Author: poetryfest

Enlighten me, friend
You tell the finest stories
What is your favorite?

In the sole required text for that Intro to Western Civ
State-college course I took as a freshman, in the chapter
On the 19th century Industrial Revolution in England,
I saw farmhands by the dozens streaming up the street
From a black iron gate, their agricultural work rendered
Obsolete by mechanization, migrants from fields of grain
In the West Midland countryside who’d sought employment
In the city to support their families, creased hands and faces
As smeared with soot as the chimney-sweeping children
In William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience,

No longer rewarded for their labor by a soft pink layer
Of cloud on the horizon, in a dimness lit by oil lanterns,
In grimed bib overalls, black boots, and flat cloth caps,
Clogging the thoroughfares of the first big city to build
The “Satanic mills” derided, in Blake’s anthemic “Jerusalem”
For spoiling the beauty of “the green and pleasant land,”
Only to emerge, in the grainy black and white photograph
On the facing page, from a gray mass of slurry and steam,
In silhouette in the cobbled street like a herd of black sheep
After the 12-hour workday in the Birmingham factory—

Predecessors of my grandfather, my uncle, and my father,
Who lathed sheets of metal and labored in tool and die
For a coal-mining machinery company in Columbus, Ohio,
For more than thirty years each, who showered at work
And shot the shit with buddies in the locker room before
Car-pooling home in one or another of their shiny sedans,
Entering the house by the same door they’d left by at dawn,
Leaving behind in the locker at the shop clothes as greasy
And yellow safety helmets as hard and bright as those
Of their African American and Appalachian workmates:

Fabricators in the shed, forklift operators, and shippers
And receivers on the docks who routinely lost their fingers
Or got bonked in the head with a beam swung by a crane,
Yet who remained as proud of the things they produced,
Shovels, dozers, scrapers, loaders, excavators, draglines,
And universal cutting machines for fossil-fuel exploitation,
In spite of the deleterious eventual effects of pollution
And the unknown connection of coal to climate change
As the rough Brummie blokes at the end of the workday were
Of the practical things they made in those Birmingham mills:

Textiles made from the cotton of slave-camp plantations
In Asia and the Americas, cast iron from the coke of ore
Mined in creek-beds and forged in coal-burning furnaces,
Steam engines that “freed the manufacturing capacity
Of human society from the limited availability of hand, water,
And animal power,” sulfuric acid, a hybrid of copper
And iron known as “vitriol,” responsible for the modern
Chemical industry as we know it today, for the DuPonts
And Dows, the Chevrons and Monsantos, that make such vast
And inexpensive quantities of indispensable necessities,

Fertilizer, detergent, insecticide, and batteries, antifreeze,
Rust remover, petroleum, and paint, if not also responsible
For the raging epidemics of cancer that began to ravage
The reproductive organs, the breasts, endometria, cervixes,
Uteri, vulvas, vaginas, and ovaries of women, not to mention
Their lungs, livers, pancreases, lymph nodes, stomachs,
And brains, when the Forest of Arden, celebrated
As a retreat from civilization by Jacques in Shakespeare’s
Comedy As You Like It, was surveyed by greedy speculators
And clear-cut, like North America, for firewood and lumber.

Santa tell me,
Do you only give material things?
Because my wishes are ethereal,
Saturn dreams.

Santa tell me,
Can I speak to your higher up?
I need a power that can grant me
True love.

This commodity game is driving me crazy
I need something money can’t buy,
I just want peace for my family.

My mom works two jobs,
Supports a son who is lazy.
Can’t see her grandchild
The toxicity is rampant.

Santa tell me,
What’s going on?
You bring toys for children
Adults have to buy.

Santa tell me,
Could you have got it wrong?
Presents aren’t what we need,
It’s hope for which we long.

Voice Over: Val Cole

Editor & Visual Design: Steve Rizzo

Produced by Matthew Toffolo

dark mysteries
civilize
the ivory mind
that grows confines
Inner Station infestation

snaking vines –
who swallows whom?

carnivorous heart, his
a hungry captive
feeding its obesity

bloated, insidious church
of Might makes Right
preys on
sovereign
bended knee

through shuttered windows stained

voracious machetes
wildly castrate all
as red
in random patterns flies

The cook passed the food.
Like all schools, she keeps
secret agendas, hiding
green among the masses,
fooling perceptions,
creating, forcing,
new appetites, cravings, desires.

Juices are forced inside
boiled or steamed.
Textures become one
in death. No life.
No life present.

I wonder how wind would taste,
like, if it were infused with food.
Or water rising up from dirt
through roots, carrying eternities
of events:
Memories of sky adventures,
Torrential change,
Acceptance,
Rebirth.

Why can’t I taste that?

We take each–falsely enflavor–a cost of identity,
and mix them together to create something that bursts
common experience.

Richard S. Chiochios
3/14/17
Draft I

Dear Jenny from Forrest Gump 5/9/25

I’m sorry about how they treat you. You would never fall in love with him the way they wanted.
I’m sorry my dad asked the female siri on his phone “was Jenny a whore” , And I’m sorry it was on a sunday morning
And that the first result was an article -written by a man- beginning with “Jenny was a bitch.”
And I’m sorry that your dad was a man like so many others who did not love you and I’m sorry that’s what that article blamed you for.
And I’m sorry Forrest loved you and you are the villain because of that and I’m sorry perspectives are considered unfathomable when it bottles down to chivalry.
You told him to run, it’s not your fault he survived.
And I’m sorry you died soon after but then not soon enough

Dear Amber Hagmen
I remember the last time I saw you riding your bike
Telling your little brother to go on home first
Promising that you would be right behind him
Trusting you
He left

Dear Amber
I saw your brother come home
But without you
He told me what you had said to him
I trusted him
We waited
Dear Rene
I need you to come back home now
Come back to me

Dear Amber
They haven’t found you
I wait
For an answer
For anything
For a sign

Dear Amber Hagman
They found you
Dead
I need to know who the culprit was
Whose idea was it
To take you from me

Dear ________
I will not rest until I find you
I will take you like you took her from me
Until then
I wait

Revistion:
Dear Amber Hagmen
Dear Amber
I remember the last time I saw you riding your bike, pedaling your way home-
Telling your little brother to go on
Promising that you would be right behind him
Trusting you
He left

Dear Amber Hagman
I saw your brother come home
But without you, nowhere to be seen
He told me what you had told him
I trusted him
We waited
Paitently

Dear Rene
I need you to come back home now
Come back to me
Please
Please…dont go missing

Dear Amber
They haven’t found you
I wait
For an answer
Anything
A sign

Dear Amber Hagman
They found you
Dead
I need to know who did this
Whose idea was it
To take you from me

Dear ________
I will not rest until I find you
I will take you like you took her from me
Until then
I wait
Searching

I’m stuck aging with the rest of these millennial fucks who can only wax nostalgia with what they got. Boy bands, Britney and modem noises. MTV’s last gasp. Kid Rock sucking Scott Stapp’s cock and you bet even the ones in suspenders and man-buns will be there, not knowing whether to jerk off or call them problematic or both. Saving the world and running for office like it’s some Marvel-MAGA-Whole Foods picture-show, only you’re half-blind and kinky and shun anyone who doesn’t flaunt your couture brand of rage whether left or right, and you never quite grew past all that mall goth sarcasm in Congress while determining the fate of millions, did you? You’re boomer lite, sans the money. And you’re gonna vote Regan too. Every generation thinks they invented sex but here we invented tradwives and social justice. Oh mama, can this be the end? To be stuck inside the fascist sequel with the breadtubers again. Wholesome hoedowns and soy palloi, and NPR hosts who speak to us like kindergarten teachers. Let us make a more just, verdant and peaceful world, full of pudgy little Cocomelon banshees who foam sugar and serotonin at the mouth and blink like halls of flashing lights, nothing another whisper-talk about feelings can’t fix they draw blood at the merest request. Pats on the back, “Madison’s on the right track.” She just strangled a cat. But that’s none of anyone’s business anyway. We’re a generation of bad bitches who know what we’re doing and smirk. We’re a generation of bad bitches who shit avocado smoothies and pretend the past lasted all of five seconds because, in a sense, it can only repeat itself

There is no bond between me and the mirror.
The ceiling of my chest collapses beneath the cold boot of loneliness,
and sorrow melts across the brow of memory.
Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.
The harsh slaps of absence sting the child’s face,
as the black parade of clock hands
marches to the tune of your vanishing.
Toys.
Heartbeat.
Fear sprouting in the ashes of forgotten youth.

I was not a phoenix, nor a seeker of manhood.
I was regret curled in the lap of life,
an innocent fault trapped in the loathsome snare of obedience—
a premature release,
a rush,
a helplessness.

You were not.
You are not.
You will not be—
That is the question.

I embraced the doll. Nothing.
I embraced a friend. Nothing.
I embraced a cigarette. Nothing.
I embraced a lover. Nothing.
I embraced the bottle. Nothing.
I embraced the crowd. Nothing.

In my city, no one knows the worth of the sun.
The towering canopy of thoughts forgets the blessing of day.
The turquoise tide of mind forgets the worth of the moon.
The torn sail of feeling forgets the gift of wind.

And still,
no bond exists between me and the mirror.
On one side, this aged middle-age,
on the other, a rejected child.
No bond between me
and me
and me.