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I. Ohio, Somewhere I Lived

Ohio, You Liar 

Ohio, I keep coming back to you now, a man returning to old memories — 
my original woman, the one who stayed up late, just burning the porch light like it was a form of love. 
 
Ohio, you never held a door for anyone, least of all me, when I’d come home a little more broken every night. 
No embrace. Just twilight and a cold breeze. 
 
Ohio, you’re just dirt and mile markers, some highway exits shaped like regret, 
cities two hours off through cornfields laid out like veins on a heart-shaped map somebody drew by mistake. 
But those nights around midnight, when I’m driving your anatomy nine over the limit, 
I swear I can hear your heartbeat pumping through the radio band, driving your arteries that never end. 
 
Ohio, you liar, you let me call this love — the flat horizons, the gravel lots, 
the bridge they never finished because who has the money, 
the hole-in-the-wall still lit at 3 a.m., keeping watch over nothing. 
You’re a heart-shaped region built on land that never asked to be loved. 

I’m aware. I’m aware a man my age shouldn’t be writing love songs to a landlocked state that stays stagnant, that feels nothing back. 
But twenty years of trying has to go somewhere, and I’m fresh out of women, so here. 
In the rust, in the cold, saying your name out loud in an empty truck, thinking hearing it might make it mean something more 
then just silence to the ears. 

Ohio, you liar, I’m still here. Not because you’re kind, and not because your roads bent toward me in some cosmic, accommodating way. 
But because I ran the numbers, and there’s no other zip code, anywhere else, where I know who I am. 

 

November 

We drove past the river where the night runs thin, 
Your jacket on the dashboard, radio humming, hands holding. 
The skyline flickered soft, slowly turning to the moons glow, 
Ohio in November always feels like letting go. 
Street lamps light the pavement, late night diners still open, 
We walked to the talk about plans for a future unbroken. 
You giggled at the late night inebriated people passing by, 
Funny how the little things make us smile. 
And the world felt open, 
my chest felt tight. 
I could feel the ending. 
Longing for more time that night. 
So here’s to the city lights and the little beautiful memories we don’t save, 
To the roads driven dangerously, all the nights we misbehaved. 
Why the brightest nights are the shortest ones we have. 
Goodbye to the Ohio lights… 
Goodbye to the life we planned… 
Maybe someday we will meet back in that town, 
Find the street we use to walk down together in Ohio snow. 

II. What the Voices Keep

Something's Off

Notify the cops,
Ran to be lost
Escape the shadows alone

Stuck in a cold ditch,
Shivering, crisp
First panic
Lies about it
Slit my wrist

No one spoke to me after this

Who, Where

Here or back
Where do I stand
Live or die
I have a plan
Tomorrow again
Yesterdays hopes
Under they go
The screaming at home
Here or back
Or die
My plan

III. THE AMPHETAMINE
HOURS

Addict's Curse

Adrenaline receptors firing off
body in overdrive
can’t stop
can’t stop
meaning the body needs to stop
but I can’t adrenaline overdrive
amphetamine override
adrenaline—implied
amphetamine
amphetamine Nobody used to work nights
nobody four-count
come down to pay period
nothing adds up
nothing lands what do I do now
what should I do
on this calm down been here
so many times before
still don’t know
how to handle it the pain from the pleasure
how do I handle the shift
the turn
the drop the amazing symptoms of drugs
don’t continue
for long periods what do I do
every time it ends how do you kill the pain
it causes still searching
for that current concoction
that mixture
that might heal the addict’s curse


Amphetamine Nights

Amphetamine clouds covering the room,
no lights, just ruminating the past,
I lost my lover, my love for life, my complexion in my skin Stuck sitting in
an apartment alone.
No furniture.
No heat.
Just drywall, silence, and the buzzing in my teeth.
There’s a glass mirror on the floor
reflecting a face I dont recognize,
and a little white line beside it
like a prayer I keep saying
even though I know the god is gone.
Days blur like chalk in rain—
I forget which meals I missed,
which conversations I talked through,
which nights I didn’t sleep
because I couldn’t bear to lose the momentum.
There is a hunger that is not hunger,
a joy that is not joy,
a light that burns straight through the skin.
Sometimes I remember silence—
slow breaths, warm rooms,
a world that wasn’t vibrating.
Oh, the amphetamine nights make my life—
Amphetamines make me feel alright,
make me forget my fucked up life,
before the comedown claws the inside of my skull
and my neck hangs from the clouds in the ceiling..
Oh but amphetamine dreams make me have meaning to my life,
Chasing the one high
when my hands still felt like they were part of me.
Now they just shake,
and the shaking tells the truth:
My body remembers the damage
even when my mind refuses.
This room smells like dust and old regret.
I haven’t did the plans I made, now its 2 days late
Time is a broken clock
that only points to Now Now Now Now Now
until I forget what a future is.
There’s no music here.
No friends.
No grand revelation.
Just me, the mirror,
the line,
and the gnawing need for “just a little more.”
Amphetamine world.
Bright hell.
Hollow salvation.
The kind of light that doesn’t warm anything
it only burns.
I know I should leave.
I know I should stop.
I know.
But knowing and doing
are not the same thing
when the world is made of her beautiful crystal white lines.
I don’t need hope right now.
I just need speed And this is it. Another line, to punish myself Give myself
lashings for each regret.

IV. LAST RITES

Fast

Something split the skull before I could name it,
drove in at the temple,
punched out through the throat,
and the mouth came open
not to scream
But because the jaw had no reason left to hold.

The colors bled in with it.
Magenta where gray matter thought was.
Orange at the wound’s edge, already oxidizing veins.
Charcoal laid over suffocating
pressing down,
a body trying to clot
what cannot clot.

I did not invite this.
My door was shut.
But pain don’t care about doors.

Entered where thought lives
and exited where speech begins
and what is left between those two points
is whatever I am now
still faced forward,
still holding the shape of a body,
full of something unnatural
That will not leave.


6:25 am

Screaming silence forever within my eyes,
Tormented thoughts forever in my mind,
These tears they rain my unforgivable lies,
My life, my soul, I will never find
The crys are heared black hopeless thoughts,
unbearable, uncertain, the lost, the empty vessel of me.
Everytime of help of which I have constantly fought,
no reason, no future, as my life has already been lost.
The window to pain a painting of endless despair,
Just hung by a thread for others to look and fear,
So see into my soul, look at my sadness i bear,
The demons, the fantasies my life long fears/
So as I hang my sentence for hold this universe in vein,
Remember I hang so hopefully you will never feel my pain.

V. LEARNING TO STAY

Calm Down Signal

I wake up in mid sentence,
heart already answering crys
of questions I didnt ask for

Adrenaline spelling my name wrong
over and over it repeasts,
like its trying to
take over me

I sit to prove I still can,
but i keep renegotiating,
but no ones there,
but empty air

I call it focus,
my doctor calls it history
my body calls it midnight
i call it insanity

I dont know what to do
when it finally gives in and stops
when the chemicals pack up
and leave me
with a empty room
and my name in my mouth

Been here so many times before
I should get a plaque
or a recling chair
to plant my flag

Pain from the pleasure
pleasure from the pain
I cant tell which is which
who invited who to the mix
Im told it passes

Just a seasonal phase
But weather still ruins house
Still floods basements
still washes away memories
takes anything in its path
away

I dont know what to do
when will it end
when my current goes neutral
and im just a body again
still searching for the signal
that means this seasons over

Name in the Mirror

I wince each time my name appears
written by my hand, spoken by another’s.
Letters that once meant nothing
now carry every storm I never escaped.
Matthew.
A word that tastes like old wounds,
a sound that drags the past up by the throat.
When I see it, my whole life reels:
mistakes replaying, shadows stacking,
all the weight I’ve carried pressed
into seven letters.
Sometimes I swear the name itself
watches me, judging, twisting my stomach
until I can’t stand the thought
of being its keeper.
Matt. Matthew.
Matthew Paul Haubert.
A full incantation I never chose,
echoing like the voice of my demons—
not because I am them,
but because they learned
to hide inside the syllables
that were supposed to belong to me.