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You know, Saturday night,
I found myself in one of those moods.
I drank some wine
And threw in my lot
With some of those old, old blues.
I am talking about Skip James
When he sings in that haunting falsetto,
"You know, I would rather be the devil
Than to be that woman's man."
 
Maybe you know what I mean.
Maybe you have been there
When that lonesome sun goes down
And the dark and the silence left behind
Are all that we know of love and truth.
 
I poured out wine
That maybe strictly speaking I did not need,
But since when did what I need
Have much to do with anything?
I cannot say that I have been mistreated.
It is more that where there was a wrong turn,
I zeroed in on it.
 
You can flip through the leaves of the book
Of who I was
And who I come to be.
You may find some pretty colors there,
Some silences, and some despair,
Where Buñuel's razor
Rakes my eyeball raw

And the film tangles in the projector
And the screen goes white.
This is nothing but life as it is.
The pretty colors I once thought I found there,
I do not know where they are gone.

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David Matthews is a native of the South Carolina Midlands who now resides in Portland, Oregon. He is author of the chapbooks, Notes to One Who Is Far from Here (2003) and A Portable Bohemia (2008). Poems have appeared in Chattahoochee Review, Quill and Parchment, Red River Review, Tryst, and other journals, the poetry blog Magnapoets, and the anthologies "Blown Out: Portland's indie poets" and "Raising Our Voices: an anthology of Oregon poets against the war."