April 26, 2025 /  by Matthew Fleming

He’s got too much youth.

He’s got too many tattoos.

He’s got too much hair.

He’s got a nice chest.

He’s got a great smile

but not often enough.

He’s lanky and odd

and oddly sweet.

But there’s nothing special about him.

I hope we meet.

Past Behind /  by Matthew Fleming

Early 2020

Past the discordant noise,
behind the clank of the martini shaker,
past the bar, through the haze of smoke,
behind the stubble of your beard,
past your perfect little ears,
behind the curves of your handsome nose,
past the cool steel of your soft eyes,
behind the smile that comes so easily.

And when most of you
is hidden—
tucked away in the kitchen—
all I see…
is your fabulous behind.

A New Chicago Blues /  by Matthew Fleming

07/31/17

You make me cry
a new kind of blues,
Thin Blue Line.

This is our chance for a new blue era,
an era shaped by bold blue vision—
but never forgetting the great blue tradition.
Lead us in a new Chicago Blues,
Thin Blue Line.

 

So sing with us, Thin Blue Line, a new Chicago Blues
and build a new blue people
from the waters of our lake,
from the slow roll of our three-part river.

 

Not a white song, red, yellow, or black song;
not a Christian, Muslim, Agnostic, or Hindu song;
not North Side, South Side, East Side or West Side song;
not a song for the rich, nor a song for the poor—
but a song for a new people.

 

Sing with us
to the single pulse
of blue blood
from the one Blue Chicago heart
of our New Chicago Blues.

 

We have it in us.
We can.
As we've said before,

"I Will."

Kindness Lingers /  by Matthew Fleming

I knew a wonderful man who lived in that building.

His husband was not so great.

The wonderful man was eager to please.

His husband was never satisfied.

The wonderful man worked two jobs.

His husband owned a stripper bar.

The wonderful man was kind, hiring boys lost to the street.

His husband felt he owned them.

The wonderful man died too soon.

His husband married a stripper boy.

The husband died and left the club

To his adopted stripper son.

But kindness lingered where apathy ruled—

And the boy grew to be another wonderful man.

Why make your bed in the morning? /  by Matthew Fleming

08/12/2016

To build trust. The DMV should check your bedroom before issuing a license.

Nobody will see it.

It will get messed again tonight.

What does it say about you?

Esthetically it doesn’t matter if it is messy or neat

Be prepared, boy scouts.

You’ll want to have someone in it someday.

If you can’t take care of little responsibilities, how will people trust you with big responsibilities?

Forty-Four Minutes of Terror - A Lifetime of Love Lost /  by Matthew Fleming

At 02:06 AM on Saturday June12, 2016 in Orlando.

Mina was awakened by texts from her son:

Mommy I love you.

In club they shooting.

He’s coming.  I’m gonna die.

He’s a terror.

 

Ad then the final message at 2:50 AM…

 

Yes

 

Mina’s son, Eddie Jamalroy Justice,  was 30 years old.

 

If you want peace, WORK for JUSTICE.

– Pope Paul VI

Sailing Away /  by Matthew Fleming

The air is so still, so sticky, so soaked I can feel it in my lungs. It is sticking to my eyebrows and beard as I walk to the corner. A rivulet drops down between my eyes and hangs for an instant on the tip of my nose before jumping off.

Seeing others primp and preen for relief, I feel...vindicated – my wrinkled linen will breath, relax, cool.

It’s been a while since I’ve looked meaningfully upon her, so I sit purposefully facing east so I can see her today, my lake.

She is impossibly still, the surface just barely making grand swirls, like buttercream dappled with silver sugar pearls.  No sun to be seen, just an expansive sky, a fragile yellow glow. The horizon today is brought close to shore by the watery air and is crisscrossed by sailboats’ masts. The scene looks like toothpicks poked through icing on a cake holding up a scoop of lemon sorbet.

The trees bow with leaves plump and heavy with water both inside and hanging about. They reach down to caress my park’s lawn; freshly cut the scent is drawn over and sneaks in like some intoxicating Alpine cocktail of elderflower and gin.

Oh, I wish these windows would open; the roof would disappear!

To stand,

eyes closed and head back,

right arm up, hand a sail in the air;

left arm down, hand a sloop in the water.

  • Morning of September 11, 2019

When People Get Into Your Heart /  by Matthew Fleming

When people get into your heart they stay there for good.

Death or other partings do not diminish their good.

They're staying; it’s good.

Pain will be here, always.

But what’s pain compared to life?

So get into people's hearts and stay there for good.

Be there for all the living; for they're good.

You're staying; it’s good.

April 26, 2019 at 2:12 PM

"Rusty" /  by Matthew Fleming

He’s here again, just across the aisle, facing me today.  His name is Rusty not because we’ve ever spoken but because he’s a rusty-red terrier sort of a guy, albeit a pup.

He’s a young man whose beard catches the morning sun; makes the bristly hairs dance like tiny copper Brillo wires.  He combs the thick deep-red plume of his up-to-the-minute haircut with his hand again and again, exposing those warm amber eyes.  I’m easily hypnotized by them; those twin tannin waterfalls lull me, and I drift in and dream far ago dreams.

Rusty’s long alabaster neck goes down to wide shoulders and stretch into strong arms with sinewy hands.  A grey tee just old enough to be hip without being trashy covers a slight chest and flat belly.  Oh, to lay on the beach next to him and see the hair hidden beneath!

His peppermint green pants – probably Ralph Lauren straight-fit Bedford stretch chino in faded mint – sit on not-too-narrow hips and are rolled-up the ankle just enough to suggest “I’m the modern gay man. I’m the avant-garde, not hidden in metrosexuality”.  The pristine white Chuck Taylors with red and blue strips – not high tops – remind me of gym class and so many others.

Rusty’s reading an old tattered book. Yes, an actual book; makes him even more alluring.  Too infrequently something in it amuses him and I glimpse that ivory smile.  As carefree as the moonlight, it charms me, and I imagine I hear a whisper: “Do you want to play?”.

Suddenly the bright morning light exposes us to each other, his eyes piercing into mine, my moonlit daydream gone; neither us of awkward in the moment.

He is my youth; my hubris, my unapologetically unreasonable liberalism.  Is he as restless as I was with the privilege of youth?

Is objectifying wrong when the person becomes a work of art, helping recount a time of physical joy, stamina, versatility, and flexibility?  I wonder if I should regret past decisions but wonder even more why I don’t. 

My zeal to fight the good fight has been tempered, good and bad shifting from white and black to shades grey.  I allow myself pride in my past; pride in my present. I still hope more for justice in the world. Rusty travels down a road I’ve help pave.  A road with seemingly less insults, job firings, bottles thrown, and broken bones.

I know love is hard work.  But my daydream reminds me that I choose to be an optimist. I know optimists always fall in love easily. I know and accept being wounded when the falling in love comes to its inevitable sudden stop...and today that stop is “Michigan & Jackson”.

June 29, 2019 at 12:08 PM

Tinkle, Tinkle Pervasive Cloud /  by Matthew Fleming

Tinkle, tinkle Pervasive Cloud, how I wonder what you’re ‘bout! Pressing down my world so low, isn’t it ‘bout time you go?  Tinkle, Tinkle Pervasive Cloud, how I wonder what you’re ‘bout!

Where the blazes has the sun gone?  Nothing warm shines upon me.  Then you show ever more spite and tinkle, tinkle all day and night.  Tinkle, tinkle Pervasive Cloud, how I wonder what you’re ‘bout!

I travel in wet, ever sadder, thanks to your tiny bladder.  I cannot see which way to go, my eyes blinded ‘cause you tinkle so.  Tinkle, tinkle Pervasive Cloud, how I wonder what you’re ‘bout!

The sky you keep dark gray, often for more than three day.  ‘Cause you never shut your hose you give me an endless runny nose.  Tinkle, tinkle Pervasive Cloud, how I wonder what you’re ‘bout!

As your never-ending bladder soaks me and fellow traveler – still I wonder what you’re ‘about, tinkle, tinkle Pervasive Cloud.  Tinkle, tinkle Pervasive Cloud, how I wonder what you’re ‘bout!

Fasten Your Seat Belts /  by Matthew Fleming

A good night’s sleep.

A window seat.

God pray my day finish as sweet.

Dark blue lake

heavy and swollen with what was white snow.

Geese are back; seagulls and ducks too.

Look at the handsome man in the lagoon crew.

Such a sky!

Makes me squint.

But can’t help try, so

I close my eyes and stare

until my eyes see red

and shapes and ideas come and play

and bounce around. Oh...those were potholes.

Jealous /  by Matthew Fleming

I wake to silence. No chirping of the birds.

Look out to glimpse a pale, gray sky.

No sun nor sharp shadows.

A dull, evenly lit world.


Winds from the east may warm her with kisses

making goosebumped waves of her skin

but sends a chill down my neck and reminds me

she is not my May to September lover.

Happy my Hawks hoodie still hung heavy on the hook,

I now see the sun melted like butter soaking into clouds

so heavy and low not even the airplanes are seen or heard. 

So long before I’m enveloped in her embrace.

So long before every hair on my skin slowly sways

as we pitch and roll in mermaid play.

I long for her.

Jealous of the freighter on the horizon.

Jealous of the beaches and the rocks and the piers and the cribs.

They always have her, all year, forever.

Until they ebb into her eternity. 

"Will you go hunt, my lord?"* /  by Matthew Fleming

What is my song?  Music and poetry.

What is my music?  Poetry without words.

What is my poetry? The music of my soul.

What is my soul? My ache for love; for love of a hart.

​(*Thank you, Mr. Shakespeare. “Twelfth Night”)

The New B’hemoth /  by Matthew Fleming

1883: Emma Lazarus publishes “The New Colossus”

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

MOTHER OF EXILES. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

 

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

 

1886: Statue of Liberty National Monument opens.

Since the 1850’s and continuing to today, approximately 10% of the U.S. Population has been foreign born.

 

1903: Lazarus’ “New Colossus” is affixed to Statue of Liberty’s pedestal.

 

Friday, January 27, 2017:

President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 13769 immediately banning foreign nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries from visiting the country for 90 days, immediately suspending entry to the country of all Syrian refugees indefinitely, and immediately prohibiting any other refugees from coming into the country for 120 days.

 

February 2017: Matthew Fleming writes “The New B’hemoth”

Oh, Mother of Exiles, how we have strayed from the path of Liberty your enlightened high hand has shown these many years!  If now we turn our back the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free your beacon-hand, once a light to the world and worthy of devotion, will forever be seen with righteous revulsion should this humane nation survive these trials.

Oh, Liberty Enlightening the World, no longer will the nations speak your name if we fail in our great ambition.  Your skin, like our young Republic, is green and frail - just two pennies thick - but lasted this past century and more.

Oh, Lady Liberty, if we give way to Phobos and let Ares reign, when we cross the Styx we shall surely drown in the Acheron or Cocytus!  If this comes to pass weep not for me, but for the country we once sought it could be.  Once beloved, envied, a light upon the mountain top!  Once feared by tyrants, today we seem to have allowed one to lord over us; given a bully the bully pulpit.

Take back, Kallstadt, the young, storied Trump or set him to sail with the ignoble bin Laden!  For if Charity and Civility are no longer virtues in my homeland, I know not where I live, and Cape Breton’s call becomes the sweeter!

Resilient and resourceful resistance is needed to rescue us from ourselves.  Please let the aureole of your golden torch once again beacon to that wretched refuse which has built this great nation; to that homeless tempest-toss which has been sent to us; send us a sign and keep alive our ideal.  For who our we if we no longer believe equality of opportunity is available to all?  If we don’t see allowing so is the soil of highest of aspirations and its fruits are true greatness achieved?