Author: poetryfest

Once upon a time,
In a fantasy world a away,
Stood a beautiful girl,
Innocent and sweet,
Taken from her perch
Far too soon.

As she fell in love,
She fell hard.
For a man that she thought could change.

As reality hit,
And times changed around her,
The man she hoped to change,
Fell short of expectations.
Leaving bruises and empty promises in his wake.

As time passed,
He promised her one more thing.
As she stood at the altar,
Her heart fluttered,
As her hope set in once more,
For the man she hoped she could change.

Alas, as time ticked by,
The girl stood alone,
As a tear fell upon her cheek,
Staining her white dress black.

The man she so hoped would change,
Failed to show on the day they were supposed to wed.
Leaving her heart bruised and empty,
And her life drained.

As time passed,
She continued to live,
Upon her perch once more,
Waiting for the perfect man,
To come and sweep her off her feet.

There was an old witch who caught a spider,
It built a web next to her cauldron of cider.
There was an old witch who caught a cat.
Now, what do you think of that?
Of a witch who caught a cat…
She caught the cat to paw at the spider
That built the web next to her cauldron of cider.
There was an old witch who caught a ghost,
She caught that ghost- a Halloween host,
She caught the ghost to play with the cat.
She caught the cat to paw at the spider
That would build a web next to her cauldron of cider.
There was an old witch who caught a ghoul,
I thought, “She caught a ghoul? How cool!”
She caught the ghoul to scare the ghost.
She caught the ghost to play with the cat.
She caught the cat to paw at the spider
That built his web next to her cauldron of cider.
There was an old witch who caught a goblin,
The goblin was around the graveyard hobblin’,
She caught the goblin to befriend the ghoul,
She caught the ghoul to ghoul to scare the ghost,
She caught the ghost to play with the cat,
She caught the cat to paw at the spider,
Who had built his web next to her cauldron of cider
And on October 31st when there was a chilly fall breeze in the air,
The sounds of these creatures in the haunted house gave everyone a Halloween scare.

the man who sells stars
(but swallows the sky)
built a tower of teeth
& called it freedom

his hands (so full of nothing)
touch screens & women & dreams
& turn them to static

a mouth like an elevator—
down down down
to the basement of
(where your tax dollars sleep)

somewhere a rocket dies mid-air
somewhere a car is burning but it’s not art
somewhere he names himself god &
(forgets how to pray)

then, there is the other
mouth
so vast it becomes a country
a war
an (exclamation mark!)

it speaks & the clocks rewind
the mirrors crack
the past (which was never gone)
grins wide & steps forward

his hands
shake the world
(but never a book)

his hunger eats itself—
(feeds on the fear it makes)
a beast with its own face
in a suit the color of money

the billionmou$e king & his loudest echo
(louder than God, dumber than light)

& yet the crowd still claps
& yet the ghosts still vote
& yet the night
stretches
(longer than truth)

Not British enough, not Foreign enough,
Maybe European enough – whatever that means.
What’s my language?
And how many do you speak?

Some mornings, I wake speaking
Yesterday’s language to tomorrow’s dawn,
My dreams a patchwork of metro maps
And street signs I once called home.

It’s different things for different people.
I belong wherever I go
But the environment shifts beneath my feet
Like quicksand of expectations.

They ask where I’m really from,
As if truth could be contained
In a single point on their atlas.
I am from everywhere I’ve left pieces of myself.

“It’s just because you’re not from here,”
You say when I disagree
When I voice thoughts that don’t align
With your comfortable certainties.

These opinions aren’t European,
Aren’t German, aren’t foreign –
They’re mine.
Each thought
Breaking through borders
Like roots through concrete.

I’ll adapt but won’t conform.
I’ll translate but won’t transform.
Every new place paints me technicolour
Until I’m a canvas of everywhere I’ve been.

From city to city
Eyes down, eyes up
Whatever your gaze meets –
Lives a thousand beats per minute more
Louder and brighter
In this precious conglomerate
Of foreign wonder.

To the late First Lady, Jackie Kennedy
To my sister Sara and my cw teacher Ms. Bothwick

Your name was spoken by every person, in every tongue and in every place that November
afternoon.
At 1 pm the sun had already perished,
as a sign of respect, I assume,
for your wife’s horrific shrieks.
John! John! John!
I felt my body stiffen at the first bullet,
my limbs dry on the second,
your skin colden on the third.
At the time I was your most grand possession, your most obedient servant
And yet, no one was aware.
To the people you were hers
and in the evenings you were.
But on mornings you’d greet me with a lordly smile
working side by side
“To change the world” as you’d say.
I’d have your undivided attention
your most ostentatious affection
and utmost comfort as I sobbed on those busy nights.
I am devoted to you. Even after you’ve gone,
because in my world, your grip on my waist
was the only time I came alive.
They think it was your speeches that mattered.
The speeches that shook the world.
But they were all just echoes, weren’t they?
They screamed confidence but your letters were tender.
I was the only one who felt the tremor of your soul
in every stroke, in every moment of doubt or uncertainty.
I was your only darling,
your only duty.
When the world, including she, saw a leader,
only I knew the man behind the podium.
I saw your weaknesses.
I knew your fears and was present
for your quiet moments of contemplation.
We shared secrets that historians will never unveil.
We made history.
In those final moments, we shared
the crowd’s applause
as they turned to roars in an instant.
John.
4 letters or 7 strokes of cursive
plastered on every paper.
Montblanc,
but you weren’t the one clasping me this time.
Someone else wrote your name.
It’s hard to remember all I had felt that afternoon.
Afterall, nothing was written down.
Your blood splattered over her bright pink suit
and for a brief moment there was silence.
Grief in her eyes as I seized onto your pocket.
My crown glued to you,
detached from the rest of me
falling from your lap.
Together we lay motionless,
as we bled blue and red for our nation

First, you send her flowers in the morning.
At noon, you send her worded poetry and flirty verse.
In the evening, you buy her a meal.
And at night, she might wrap her legs around you or not mind your sweat trickling down her
breast.
Or just a lesson about repetition till it loses its meaning,
Or gain relevance
You begin by calling her beautiful,
And forget she is a jaguar,
Who sits on the branches of her high principles,
Or she learned to be a man first, guard her balls first before anyone noticed the fledged breast.
To love a woman right,
You know you lost the moment you looked into her eyes
To get by a strong opponent, you need to fight around the corners,
Like, creep up behind her
Get your hands around her waist before she beats you to it,
Walk your way through her shoulders to her neck,
Say you are beautiful on your breath
And let her ears bed every letter of that sentence,
You might get a kick in the balls
Because she hates a man who can not stand her fierce eyes,
Or turn to you with closed eyes
So she does not scare you.
A woman does not lose. She learns
She might let you explore her territory,
And you might get lost in the cocoons of her butterfly.
When you get scared, do not say she is not genuine,
Her mind is hazy of constant debate of what is true or trivial,
So she hits hard on, ‘Do you love me?’ when the odds are against her.
Do not ask if it is the hormone,
Her mind is a brawl of events that may or may not have happened
It does not matter. Just love her
Laugh a little too hard at her stories and pretend you understand most of them,
It is okay if you do not, as long as you remind her that she is the light in your mornings.
And you do not mind if she filters into your mouth some sauce
Just before the happy hours.
Being a woman is a strength even if her shoulder has known the weight of a thousand men.
Or she is fighting battle after battle of infidelity and infertility,
Her smile is soft,
Like when she opens the windows of her heart
And let you sit like a king even if she preferably competes with you
You would not know that, but she seeks your protection,
For her thoughts, trust, integrity, dignity
And a whole room of safe space and always burning candles
Leave some music on while you step out,
She leaves the music on till you come back
And leave a little light in her smiles again.
The truth is, to love a woman is a personality
And if you are not a real one, it is work
And you might still get kicks on your balls if you do it right
Or if she chooses her branches over warmth
There are no written rules to how it plays out,
Just uncertainties and love. ~_Kas_

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”