Author: poetryfest

You are the sun,
brightness everlasting,
finding hope,
finding excuses to be happy.

You are the stars
with ambition for eternity,
able to combine your wits with passion
to form your own constellation.

You are my moon
somehow healing my confusion.
Now I see you clearly love,
it’s only you.

I would say “I love you”
but the implications of such
would drown out all pleasure
Soaking heart’s fragile contract and
muddying these spontaneous words
yet to be written

So here I stand
trapped in your gaze
as the blood rises higher
sloshing through my veins
But I will not be overcome
by my desire for you
This is not love,
merely a forethought of
promises that may be broken
and hate that may be kept

I say, as if these flimsy statements
could be my raft, floating
through the rapids of passion
saving me from the cold water below
But, as far on the shore as I may crawl
your tide will claim me eventually
and I shall become enraptured
in your baleful flow
whisked away to the vast
and deadly sea of intertwining lives

No matter how hard I wish
for a safe and passing path
there is no resisting this silent siren song
dripping from your skin
But until my ship crashes
upon your jagged rocks
I shall try with all my might
to resist the reasonless pull
of the words
“I love you”

When emerald eyes and diamond tears
Will lay to rest all of my fears
I will see your face with quirky looks
And joyful smiles full of hopes
We’ll remember your beautiful words
The way you withstood all the hurts
How like a wave
You were swept into the grave
But wait there my cherry blossom
The flowers are soon to bloom
The beach’s sunset set to swoon
A supernova of light and flowers
A picture perfect set of hours
So wait for me dear cherry blossom
In our time you sure did show ‘em

*An homage to Zin Zin Zin A Violin

I can safely say that even if we weren’t related:
his writing is untouchable, he still would be my favorite.

The trombone while in high school sparked a grand fondness for music.
I’d try my luck announcing (if I thought that I could do it).

Unsure about his children’s book (you don’t know til you try).
He wrote (and drew) since toddlerhood, not unlike William Steig.

It seemed to be his destiny (just one of many others).
But who’d’ve thought the idea took just three days to uncover?

Despite the odds, the book’s adored (through all the years and many more).
Those thirty years have quickly passed, and look at all he has amassed.

Composer’s revenge still holds up, of that you can be sure.
To think he had to be convinced (and by my mom, not yours).

Runner up for Caldecott, it seems he played to win.
A soldier on and off screen, join me to hail zin zin!

i stay inside and ruminate
in a four-walled room like it’s innate,
inert but roaming a mindscape
a mind at stake, but how to escape

the era kaleidoscoped into an atom,
too much to ever fathom,
but there’s no way around exploring this chasm
this hairline crack that contains it all
the birth, the rise, the peak and fall

so where is the bottom, the end of this mixtape?
it wasn’t mine to play, and I didn’t make it
loops over and around again, history replays it
self over masses, arrogance betrays it

leave or be left, kill or be killed
neither choice leaves room for the inevitable rebuild
just a cycle in pocket, saying here’s the beat don’t drop it
compelled by all the music noise, too loud to stop it

but then there is you, bright shiny new
sparkling penny off the old press
impressed to be with you
so this cycle, I’ll chop it

try to keep that change in pocket,
in locket, won’t drop it on rainy days while on the street walking
and the little minted coin will always tell it like it is
you are a small one in a hundred, that’s what the truth is
but change is just perspective; flip it & you win.

The cruelest thing
is a rose. It is sharp but it is beautiful,
so I hear,
and the animals make me hold it to
my breast. Label me,
standing here obedient
as vile. The skin beneath my collarbone
is broken, but even then,
I resemble the gorgeous women
in the paintings men render,
where tears are only beautiful. I am prettier
when my makeup is smeared down my cheeks,
when it is clear I need saving, and I agree.
I have two pointer fingers and a revolver
aimed at the beating in my chest.
There is no regret, not resting
in me, anyway. When I come alive,
they watch the revolver clatter
with disgust. I cannot tell if it is
me they are ashamed of
or themselves.
The animals startle.
I am not a cartoon princess. I am
their father’s America. I am
the End and the beginning of life,
one hand curled around the plush
of my stomach. I am a sight even when
tears blur my vision. I am the field soldiers fight on,
and die on, and are buried
under. The last thing I lose
is the rose. You can’t tell
I ever held it.

Pick me a flower
and I’ll give you my day.
We’d laugh and talk
of adventures we’d like to take;
around the world,
flying through clouds and dreams.

Buy me a bouquet
and I’ll give you my night.
Filled with romance and passion
lips do what hands do
under streetlights, and backseats,
stairwells and park benches.

Build me a garden
and I’ll give you my life.
Tied to one another, I’ll forever
ve yours–as your eyes are blue
and mine are brown.

Give me a seedling
to love and to hold.
Together we’ll cherish a love
never known until cries from
tiny blue lips.

Lay down one singular rose
on my tomb made of oak.
where we will say goodbye
till our hearts intertwine once
more in the clouds.

Maiden battles are an easy conquest
Or so they jest,
I’ve never been with a woman.

But it’s alright,
The mail is light,
And ambition burns bright.

As the sun entered its full luster,
The Frenchmen began their cluster,
a swarm surrounding their queen.

I watched them charge the hills,
have they forgotten our emblematic tales
that I am the prince of Wales?

“Hail, bring hail upon them.
Feed the earth with songs of love.
Hail, bring hail upon them.
Drink these Welsh arrows sent from above!”

For the Black Prince wages war.

The sky reflected the blood let,
faux chivalry bred contempt, yet
the knights betray their own.

The slaughter of one’s own weak,
what sort of lords do you seek
to be?

Good King John weeps
with his hollow eyes, he leaps
to bring clarity.

The sky now melds with earth and sun.

But the sun does not deny a sightless man,
so the Blind King, knowing his role,
rode as fate unrolled her scroll,

The sightless sovereign swung his sword.
one by one, killed my men.
one by one, massacred my friends.

“Father, father help me!
Father, oh why must you abandon me!”

But across the Norman field,
the first king of the Seas revealed
his edict unto me.

with a stare of his eyes,
I hear what they imply.
“Learn.”

He was right.
Cowardice, what blights
must be quashed.

“Nobles, rally to me!
Let us teach a blind man how to flee!
Charge! Charge! Cha—”

Who knew that a fall
could conjure an inertial stall.
All I saw, frozen stares.

Friends are like garters though,
tightly sewn.

Richard abandoned his standard,
gave into his carnal prowess.
Even the gouged felt his malice.

Arundel’s earl,
sensed the peril,
gathered the Garter’s men,

swung the knights
in the way of the emerging night,
maiming the Bohemian charge.

As the heirs of Luxembourg fled,
Their king, blessed he, charged ahead,
broke our line with such ease

and found the upstart boy,
but he could not see
the pride of Wales filled with glee.
“Hail, bring hail upon him!”

Arrows crucified a king to the wind.
“Hail, bring hail upon him!”
His loyal steed turned; he was crushed and pinned.

at last, the Bohemians ran.
The sun had set.
the crows came to collect.

The Good King, dying,
motioned for the good prince, smiling.
“I hold no grudge; but do remember me little one”

Edward understood what he meant,
this battle was well spent,
the king could rest peacefully.

He will be immortal.

“Here lies King John,
God forbid that he ever flee,
and so he met his end at Crécy”

“I will don your words unto my crest.
‘I serve’ your memory.
May you shine for eternity.”

And so the fields of Crécy now slept.

Performed by Val Cole

—
POEM:

Ed- I watch as he stumbles, a man undone,
A poet once soaring, now falling—done.
His words like daggers, sharp but not kind,
A tortured soul with a fractured mind.
“Nevermore,” he mutters, his eyes vacant, cold,
A genius’s madness, a story retold.
I wish I could save him, this hero of rhyme,
But he’s drowning in shadows, lost to his time.
The drink in his hand shakes, spilling like rain,
Echoes of sorrow, more poignant than pain.
His fame is his shackle, his gift a cruel weight,
Ed’s brilliance too bright for this darkened fate.
He whispers his secrets, too soft to be heard,
Yet in his silence, we’re haunted by words.

Performed by Val Cole

—–
POEM:

The abhorrent white mucus bore no trace of the honeyed nuances he was accustomed to.
All the elements of earth and beast were absent in its creation,
As if this pale perversion stood wholly apart from the nurturing animal for which it did imitate.
And though the divine vertebrate may be spared,
Its thin and eternal replacement was devoid of any origin and thus all cessation.
Man had played maker and created only abomination.

What gifts of gods has man not poisoned with the fumbling hands of some great ape?
Turning impotent stone into sharpened steel
And warm hearths into scorched earth.
Even those very extremities with which he once beheld the universe;
Built for simple vocations, such as bathing or feeding or loving,
Passed graciously down to him from his crawling forebears, upon such pretences,
Have been deformed and remade into mechanical appendages of some otherworldly reckoning.
Cold and incapable of feeling all that it touches, though it touches all.

If you were to interlock it’s claws with your own fleshen counterparts
You would find them crushed likewise in the subsequent embrace.

Yet you spare the sacred bovine by allowing those same talons to caress and molest her underbelly,
Arresting its product from the crying mouths of her children by the gallon,
And pumping it full of all manner of alchemical pesticides by ritualistic warlocks in white lab coats.
Sterilised and advertised all the way to your kitchen counter,
For perfect consumption