Author: poetryfest

I lope around the corners of the room
Not wanted
A pest, a pain, a nuisance

I cannot help it, it is my nature
I am alone and I am howling
A distant shadow in a crowd of lights

Do not perceive me
I do not deserve it
Oh, but I want it desperately

I am the eternal survivor

Trickster, loathsome trickster, what is your true form?
A foul and mangy thing
Made manifest by fear and famine

Scavenge what you can
My fleeting friends
For when it is done there will be naught
But aching bones

I picked them clean myself

I daydrink with deities.
They tell me stories of the cyclic existence
we all experience
but are rarely aware of.

They say things like,
“Beings want happiness but are bereft of happiness;
they do not want suffering but are tortured by suffering.
You must develop great compassion and empathy from the very orb of your heart
for all sentient beings…”

Then they steal my name.
They try to wear my face.
My body rebels against their seizure of it.
But I wish it wouldn’t,
Because their words hurt my heart and flood my eyes.

One day I’ll really listen.
That bastard Siddhartha’s always right in the end.

I stopped counting how many times I found myself suffering
and then realizing the fucker predicted it and warned me.

I’ll weep a thousand years
for every minute more
I ignore
the cry-hearer’s advice.

He’ll soon multiply himself with my corpse
and we’ll both realize again
we were never separate in the first place.

Avalokiteshvara likes whiskey like I do
and when I’m done complaining about
the nonproblems that stain my mind he says:
“You must train in the compassion that is the inability to bear
the sight of suffering in others
without acting to relieve it.”

And the desire for the gorgeous woman I’m trying to seduce,
and the money I’m trying to make,
and the legacy I seek to leave
all fade away
and my eyes bleed golden tears of joy.

My body is not removed from the path of death
but my being is,
and my heart shatters into billions of pieces
so it can be placed
into the minds of others –
I hope to make you fucking weep

Black male
As a young child, I imagined a jet black letter with a gold seal
I had trouble with taking things literally back then
Confused by the language
If I am black, why is my skin this maroon brown?
I’m not a piece of paper like mail?
I’m a person?
Premonitions of wise reflections

My father repeating the mantra 10 times a day
“Be yourself, don’t let THEM tell you who to be”
Who was them I wondered?
And as years grew
I saw what THEY told me I am
Every screen, every publication
This is a character
A scripted, contrived version of a false self
Holding a mirror reflecting upon a mirror
A infinity of bullshit that becomes even more granularly curated as the years and
mediums progress
And we do not
I’m not scripted?
I’m a person?

Hyper sexual hyper violence or safe castrated character
Clean cut coon, Alt edgy and angry,
or chill collected and suave
Just a few examples
All regionally and state variable of course
Look, Im a handsome dork that likes disco and Dvořák
Dilla and Dreamcast
Doom and doom metal
Tacos and Zydeco
I’ve been described as a mountain sage with nigga tendencies in a lifted truck
And 1000 other quirks from the sum of my living experience and the intrinsic qualities of
my being
I know some roots, and I want to pull them from the soil and study every coarse, vein
and split

I’m not a continuation of your 13th amendment chattel
I’m not your predator class
I’m not your charity case
I’m not your BBC
I’m not your magic negro
I’m not your voting block
I’m not your work horse
I’m not your shield
I’m not “so articulate and well spoken”
I’m not a brute
I’m not a hood nigga
I’m not a ain’t shit nigga
I’m not a thug
I’m not a statistic
I’m not a artsy nigga
I’m not a scammer
I’m not a respectable black man
I’m not a Uncle Tom
I’m not a oddity
I’m not a Oreo
I’m not a fetish
I’m me

Some days, I wish they would return me to sende

“Oh gracious being that looks at us bugs below
I beg and plead
Take away the miracle oh so miraculously given to me
Force me to regurgitate the elixir of eternity
Make me man once more

I have solved all of my woes
All that had troubled me
I have established reign in all lands
Above and below from where I stand
Oh loving and forgiving Deity
Make me finite!

For the love that is in all of your creations
I stand here and give my all to you
Please Lord
You who is king of all
I mere fragment of your crown
Take away this wish I had asked of you

I have learned my lesson
Know all too well the hubris that once consumed me
I now know why you made me person
I know why people are people
Why life is how it is
So please my father
I pray for nothing more than to meet you at the gates
An ask I know I will not regret”

A Dramatic Monologue based on The Musicians of Bremen.

The first I took with trembling hand,
fruit succulent from a tree in
the landlord’s orchard,
tasted it, tasted juice, never
in all my years had I tasted such juice
for was not I too turned out from home?
Sent to the road?
A person of the road made to live
the way of the road.

If it could have been different
I would have done different,
the church, a trade, apprenticed, a carter
anything but the road
but the road it is and living is lean
it’s bone
it’s no honor among thieves
it is one scare, one fright from the shakes
and I can’t go on but I swallow
I take, I steal, I hold you up on the road
in the dark forest and take what is mine
for won’t you be made good
in this life or the next?

There is nothing for me in this life
or next, there is only the road
the darkness
keeping one up on those beside me,
my brother my captor my killer,

the food at our table, a banquets feast
warm, there is beer and for the taste of beer
I will sell my soul to wrap my fingers around a stein
and have it

that is the bit of living I crave in the cold
when I see you coming down the road
with sacks in hand bags over shoulder
that’s what I crave at the edge of the forest
but tonight I am lucky
I have found my brethren and a man
who knows how to get things,
to get things done
to rob from farmhouses, from inns
from taverns, to waylay
people on the road
and what is that sound at the window?

I thought I heard something.

I haven’t eat this well in weeks
been this warm
never mind what had to happen
for us to get it
to gather together to break bread
we here brothers now
fill our hungry bellies
same as you’d do if you’d been
turned out on the road left for dead
and become
a beast in the night
you’d willingly set the table
and dig in, not pause for breath
because life is short, brutish.
A meal might be your last

Is that a scratching at the window?
I swear I‘d heard something,

save some beer for me will ya
there’s cake and my hands
are warm I can feel my hands tonight
and

we’ll sleep good tonight
never mind whose house this is
forget about it, they knew this was
part of the world, it is the gamble
of being alive, they knew that every breath
could be their last and this land, this house,
this meal, this could end and they’d gladly
claim their heavenly reward
and for once i am happy
for the prospect of a warm bed,
we are the beasts of the night
of the dark woods and is there
something greater than us?
A judge, you say?
A witch you say?
In this forest?

AND they drink.
The wine meets her upper lip taking some of the lipstick with it,
Down her throat,
Into the bottomless pit that is her stomach
Leaving a smear that would never be cleaned off.

He has drunk almost an entire bottle by himself.
He hasn’t changed,
She comments on it.

You haven’t changed .

I have.

His blunt response halts conversation.

Still the same refusal,
Always right never wrong.

That is what he’s like.

He raises his glass again.
The red liquid stirring from its sleep.
And then the harder landing,
That comes from slight misjudgement,
When in a drunken state.

MORE wine, another bottle.
Thank God she left him.
He apologises.

Always so critical,

It’s improved.

Good. Excellent. If you say so.

She knows why he retreats behind his menu,
He embarrassed himself.
One of the few things he does well.

Come on, no sulks, be nice.

She knows that only by talking will he come out of his shell.

THEY shake hands.
His hands, sweaty, clammy,
Omitting the alcoholic odour.
His, firm then light,

then firm again, in hers,
then slowly withdrawn, wanting longer contact.

Better?

A grunt, in response.

It’s getting there,
It’s always a slow resumption.

SO. Who’s to start?

You.

Short and sharp,
Still embarrassed, he needs more cajoling.
Still in is impenetrable cocoon.

Right.

His glass, always drained,
Hers hardly touched.
She is drinking in moderate quantities,
He is drinking by the bottle.

Next it will be a Magnum,
Followed by a Jeroboam.

Judiciously, he brings the levels level.
Of course, she notices, despite what he thinks.

Right: I’ll tell you everything I can.
The wife, struggling to force him out of bad habits,
And a loving mother battling with two wild children.
I’m busy, with no complaints.
And then work,
Authoring my books, reeling out the pages.
And Paris.

Now it is her turn to be wistful.
She could be in a lovely boulangerie.
Wistful thinking, another thing he is good at.
Will he ever change?

(In her bedroom. She’s pacing, rehearsing an apology.)
I don’t know what I was thinking. It was a flash in the moment, I—I panicked. The words just (she gestures) tumbled out of me. Escaped me. (She sounds breathless, almost like she’s just ran a marathon.) I didn’t mean it, I swear, I…I don’t know what happened. What took over me. It was a mistake. I panicked. One moment we were…(swallows) and then, because of my stupid mouth, we weren’t. And there was nothing more to be said after it. Nothing I felt that I could do. I couldn’t pull them back in, I—I didn’t have the strength to. It was like a dam broke inside of me and everything I had been holding in gushed out, and I just had to sit there, and let it spurt out for a while. (Shaky) And when it was done, I had nothing left in me. Nothing left. It felt— (she inhales sharply, like taking a gulping air before submerging in water) it felt as if I had been drained. (She pauses, thinks, sits down on the bed.) It felt as if I had given everything, my heart, (she rests a hand over her chest) my head, my love, my everything. I had given it all, and yet…You have to forgive me. You have to…reconsider. Remember the good times. Remember when we first met (she smiles to herself). It’s gone sour but we can get that back. Can’t we? (She looks around her empty room, looks to her hands in her lap.) I don’t know what happened. When the love spoiled, and we both became so bitter. And I so angry. I didn’t use to be like this. I think…I think it happened gradually. Like erosion. Slowly, the happy parts of me, the ones you loved, the ones I loved, chipped away. (She sniffs.) I didn’t mean to become this. I wanted us to be happy, together. Maybe I was too insecure or too selfish or demanding, always expecting, always hoping, always wanting more. Or maybe. I don’t know. Maybe I wasn’t enough. Maybe you—I’m sorry. I know it was mean, what I said. I shouldn’t have said anything, I should’ve let it go. I just couldn’t bear the weight of it any longer, all the pressure building. The heat. But I’ll be better in the future. I’ll learn to be grateful for what I have. I will. I love you. (It sounds wrong, almost like a question. She tries again, with more certainty.) I love you. I do. I have to—I do. Please. (She releases a sigh, puts her head in her hands. Fades out.)

I gave you the fire
You watched it burn
Hands in your pockets
No hint of concern

I whispered forever
You mouthed a lie
You built me a heaven
Then taught me to die

Now silence is louder
Than all that you said
Your words still echo
In rooms in my head

I waited for answers
Your heart cold stone
But love isn’t love
When you’re left all alone

You made me a promise
Then vanished like smoke
Now the words “I love you”
Just feels like a joke

But I won’t keep drowning
In oceans you made
You turned me to ashes
But ashes don’t fade

I wake in a body that is both mine and not mine.
The first thing I taste is iron.
The oxygen burns through my throat like rust,
scouring me from the inside out.
The machines whisper their mechanical language,
a steady beep-beep-beep drilling through my skull,
a countdown to something I can’t see.

I should be gone already.
I know this.
They told my mother I was a mistake,
a smear on an ultrasound,
a wrong answer waiting to be erased.
The doctor squinted at the screen,
said something that made them hesitate.
I should have been a decision they never regretted.
Instead, I became a question they never stopped asking.

I should have left with the others—
with the pale hand curled stiff beside mine,
with the body zipped inside the thick yellow plastic,
with the wheels rolling slow, slow,
the fluorescent light smearing over sealed flesh.
I watched it move past me,
a body still holding its last breath,
trapped beneath something that does not breathe.

How long does it take to become cold?
How long before skin forgets that it was once warm?
How long before the body no longer belongs to itself?

I have died before.

In the silence where my mother tongue was buried,
choked beneath the weight of foreign words,
drowned beneath the tide of languages I was told to keep instead.
My first tongue had no letters,
so they made sure it had no future.
But I still remember how it sounded before it disappeared.

I have died before.

Beneath the hands of someone who did not see me,
only the body,
only the shape,
only the way it could be arranged,
bent,
reshaped into something that belonged to them.
I walked out, but I left something behind,
something I can never retrieve.

I have died before.

They scanned my brain and told me something was missing.
A hole where an artery should be,
a riverbed that was never carved,
a structure that should have collapsed at birth.
“You were never supposed to live,” the doctor said.
I think he meant it kindly.

I want to ask him—then what am I doing here?

A mistake that refused to erase itself.
A scar that kept growing back.
A body that should not exist,
but does.

I wake up again.
The bed beneath me is still cold.
The machine still beeps.
The plastic curtain still flutters at the edges.
I open my mouth to speak,
but nothing comes out—

Somewhere, the flowers begin to bloom.

My hand shook my shoulder this morning
until I awoke.

Both my arms are wondering
where your arms could be.

They miss you.
Both of them.

We should take our arms to the beach again.
They’ve become quite attached
to each other
the way they wrap themselves
around each other
arm in arm,
hand in hand.

They were meant for one another,
I think,
their hands clasped together so perfectly.

The way
I was meant for you
And you were meant for me.