Author: poetryfest

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

Performed by Val Cole

—-
POEM:

Love is like sitting down at your favorite restaurant & eating your favorite meal
Just to walk away from the table with no left overs & wallet feeling smaller based on the bill

Love smells like your favorite desert on Christmas evening when all the presents have opened, yet saddened to have to wait a year for those very moments

Love looks like a family picture on vacation with big bright smiles & hugs that were just frowns & complains of all that’s around, low & above

Love sounds like waves in an ocean or seashells at the beach the closer you get the more intense almost forgetting the sound of peace

Love feels like rolling around in silk sheets that just came from the dryer as you roll around with your eyes closed then open just to notice you never took them out the dryer

Love to me is imaginary a feeling, a smell, taste, sound, or look we want to last forever, yet comes & goes like many of the other emotions we tend to hang on

Performed by Val Cole

—-
POEM:

I find myself attached to a woman in the most peculiar way. I love her, but she’s a fractal scar of a person. She’s been struck by life, but who hasn’t. There’s a quietness I love about her – sheepish to show me what she likes; what music makes her soul breathe, what hobbies make her days feel more fresh.

I like how she makes a bad week into a perfect day, and I like how her by my side is like time standing still; honey in the air.

She drives me mad, but I keep running back to her everytime we argue. When we work together…we work together. I need her and I hope she needs me.

You do things for love that feel unnatural. Money gets spent, trips are traveled, and you don’t know yourself from the man you were first meeting her.

There’s diamonds and there’s rough, and she has a lot of dirt on her…but I don’t mind cleaning.

I love how she feels in my mind, but when we’re silent with one another it’s like a tumor; swelling and cracking my skull. I need her to be a part of my station; she’s the only frequency I want to hear.

The air is warm when she’s near. Not snow, sleet or rain could make me feel differently.

I want a coat made out of her voice. I want to put her smile in my pocket.

We break up and make up and now we’re just…two hearts in limbo.

I gave her all I could, but I’ll scrape the bottom of the barrel for more. I can pull my hair out over you but I’m not tired, and it always grows back.

I love you like I can’t explain. You’re mine, like blood in my body.

I hope I don’t say things in vain, because we’re cogs. We’re designed the same.

I want you to see what I see, and not run away. Every push feels like my soul is being punched.

I need you to heal yourself, so I can be yours.

I do my part, clean shaven and law abiding. The world is scary and I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m trying. I try everyday to keep calm, but you make my emotions curse themselves.

You’re torrential…but you cool me down.

You’re mine. I want you even if it all seems pitch black.

You can be cold, but even a single match can draw heat for two.

Be mine, and open the door for my eternal waiting. A rose sits in my pocket even if I am just bones now.

…nevermind…I realised my own worth.

Performed by Val Cole

—-
POEM:

If you asked my parents

“What was the worst year
Of your youngest daughter’s life?”

They might tell you age twenty.
Because that’s the year
A bottle of pills
Found their way
To the bottom
Of my stomach.

But that wasn’t
The worst
Of my experiences.

If you asked me
The same question
You’d get a more accurate response.
I’d tell you age seventeen.
The year I lost control
Of my body.
7 times in one night.
I’d tell you of how
To this day
I can still feel

Her hands
Running on my skin
Like knives.
Over and over
7 times
One after the other.

But in my house
We don’t feel trauma.
We hide it.
Bury it.
As far as it can go.

I learned that,
When at age ten
I asked my dad

“Can we tell the police?”

And he scorned

“Of course not.”

“Call we tell the parents?”

“We don’t tell anyone about this.”

“Ever.”

“Well, what do I do then?”

“Forget about it.”

So, I tried.

Believe me, I tried.
With everything I had
I tried to be like them.
I carried shame and avoidance
With me
Like my own children.
For years.
Never letting them out of my sight.
I took them with me
Through assaults,
And broken beer bottles on the floor.
To the tops of mountains,
In oceans, and rivers,
And lakes.
To concerts, and schools, and work.
With friends, family, strangers.

But when I tried
To bury myself
As deep as my traumas
It didn’t work.
I couldn’t breathe.
For some reason,
I am not like them.
I cannot push the pain away.
Maybe it’s because
My senses tell me
I am still there.
How can I avoid
And shame these feelings away
When they refuse to leave my side.

I wish more than anything
To be like them.
To live in avoidance
Like bliss.
To use a substance
To escape yesterday.

But yesterday
Keeps coming
Faster than tomorrow.

I just can’t keep up.

For whatever reason,
I’m not like them

Performed by Val Cole

—–

POEM:

There’s an aging letter in the drawer of my nightstand
It lays hiding in plain sight
On top of my grandma’s fake pearls
And papers that were lost on their way somewhere else
It doesn’t call out
Just plain white printer paper
And though I always know it’s there sometimes

I can forget
For long periods
It’s everything and nothing.
It’s worth reading every so often
But I carefully push it back into the blind spot.
Dip it into a bath of negative ions
Nullifying any power it may have
While I continue outside the drawer.

It’s written neatly in someone else’s handwriting.
Although it says everything I needed him to say
In near bullet fashion, the sentences race to their end and stop abruptly.
Then another.
It’s everything I told him in the last chapter.
Hell, I hired the counselor.
It’s deja vu or a face you swear you know.
And every so often I take it out and gently look over the dictation,
The guided voice and pen.
And it’s just enough doubt
To stay uncertainly searching
Outside of the drawer.

Peformed by Val Cole

—-
POEM:

There is that saying how can you love someone if you can’t love yourself?

Then again.
It has me thinking.
I love my family.
My friends.
Inanimate objects.
My creativity.

But at one point I was an afterthought
I spent a good part of my life.
Truly not loving me.
Liking myself never felt honest, real.
Didn’t feel worthy
I never really drew too much stock of the idea of loving me.
And deep within I thought it was just enough.
Going through life. Being just blah
Giving parts to myself, to people.Who I didn’t love.
Just because I could. It was easy
I was doing things just to make others happy.
While It didn’t make me happy.
I lost myself in the process

Once I truly stripped myself down. To the core of me
That’s when I began to accept the fact that it’s OK.
To ask for help.
That. its OK.
To set boundaries.
Learn not to settle.
Be honest with yourself.

My sadness.My darkness.My Scars
The hopes I have.
The wanderlust of my mind.
Fully understanding of who I am

I began to love everything that is me
I begin to see this light that I dimmed down for so long

Then the realization hits that loving yourself is one of the best feelings in the world.
From now until when my time is up
I will always love me.