Author: poetryfest

With you I am home
Never one place
Nevertheless, lovingly inhabited

In your presence
With stronger belonging
Than childhood rooms

Returning to you
Wherever you may be
Like welcoming in an entryway

Placing my key on familiar counters
Walking the halls
Whose sounds I’ve memorized

Knowing the pattern
Of your approaching steps
That creak with the wood

A house I’ve returned to
Too many times, and too familiar
To only exist in one lifetime

Floors and foundation
Deeper than a single love
Undoubtedly reoccurring

With you I am home
The greatest gift of peace
It would suffice, for me
If I can always return here

silken grasp shimmer,
bearing the fate of mother,
unfurls one gray pearl.

“What do you want for dinner?”
My grandfather asked me.
Their house warm with the scent of biscuits rising in the oven,
and my grandmother’s chatter.
He looked down on me with a spark in his eye
because he knew he did not need to ask.
“Macaroni and cheese please.”
He laughed in a way that made it easy to picture him young.
“You got it kiddo.”
This was our skit we played at every meal.
Roast in the oven and mashed potatoes whipped in the pan,
but my grandfather couldn’t resist the urge to spoil me
with a special order,
even sometimes for breakfast.
I watched him in the kitchen.
He moved like a bird building its nest,
instinctual.
His hands broad and strong,
softened with time,
the skin a bit slack,
but his fingerprints told a story of work,
of many lives lived,
through pain and pride,
love and loss.
A thick woven web
that stretched all the way to his small kitchen.
He hummed and sang as he put water on to boil.

I sit with him now,
but he searches for me,
through a fog of confusion,
his memories stirred up in his mind,
but he finds me.
“How is your ski resort doing? You bought a ski resort, right?” he asks.
I own a house, near a ski resort,
but I do not correct him.
“Yes, it is going well.” I say, “We are having a great Winter.”
His eyes strain to read my lips and he smiles.

“Good, good.” He pats me on the knee,
his hands jittery in constant tremble.
This morning he thought he missed the school bus.
His mother is in his bedroom, she woke him, he says.
My brother’s room is his now,
filled with figments of his mind,
seeped out into the world.
He looks at me with watery eyes,
because he knows.
“Grampy, what do you want for dinner?”

God, I’m bored right now.
Why can’t I be wealthy;
like a celebrity, but not famous.
Just enough money to do stupid things.
Stupid money.

I’d fly to France for a baguette.
Nothing crazy,
just stupid.
Of course, I’d never do it,
but I’d like the option.

Instead, I have no options.
I could return the kid’s soccer cleats
and go out to dinner,
but then I’d feel awful later,
when she’s the only one
whose mom ate her cleat money.

Responsibility is so boring.
I wish a pterodactyl would land in the yard.
Just long enough for the ring camera
to snap a few pics,
for everyone to call me liar.
But I would know.
And that would be enough.

At least I’m thinking up options.
Impossible ones,
but nonetheless.

You were:
Natural auburn/Freckles/Old Spice
I was:
Sleep deprivation/Trust issues/Eager

Your barbershop haircut and Rolex watch said “privileged”
Your honorary tattoos for your 11 friends who OD’d
Said something else

I sipped a watermelon margarita
That had plenty of tequila
You kept looking at me like you didn’t want to blink.

First kiss I was floored/
Wanted more
Then I thought about it too much/
Worried I’d never have better

I loved that you kissed me hard/
Like you knew only kisses could hold me together/
Like you wanted me to know you meant it
Effortless was/
Being with you/
Was—
Effortless.

“Hmm,” you said,
With a big, stupid grin.
“Tastes like watermelon.”
I giggled. You said,
“I liked it”

When you drove me home
Your cheeks were hurting from smiling
Being with you was effortless/
I feared I could get used to it
I think you did, too
[Didn’t you?]

He says he loves me.
I wish I knew how to love me too.
Maybe I can outsource the job of loving me. To him.
Have his love reflect from my body,
Like a sunset reflecting from an empty glass building.
Better yet, maybe I can take that love,
And pass it off as my own.
Plagiarize it.
Maybe then I’ll feel
Loved enough.

I saw a nihilist holding a flickering lamp,
The season of failures has begun,
obsessing all the heroes of life
to commit a mass-suicide.

Navy blue colours the darkest of nights,
All babies are deprived of lullabies.
She died every day a little inside,
devoid of living her golden life.

The nests are empty, their dwellers gone.
I lurk on misty earth into oblivion.
No more chains of heaven left;
Sinners and saints are all dead.

Sometimes you breathe, sometimes they.
Weeping stars are shining in vain.
The silence of centuries against my skin,
dust swallows my name.

Lumumba! Lumumba! we shouted across the playground
in all-white Windsor. A joke for a name that rolled off the tongue:
the ignorance of the young.

It must’ve been heard on the news, half-listened to,
something distant in Africa we didn’t care about,
just a funny name to shout.

Photographed in the back of an army lorry, guarded by bored
soldiers that kill without conscience,
this betrayal of Independence.

Murdered in Cold War connivance, just another casualty
of geopolitics: the future of the Congo was dead,
dictatorship and death instead.

You wanted worship, I wanted love – Sadie J. Lang
All you wanted was your manhood sainted;
Anointed by a holy oil, grasped in heaven’s gate.
You wanted love, and I thought that’s what I gave.

Is it now; that dragon, sated?
Have you found the release you’ve long awaited?
In a cave of hallowed souls, you craved it—

But the snake is never charmed by song alone,
so tell me how it feels to turn to stone.
When the pleasure’s gone, you’ll have no home.

When death has come about your loan:
all the time borrowed, and the love you’d been shown,
don’t forget to mention the girl you’d known—

The one you let go; the one you let run!
All of god’s fruits will spoil in the sun,
but my garden’s bloom has just begun.

God’s masterpiece, you let her go,
you let her leave, and now you know:
When life draws cards that say you’ve won,
don’t gamble just to have some fun.

My white kite tail fights
a bloodred, turbulent sky
above a scorched earth