Author: poetryfest

I started at five,
morphed into ten.
Crisis overflow—
Why am I sleeping with so many men?

Made a promise.
Repent.
Born again.
No more men.

Then I do it again,
again,
and again.

This ain’t how Mama raised me.
To sin
has become my religion.

How could I ever be somebody’s wife
With all of these ghosts
Hiding away in my closet?

A new one comes—
The counter ticks again.
This ain’t for pleasure,
No, not at all.

Just need skin to skin
to feel
something.

Make a vow:
I’ll be good.
I’ll do right.
Try celibacy.
Quit – cold turkey.
No more ghosts lurking—
Just stay in the light.

Weeks pass.
Months.
I can even do years.

But another comes.
The ache begins.
She throbs below.

Can’t stay a good girl for too long.
Need a fix.
I dive back in.

Why am I such a whore?
Why must I scratch an itch
that’s never satisfied?

He can’t please me,
So I go to the next guy,
And then there’s that one over there.

It was ten a few years ago.
Now I don’t even try to pretend.

Don’t ask God for forgiveness.
Skip the church altar on Sunday.
There’s no need to ask for salvation.
Why?

A ho gon’ be a ho.
And I’m just gon’ do it again anyway.

how we took down the economy in the first decade of the century

We bit into the century
like strawberries in June—

each one a bond,
dressed in sugared red—

sacks of pulp
with seeds of risk.

We said:
*slice it,*
*package it,*
*rate it triple-A.*

Call it fruit
when it’s barely jam.

The men in suits
didn’t build anything.

They conjured glass towers
from bundled lies,

paper pyramids
stacked in fog.

They sold dreams
disguised as data—

and the data—
*doctored—danced.*

Greed grew a mouth
too big to chew.

It gorged—
it gasped—
it gnashed.

What began as hunger
turned to *frenzy*:

hedge fund sharks
in Armani,

mortgages flung like glitter
onto the backs
of the barely solvent.

Oh, the credit agencies—
*sacred oracles*—

told us the storm
was sunshine.

We taxed their names
with hearings,
with headlines—

but no stars were stripped.
No shrines dismantled.

And the economy—
that brittle
*glass god*—

shattered on impact
when the music
stopped.

They called it
*correction.*

We called it
*collapse.*

And somewhere,
the last ripe strawberry
was picked clean

by someone
who bet against
the harvest—

and won

My heart is held by the tiny prints from your hands.
The curls of your little fingers,
Entwined between the strands of my hair
Latched to comfort with a familiar scent.
My eyes are blessed to see you grow
A tiny and fragile soul
Blooming, like a wildflower
Infectious and beautiful,
Where does the time go?
Gorgeous blue eyes radiate,
The way the light sparks within
Glowing and spreading.
My selfless tribute to,
The incision from where you entered this world.
Where grooved stripes allowed you to grow and gave comfort.
In beauty too, they honor you
When night falls,
And after we’ve laughed and learned
I cherish each and every moment,
My precious little one.
The laughter, the tears and
Everything in between
Forever and every moment after.

I keep dreaming of hope,
As my wake – unyielding –
Keeps whispering,
And it grumbles – silently,
As her arms surround me,
Hopelessly,
I wonder,
Does hope love me?
If she does,
She does so – tenderly,
For when time travels,
I can feel her –
No longer,
I can smell her –
No sweeter,
As this love –
Turns into yearning
For me.

Twelve cuts clean through everything we built from paper and spit.

White blossoms scatter the carpet—

Someone dreams horizontal on leather.

Salt mouth, foreign tongue. Three walls between your
laughter and my archaeology of bad choices, each one a
small burial.

Porcelain altar, silver streams carving territories on my
cheek. The mirror holds a carnival ghost—

dust of dead stars in my hair.

What remains when the costume slips?

Just bone and the weight of knowing how easy it is to
become someone you don’t recognise.

Then warmth finds the spaces between my shoulder blades.
Your voice,

a soft excavation:

“I’m sorry.”

The apology lands like rain on already flooded ground.

By morning,

even the glitter will forget where it

fell.

After the election, I bow low in Sajdah

beneath the architecture of all I have read
skylit stairwells of spines, cathedrals of testimony—

& weep

As a docent for the National Memorial of Facts
I flash my light over history’s headstones, their letters
fading in a whiteout wind

His hair flares like a matchstick over a fuse

I offer my skin to undocumented families
craft my words into rape kits & purchase
1,460 vivacious hijabs, one for each day of his term

I become a tireless rim beneath the weight

Occasionally, some beauty reminds me
to raid sorrow with a pen, radiate old tumors

enflamed by the gaslighter-in-chief, crime
boss at hallway’s end, past the kitchen

supplies & MRI tubes, a malignancy
born of a million careful lies we’ve been

programmed to ignore & call our own

(Sci-Fi for Rob Halford, Written While Sitting On a Curb
Outside Steven Spielberg’s “Amblin’ Entertainment”
Universal Backlot Office, Bungalow 477)

Ravages of starlight
beat upon his head:
This battleground,
a smoking field of dread.

His body feels the pummel
of wars so vast and cold.
His mission is to “…do
as (he’s) been told.”

His only thought is to the symptom
and how he might profane the foe.
His wrists are cracked from strains
he’s brought from outland,
vanity in tow.

Dark Elder.

He crosses state and continent,
politics on full.
Three billion lives
melt quickly to his pull.

He stands, a smirking victor.
His flags dot all the earth.
He slaughters all
not of his cherished birth.

A land of locks and machinations
pulling minds apart like bones.
No more the moon
no more the spray of sunlight.
The land is dry and cold.

Dark Elder.

Unstoppable earthquakes,
One after another,
Their vibrations digging through
My mantle, to the core.

Unceasing thunder,
Rumbling and powerful.

What cataclysmic event,
What shocking collision of atoms,
Could have led to this –
Sweet creature,
Purring on my lap?

If only you could understand
The seismic impact your arrival had on my Earth,
And the joy I now feel within it.

I needed a father
Strong and wise,
To guide me through life’s highs and lows.

Instead in your absence,
I became the strong one,
I learned to fight and
learnt right from wrong.

In the depths of despair,
I found my way and found the strength to fight each
day.

Through the pleads with God for you to be here for
me,
Silence is what I received.

In the silence I found grace
And learned to stand up for myself

Country music radio is an endless hellscape
Trapped in the chair I stir with discomfort
My ears now suffering the same punishment as my mouth
What have I done to deserve such a treatment?
Amidst my torture, there is a brief period of respite.
Like the morning sunrise arriving to warm the coldest night air.
Heads Carolina, Tails California.
My ears are soothed by it’s sweet nectar.
For the moment, I believe in God’s grace as one of her angels sings to me.
But as her voice fades into the next ham fisted attempt at art,
I bid Jo Dee farewell.
I fucking hate the dentist.