the inferno glows.
Weeping wind then flowers bloom.
The light of life the Christ devours doom.


    A Sword In The Soul

Destroy all the bombs in the world
and war will still exist,
for war exists internally
covering the core of humanity,
clothing the poor in tragedy,
Satan’s strategy, divide the classes
divorce the family.
The roots grow deep down to the dark of earth,
the sword in the soul is nothing more
than the mark of birth.
Machiavellian politics dominate
the calloused consciousness of mankind.
This uber ego separates the people
like body parts in a land mine.
War will never end until the war ends within.
Appearances are reflections
of aggression and pain,
children become orphans and wives widows
in a world of woes were men worship Cain.
Can we come to an agreement?
Man’s nature is peevish,
Rather build an altar of idolatry
and worship Cain than Jesus.



He came from off the Shore
Mark 5- demoniac from gadarenes

I’ve been out in these tombs for too long,
contained in chains shackled hand and foot.
Every man fears me, for I shatter the fetters
of iron with the strength of a thousand men.
Naked and wretched, take it and fetch
like a hound with an empty belly.
Life is but a mystery, walking alongside
falling cobwebs followed by a shadow of misery.
Chanting with the moonshine, howling as I go,
standing with a doomed mind,
a growling in my soul.

I’m so tired from these restless winds
that carry me to endless sins.
I’m locked in a solitary cell of skeletons,
Living with the scorpions.
Choices, kept me captive to the voices of vipers
that vexed me with questions of self-worth.
Bitterness, unforgiveness, rage, and hatred,
Legions of demons have left me pale and naked.
Who can save me from this octopus
and bring about my exodus?

I’m homeless and forgotten
rotten from the core,
A whirling pigsty, but who’s this guy
stepping out onto the shore.
Rejecting repression I sprinted with aggression
until we stood eye to eye.
I’ve never seen a man like this before,
One who doesn’t run away from me,
Though crippled in the heart and soul
and a mind like the raging sea.
A lunatic is what they label me,
I cut and gash myself with stones,
I dwell with graves and feast with bones,
In hell I stay and sleep in foam,
It’s you who knows I need a home.

He came from off the shore to heal the sore of soul,
The pain now wind the war within is gone,
I see the grass and trees
at last a breeze blows across my naked face,
As I bow in veneration to a peasant’s King,
For freedom is much more than a pleasant thing.

Something draws me to his presence,
So with a loud voice I cry,
And why die? If I have a choice to live,
With you the coffin breaks, no longer lost in fate,
You’ve given me sight and clothes,
Into the swine the night it goes,
Never to be heard or seen,
For the word brings a shattering
of the stone filled soul.
Who is this sandaled stranger?
He doesn’t fear the danger of the broken,
He doesn’t fear the bottom feeder,
The lowlife and the hopeless.
In fact he says the last shall be first.
And I’m an outcast of the worst kind.
But he showed me my worth
baptizing me in his love,
And for the first time my eyes can see
that I’m not the things I’ve done or said,
I’m now what he calls me,
a son of God back from the dead.

He came from off the shore,
To heal the sore of soul,
The pain now wind the war within is gone,
I see the grass and trees,
at last a breeze blows across my naked face
when I bow in veneration to a peasant’s King,
For freedom is much more than a pleasant thing.