Author: poetryfest

I have nothing against the weather

We have a lot in common

I want to be like the weather
I don’t want to be pretty and put together,
I want to be strong like the storms,
Not worrying if it conforms
the weather perfectly performs

But I hate the weather sometimes.
The way it doesn’t care what others think,
The way it pushes boundaries to the brink
How it’s bold, it’s brave
The weather paves its own way

And I hate how I can’t.
How in this world so big I feel like an ant
All the words I chant
All redacted, retracted because I just can’t

In reality the weather is not bound by morality,
Instead we hide behind our formalities to hide our mortality

But we’re so similar, the weather and I
Called such shallow words that are supposed to make us feel high
But in the end we just say goodbye to the lies as we cry

We have a lot in common: the weather and I.

your neighbour saw you throwing rocks at another house, far away.
but when a rock flew back, you stopped.
the next morning it was so hot you could see smoke on the horizon.
and when it cooled down, you came down with it.

a new flu
had made its way into the house.
you blamed the immigrants across the highway, but
you could have been better by now if you just took care of yourself.

a man suffocated on the sidewalk right under you
but it was just the son you didn’t really like.
then, coughing, you opened your door and saw the entire family glaring back,
behind their heads, the fires on the horizon growing bigger.

just like the one you held in your eyes,
when the yard was still free land.

Outspeak! Burning man
Satan’s biggest advocate
We are never safe

Charges against you
Your child as your lover
Lacking true respect

Amendments to Law.
Gaining ignorant support
You break your own rules

This isn’t the end
It never ends, does it?
Unity is gone.

What a person desires in life
is a properly dim lamp.
One that is easy on the eyes,
still able to illuminate a desk
covered with ruled paper and text
yet without glare rendering lines
of graphite and ink unreadable.
This is not a simple catch.
There must be a seller, whose wares
might be found locally
in a shop of brick and mortar.
More likely, they might be found
on an online marketplace,
riddled with more trackers
than colonial America.

Indeed, take the time to install
an adblocker—modern-day necessity.
A dim lamp requires one to know violence,
and subterfuge, and the willingness
to use both in preparation of
porch pirates and seedy sellers.
As the delivery draws near,
take care to duck. The
driver may be done
with their urine bottle,
no bathroom breaks fostering
a properly dim mood.
Please sign again, they ask,
that signature looks too shoddy
and they might think I drew it.

Ketamine. Lots of it.
Yoga and meditation
until it hurts, a sustained formal apology—
on your knees, forehead heavy
on the earth—to your body. Carefully deplete
your xanax stash.

White powder press
the metallic taste is medicinal
this is the practice.

Remember the hose
that connects the bag
to the tank
to your face.

Apologize and make space.

Empty yourself. Your thoughts
are not your self. Your diagnoses
are not your self. Other people

have better thoughts than you.
Two coyotes in front of a house.
Neighborhood dogs, with neon spikes on their backs.
The coyotes bite, get a mouth full of pain,
and an ear full of yelping, panicked rage.

Must get sleep. Must warn others.
Cobalt, copper, nickel, and aluminum
lithium and wifi waves
the rainbow is an alchemy of distractions
tendon stress, delicate, the gristle is elastic

To my body,
I’m sorry.
I really fucked things up. Even when I was trying
to fix the issues, I think
I just made them worse.
Or added new complications.

aluminum, brass
copper, ash

Take walks
admit the other people, the other thoughts:
hunks of steel, a bell, some tongs,
simple insights, prayers and songs—
miscellany; a pile of impurities to defile and discharge,
anodic coating to prevent corrosion,
stir, simmer, brew the potion. You
are your own thing even if your body is broken.

Breathe in the other thoughts.
Breathe out the inner thoughts.
Advice and concern,
logs, accelerant

burn.
forge
pound
shape and carve
the thoughts
into a glowing
wakizashi sword

drive the point inward

carve open your belly
the wickedness will flow,
and spill into foul curls.

Your body
does not accept
the apology.

Neighbors walk past,
tiptoeing around the blood, fresh pavement mess
saving their pets from the feral dogs
with bleeding gums, eyes oozing hunger and regret.
You have to tell on yourself
before someone else does.

Reach into a bag,
gather your coiled hate,
contain the shame,
pick up the waste,
invert, face
the sun, just over the horizon now
making the blacktop
glimmer and shine. Toss the trash
into the garbage mouth.

The awkward, wounded wolves
follow your scent.
Their instincts leave them
no other choice.
From behind every tree
a wild, helpless dog
could pounce
you have no choice either.

The trees lead by example,
listening
dogs speak
their truths
behind fence posts
to the coyotes, singing

It’s ok to want to die.
To want more time
and connections
with people
is to want
to live,

to buckle under the weight
of time. Disintegrate

the impurities mixing with the metal
into the orange-black molten heat.

Rooftops reflect the sun. Smoke and steam, rising
the haze acceding to the demands
of the sky
as the dogs bark and the coyotes
run back to the hills, with scraps of metal
in their teeth

What’s life without intention?
Living with a dismantled intuition.
What’s true love without conviction?
Co-existing,
With no new inventions.
Not to mention,
Growth in others
Should not be despised.
While your vulnerabilities
Embeds inside.
Boiled envy,
Becomes unintentionally disguised.
Causing a melting pot
Of internal friction,
While limiting your own existence.
Master to challenge thyself,
Through boundaries and restrictions

Where love was shunned, its joyous freedoms checked,
this wondrous hope, those vista’s new, I sought
where prison head, its solace lost, lays wrecked.

To sieze my truth, out, queer, glitter bedecked.
This love’s sweet bliss, too cheap, I dearly bought,
where love was shunned, its joyous freedoms checked.

To understand, to rummage, dig, dissect
this ecstasy, within its trap, thus caught,
where prison head, its solace lost, lays wrecked.

To fend off lonely, broken self-respect,
the spirit lost, its sinews tense; strung taught,
where love was shunned, its joyous freedoms checked.

To seek out peace, to find, to not neglect,
This damaged soul, love’s truth amounting nought,
Where prison head, its solace lost, lays wrecked.

To find love’s joy, fill empty life, respect
this safe abode, our costly peace, hard bought,
where love was shunned, its joyous freedoms checked,
where prison head, its solace lost, lay wrecked.

Peel me back, for heaven’s sake!
I didn’t think to look in there
Hiding away deep down are all the
best parts

Is it possible to lie to yourself
Like habitually
The way you lie to someone else
Out of practice?

A spring, fused up, ready to explode
I wonder how many years of repression
The real me can hold

Darling?
You’re as beautiful as the day
and just as gorgeous as the night
My heart aches for you
My love,
You have not but left me for a moment
and I miss you already
How I can feel your gaze upon the most gentlest touch
and your lips,

Well your lips have a burn to them
but my god it only leaves me wanting more
I will not be able to contain myself
so do not ask me to.

How I wish to hold you every night
and kiss you softly as you drift away
How I wish…
I may be the one to have this dance with you
instead of seeing you swept away from me
by him.
And I cannot change that
and I know you may feel indifferently
But that is just how the world is

But I will sway and I will say
I will smile at the way
that are we are dancing together
and yet i’m across the room, as do you
And you are smiling at me too.

But don’t be too careful, love
I want you to myself
I want others to write of our longing looks, one day
Even if it means we are to be caught
Running away?
Hiding in plain sight?
It doesn’t matter to me
As long as we love

Perhaps we are foolish to have fallen so hard
But darling you made it easy to.

My date danced like a mongoose pouncing on a cobra.
The crowd distracted by the fight
between two drunken straights at the side bar
The sound of a bottle breaking over the counter
scared the fem twinks behind the safety of the jocks.

The music’s thumpa thumpa continued
as the rest of the club boogied away
as they did back at Studio 54.
Men and women,
gays and lesbians,
bears, otters, pups, and daddies,
all grooving to “Proud” by Heather Small,
the Peter Presta QAF V Mix

The long queue at the bathroom
due to some queens snorting coke
whiter than snow off the willing twink’s abs
Everyone knows no one actually uses
the bathroom with the locking door

The police arrive, their strobing lights
phased out by those in the club.
Security by now has broken up the fight
the fighters cornered and ready to be removed.
Off they go
Thumpa thumpa..

I pop a couple of ecstasy and
move onto cruising the next guy of the night,
as I lost interest in the twitching herpestidae
Even though his tongue was just down my throat
and hand on my ass.

Off in the corner, I spot him.
His name I’ve heard is Jake,
a perfect one syllable name
to scream later.in the night

With hair like golden threads,
eyes bluer than the ocean,
and a shirt so tight you see his right nipple is pierced,
his biceps, and stacked chest;

He sways to the beat of the song.
Thumpa thumpa.
I float across the floor, as if on a cloud.
Dancing in front of him like a bird in a mating ritual

The flash of lust
He swoops in like a jaguar encroaching on his prey.
“Want a drink?”
He asks firmly in my ear as his hands glide around my waist.
“Yea, double vodka cran,”
I bit my lower lip, “with a lime”
I reply before tasting the menthol cigarettes on his tongue.
Thumpa thumpa

Down the hatch and to the dance floor we go.
Feeling as if we were the only ones in the room,
we move in-sync like the cogs of a clock,
going along with the thumpa thumpa.
My hands around his head
pulling him close as our mouths lock,
his hands caress my body and slip into my pants
feeling the sweat bead down my back and onto my ass
Thumpa thumpa.
Thumpa thumpa.

“Let’s get out of here”
He whispers into my ear
“I was thinking the same thing”
Thumpa thumpa.

He pays his tab and off we go
for a night of passion,
saying goodbye to the glorious
thumpa thumpa