Author: poetryfest

I loved her the way the tide loves the moon—pulling, yearning, never touching.
And I, a distant shore, could only watch as he drowned in a sea I could never step into.

I watched him sail toward her, and that’s when I realized—the cruelest part wasn’t that I didn’t love him.
It was that he spent a lifetime wondering why.

I glanced back one last time, watching her walk away.
And I finally understood—it was never going to end happily.
The greatest tragedy wasn’t leaving.
It was that when I looked back,
she was already gone.
So was my boat.

I couldn’t watch him leave—not when he’d already offered up our love to the gods of his bluest longing.
And so, I turned around.
My feet sank into the silky sand, a stillness rising in me—a tranquility among the blue.

He made me feel complete.
But the God’s honest truth?
It was too perfect to be real.

Just like the ink that shaped this confession,
the ocean I once drowned in has finally dried up.

“And then, it clicked.
She was always my sun—
never my moon.”

A great love has its ups and downs, its good moments and its bad, but can love be just as great.? “Butterflies is a way your body is telling you this isn’t real,” people have said. Could they have told me this sooner? Does your body really tell you that?

Eventually, he walked into that room on that day (could time redo that moment for me) I thought it was true. For once I thought I could get over the past, how could I know it wouldn’t last? “Good morning sir,” he said walking my way. (How could first words make me feel this way?)

It took a bit after that first day but now things have gone my way. Just two months and we were free from the lying about us and the between. (Kept on pushing that voice inside from telling the truth about the butterflies this time.) Longing for more, things have changed, a bit more love, a bit less lies at least I thought so. More people knew, more
people cared (how could it get worse from here) less hiding, less caring just that he said she said coming about. (More of the butterflies coming about, less real it’s starting to get.)

“No, he does,” I tell her when she asks the big question. “Ok, but if he doesn’t love you you need to leave him.” (Perfectly imperfect she was, but this time she was perfect. Quitting I couldn’t do perfectly but loving the wrong person is the one thing I could do right.)

Ready to get hurt, I kept going in the relationship. Starting to think this was a mistake, I got distant and he got scared, I thought it was real. Two weeks later, I got the gift, I regretted it almost instantly, but there was nothing I could do. Unless his gift was heartbreak, it was wrong, it was wrong, it was very wrong.

(Very smart, he was, just not right now, told my friend it was fake, said we finished weeks ago. What a liar, what a briber.) You know how it goes, tears and anger, how do I know what was real? Zooming to today it starts again just this time I will know if the love is real.

Green rolling grass and growing pines as far as the eye can see.
3 board fences painted tar-black and dirt paths mark the road.
Inheritance split by barbed wire fences, built by the hands of the future as the eyes of the
past watched them. This land is bought and paid for by generations whose remains lie in a
graveyard off the beaten path, marred by the passing of time.

Thus, a legacy of triumphs and failures begins.
Like the moon’s siren call to the ocean
this land cries out to me
of legends of outlaws and bandits
turning into preachers and teachers.
Wisdom imparted or lost.
History repeated and of monsters defeated.
Here lies my birthright
This is a precious gift to me.
Combining past, present, and future

The creed of the land is the way to be a man, A Grandfather tells his grandson.
It’s The way of life of those who came before.
In a man’s hands lies his strength
in his heart, his love
in his lungs, his passion
in his eyes, his hope
His shoulders, fashioned for the yoke of burden
In his feet, his determination
In his mind, his knowledge

Follow the creed, and when time kisses you with its mark.
Your hands will find strength by being held by another
In your hearts, love lives on in other hearts whose love was affected by you.
Your lungs, marked by time with each breath, which burned full of passion in your youth, will
see that passion live on in another.
Till your eyes make that final drop, hope lives on in the legacy you leave behind.
Your shoulders stooped by the yoke’s burden will see another rise to the challenge.
Your feet, by determination, will have trained another to be just as determined as you.
In your mind, the gift of knowledge will be shared everywhere you go.

In the center of it all lies the land the creed lives on for another generation.
If something is lost, will it be found?
Just ask the land because it remembers

Hey asshole, you left an open bag of chips in my car
and they’ve scattered everywhere.

By “Hey asshole” I mean
Dear son
Sweet child
Nearly independent offspring who I love more than air.

And by “an open bag of chips” I mean
an open bag of chips
because not everything is a metaphor.

This particular non-metaphor has spilled all over my car and
I am non-metaphorically angry about it.

But when I weigh the new need to vacuum my floorboards
against the fact that you are likely leaving soon, I soften.

This is the pattern lately;

My low-grade chip bag
or laundry on the floor
you left all the lights on
dishes in the sink
frustrations falter in the shadow of days peeling from calendar pages
bringing us closer to your exodus.

Annoyances leveled by the memory of your young childhood voice
toddler bed nighttime routines
1,000 unnecessary plastic items purchased for your delight over the years
the way we used to bump our hips together when we’d stand next to each other
because it used to be I wasn’t so much shorter than you.

Hey asshole, I joke
because as nearly a man now you can take
my particular brand of humor,
even dish it back to me
like you’re trying adulthood on for size.

Hey asshole,
because we can admit that sometimes you are
and sometimes so am I
and we can see each other for who we are
not just for the genetics we share.

And, let’s be honest,
chip bags and laundry and lights on and dishes aside
you are not an asshole at all,
you are my son
and I love you fiercely
which won’t end when you move out.

Meanwhile, go vacuum my car.

One has to break you to enjoy your company.
Which is backward.
Usually, someone breaks after years of company.

Green, like envy.
Like limes.
Like cartoon aliens.
Like fresh buds on the trees.
Your heart is a mix of feelings.

Bitter, salty, and rough;
You’re not for everyone.
A rigid interior requires a hard bite to reap reward.

You come from the trees and
a bite of you is pleasure for one and death for another.

It’s like sand, your shell.
Like bleached granite.
Like khaki shorts.

Beige and boring, it
attempted to protect your soul
and left a crack.
Pry away your shield and you’re exposed.

You’re a lot like people,
Little pistachio.
You’re complex.
One never knows if you’ll be
sweet or salty, soft or rough.
Hard to get to but worth the effort.
And yet
the wrong people find you
and break you
and chew you up
and spit you out.
The walls meant to keep you safe drew their interest.

And now you lay broken.

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

I’d almost forgotten
Those halcyon days
When sunlight shone
While children played
The softest breeze
Carried only tufts
Of dandelions on the wind

These days we hide
‘Neath metal prisons
Beyond which awaits
More dangerous stuff

Was it all worth our ancestors’ struggle
To win the day with nothing to show but rubble?

If I could go back to those happier times
When we took for granted our peace of mind
I like to think I’d warn against
Such foolishness, such naiveté, such ignorance

This ruined land, this is not peace
Try telling that to those deceased

All it took was one step, one threshold crossed
To curse future generations with crippling loss
So if you read these prophetic words
In a time before, when they might still be heard
Heed them, act, else it be too late
To avoid such a gruesome fate

Age has offered wisdom I can no longer use
You are our future, you are our hope
I beg you don’t waste it
May this final, desperate act aid you in what you choose

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.

It’s burn day where I’m from
and the fire whistle howls at noon.

The hardware store owner
shot himself last week.
Now there’s
nowhere
to buy a hose or
finish nails.

Tomorrow is Sunday
and the beer distributor
will be closed and there’s
nowhere
to buy beer.

The bakery is closed again.
I don’t know for how long.

There is
nowhere.

At lunch time today
My best friend crept up on me unawares
And left his corpse inside my brain
With cling film wrapped around his head and face