Author: poetryfest

Through you, the eyes of a puppet:

1. You’ve sat at their tables, on stacked,
dusty books. You lean against a desk’s shadow.

Darkness remains in the room where they thumped us
with rapid finger flicks. Weightier decisions were taught
with the back of a hand.

2. Their oppressed light brightens to hope
planted with carved limbs and painted face.

Light was brighter without their secrets. Winding roads
walk on clouds that circle fields where grass is greener.

3. A child cuts your strings:

hands first raising your head to a blessed sky,
before their voices were raised to perfect you
when the first light of Christmas faded in the room.

4. The dirt scatters and is covered again:

small cakes churn beneath a tractor’s plow;
small souls lean against a hardwood forest—dark,
thinly spaced and leafless trees wait to be cut;
and wait for stars to spin spring back to life
that becomes abundant again.

But now, the land chats with its sinking gospel,
an underground closing its eyes beneath
gossamer shadows.

5. As the land dries and winds uncover me:

my glossy limbs crumble in the sun returning gifts
to your children. Knotted purchase lines are gone.
The weight of tangled strings no longer a burden.
6. And the moon disappears quickly in the light:
my body crumples in a world of retail food
on store shelves that feed hungry puppets.

Rise, Fall, Rise, Fall
Touch, blink, song, prayer
Rise, touch, silence.
Tears shed, goodbyes whispered
Corpse left, the end is over.
The Centurion takes its place
By warm corpse, cooling corpse
Await the undertaker
Guarding empty, gone, important
Angels, ghosts, and souls departed
Look after indelicate meat
Relinquish your charge, Centurion.
Don’t Look.

I am loathe to forget that grey stone on the banks of River Rui.
How can I? You and and I sit there every evening after all.
The memory always starts with us getting lost in stories of a past we misplaced.
But something feels different now.
Unlike yesterday, the sentence of your laughter fails to mature into a roar.
You see the grey clouds demanding the start of the morning
and you climb down from the perch along with the flowing waters.
You walk the other way, and the water slides into the fire.
The yellow fire turns into soup, red soup, sticky and angry.
It approaches my feet with a steady hiss, and I clamber to the edge of
the ledge from which you dove.
From a distance, your chapped lips coil into a sentence.
but I am grabbed by the collars of my shirt before you can whisper,
and I wake up in pieces.
The bedside mirror reveals all the broken parts.
You slip from me every time,
You never live long enough for me to believe
that you are already dead.

Whispers of Resilience

Beneath the moon’s soft glow, a soul reveals,
With a shard of pain, his spirit conceals.
A lone warrior amidst shadows deep,
A beacon of strength, his scars he’ll keep.

Just the two of us

In twilight’s tender grasp, our souls entwine,
Yearning hearts in a celestial ballet.
Chasing love’s glow through the darkest night,
Our essences merge, a flame takes flight.

Dear Jabari

In the afterlife, my dear son, I watch over you with love so true,
Though we never met, my guidance and love will see you through.
Stay strong, be kind, and always believe,
For in your heart, my spirit will never leave.

Awakening in the night

In the wreckage of my shattered dreams,
Where hope once bloomed, now silence screams.
Amidst the ruins, a whispering light,
Guides me from the depths of endless night.

From broken pieces, a phoenix arises,
Embracing scars, a soul reprises.
Through the ashes, a new fire burns,
In pain and beauty, my spirit learns.

In the reflection of the feces infested watering dish,
My appetite waned as I saw who I was
A plump, wide belly squealer half witted
Roaming rooms and ridges righteously
Screeching insufferable afterfore mentions of secular thought with a sopping mouth
Slack jaw exposes a foul gullet
Putrid scent engulfed all pristine sterile rooms

Newly minted farmers begrudgingly accommodate my feeding schedule
Branded another inoperative rodent-like swine ramming into doors
Chalked up emotional dysregulation and cognitive dissidence
Show no mercy, just pure pity for the easy meat
Personalized personality perilous hellian I was inside

Rioting inside a slop filled stomach,
With sharpened canines and tired claws, out I ate.
I ate from the inside out with a madcap deliriousness
Birthed of bloody shame made a too-late coming

Out spurred from my sheddings, vengeful rumbles led me to eat
Devoured greedily all the prison memories
Mass consumption to swallow it all, digesting the unconscious gutsy parts
Purged what even I couldn’t stomach of myself
Lurched all over a nondescript bar bathroom
Leaving acidic paste to the maggots that wait for mere morsels of human mistakes

Chopped off my dried out ears to leave the dogs to bicker over my nativity
Ground my feet into tasteless chum
Lick with a tiger’s tongue down the center gouge–lapping at it
Satanic chanting of bile pushes up in my throat

A hysterical excitement of greediness, it is, to feed on flesh!
My one-stop bacchanal is fervent
Constantly fending off of judgmental patrons
Vivacious self-cannibalism as I demonstrate the benefits of such meals
Infinitive dismemberment for the search of something meatier

I swear there is something within all these plastic primal cuts
Someone worth saving and NOT EATING
Sacrifice my pale impressionable slimy casing
Clean plate club

No longer is the wild boar.
I ate her, I ate all of her.
Let me show you my fatten well fed stomach
Proud predator I’ve become with a carnivore’s killing

Among the blood and inedible parts of that gluttonous creature
I lay better
When those farmers come back to the pen hopefully they won’t see
The dried blood and cartilage stuck in my hair
Encrusted demons under my proper clipped fingernails

No one remembers right?
You don’t remember right?
Right?
I was never a pig.
Don’t look at the ground around me or breathe in too much
I’m not a pig.
Please, I’m not a pig. You know that.

Notice the difference yet?
It’s not impossible to say which is which.

My brother asks,
over or under
four-and-a-half?

I’d put it at two-point-five, I say. See his limp?

It ain’t the limp,
I’m reminded,
but the cough that’ll kill him.

We end up seeing Dad many more times
than either could imagine,
both blown away by his
persistent resilience as he clung
to life like the
hardened bastard he was.

Stubbornly, he’d call,
leave voicemails,
have neighbors do that
fancy text-message-thing
from both their phone and his
with increasingly angry and desperate
demands and threats.

Birthdays and Christmas;
when had more been necessary?

Only now, now that the specific
type of woman he can charm
has gone extinct;
now that the long days at bars
really will kill him;
only now does he subway a couple hours
for a surprise visit.

Well now it’s my turn;
now I’ve beers to drink, weed to smoke,
women to fuck, fights to win and lose,
lives to ruin and
a whole bunch of other shit you’ll never be privy to,
and so with that,
even knowing you’re a durable, unyielding bastard,
I’ll still take the under on the two-point-five line,
parlay that with a suicide and
the Raptors finally snapping
their losing streak

Quiet rain falls upon marble graves
Despite who you are, life ends the same
As time passes, there are more stones added
As Becoming and Going sustain their comely ballad

Our trajectory of life, soundly resolved by time
It clasps us soundly within its holy design
I admit I ponder, do grave-dwellers smile, knowing they have been allotted their while?
Tyme, when over and above us it resides, is it teeming with conceited guile?

So much of which we are not aware
On occasion, we even disregard what is there
And for what purpose do we hesitate in defining
When every moment spent living is also spent dying

One day all that we know shall all slow and go quiet
Therefore keep a stern grasp upon your life and write it
You hold the pen at all times given
And not a soul can erase what you desire to be written

What do I have
but my eyes to see.
The school was safe,
They were safe.
The bang
shutters the wall. The cry
deafens the next,
bang.
They wait,
They scream,
again,
again,
again.
They wait, now we
wait.

My eyes see,
the doors are closed,
the classes still
in session.
They won’t wait.
Wanted for the crime
of existing.
More deadly
to the moral compass
than a shuttering,
bang.

Who are we? If not an,
Elegant Catastrophe.

A catastrophe waiting, waiting to
Crash into our next story.

We warn ourselves of our future,
Exquisite in flame

and,
Furious in emotion.

What are we? If not the most
Elegant catastrophe.

We, We are more than
Furious emotions

We are more than
Exquisite flames.

Which wait, wait
To burn our next story.

Watch us burn
Tales of old

Hear us cry
The hysterical lie

Which spread through your,
Exquisite flames.

Fear, fear where
We will crash.

This, this is not our story.
Spread your wings.

Then fly, fly far. Far away
From this fire

You have caused.

It wasn’t until months after we met
that I noticed the semicolon on your wrist.
It wasn’t that I didn’t pay attention,
but your spunky, energetic personality
lit up every room,
and paying attention to anything else felt mundane.

The semicolon has become a period.
Too soon, and not for the reason that you got the tattoo in the first place.
Your kids, both in middle school,
too young to be left behind.

You were one of the good ones.
To know you was to love you.
You did not deserve this.
But cancer doesn’t care,
and if god exists, he evidently doesn’t care either.
Because of all people to take from this world,
it shouldn’t have been you.

You posted about working,
you were supposed to start treatment today.
Today, they were going to get rid of the cancer,
but they would’ve been 7 hours too late.

Seven. Fucking. Hours. Ago.

I don’t understand how you can go from smiling,
laughing,
being your spunky self,
to not being here at all 12 hours later.