Author: poetryfest

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

This morning I looked at the photo book filled
With pictures of Indian Massacre sites and treaty signings again.
While I looked at the photos of places where
Indians used to live, I ate a bowl of vanilla custard.
The custard tasted good.
Though, it tasted like it shouldn’t be here.
The sweet cream, it tasted like
None of this, none of us
Should be here.
It tasted like the marrow of the Pontiacs.
It tasted like Metacomets head on a pike
At the gates of Plymouth
For a quarter of a century.
It tasted like sable hair that changed dirty blonde
So we could hide.
It tasted like keeping the mother tongue a secret.
The custard tasted like
Battles that can only be won from the outskirts of heaven
And from shitters in the worst junkyards of hell.
The custard tasted like the keeper of the plains
And how it’s just bit of art to look at
But not an altar to bow to
And recall the lives we lived then
Shouting in our dreams and forgetting
Waċiƞ yaƞpi, Waċiƞ yaƞpi, Waċiƞ yaƞpi
Otoka’he! Ho-Kah’He’!
God the Custerd tasted like basketball courts In Creek graveyards
In Alabama so the Ghosts might keep playing.
It tasted like living on despite the dying of the
Memory of all the death.
It tasted, The custer’d, like speaking in tongues,
Sounding of Demons to the priest and,
Sounding of sages to our children left.
But I sat there with a smile
Swishing that goddamn custer’d in my teeth
Knowing that sweetness is born
Of all the dried up tears and voices that echo
Without any lips
If we listen to the dirt
Knowing that
It will in fact
Whisper—
Just
After.

Drums always constantly underlie.
Creating tension building high,
Never ceasing for a second.
Centre stage all seven planets:

They stop and start and stop again, repeating.
Steady, soothing sounds slowly buliding;
Grandeur forged on the back of brass
Trumpets summoning the climax en masse

Tension steered and subjugated
By a single ostinato
Slowly expanding, landing the movement.
Triplet doublet Five Four
On edge, –
forever wanting more.

Strings in a golden triangle strummed
Creating a soft silky-smooth like sound.
Always staying in the background.
Brass, burst fanfares: a stream of bars fly.

The scramble to notes bows flying.
Bassoons with Cellos make bass.
The basis to all piece and pace.
Drums hammering home the order.
March —

The audience clap and confirm
They rise, conductor stick in hand she turns,
The first of Holst’s planets.
Mars, the bringer of war

The weight of it all
is crushing me.

Like a boulder,
I’m hoisting
over my broad shoulders.

Bending my back,
burning up my arms,
collapsing me like a foldable picnic table.
Scratches coating my neck.
Being forced to my knees
that are touching my shoulders.

Getting crushed,
from the weight of it all.

My face is beet red.
My hair, untameable.
My feet are sliding on the ground,
kicking up dirt and rocks
into my face,
my vision.

My lungs are collapsing
inhaling the dust.
My head is resting on my knees.

The weight of it all
is crushing me!

I wish I was strong enough!
Strong enough to lift this boulder
off of my shoulders.

Useless! Why am I not strong enough?
To simply bend my elbows and lift the rock
up into the sky
and place it down.

To get to breathe
like I needed permission.

Released,
from the weight of it all.

If only I was strong enough,
I wouldn’t be getting crushed.

My face is wet,
Dripping and inflamed.
From the sweat, from the pain, from the tears,
from the heat of the fears, from the pile of this mess
That was never mine, but now it’s my crime.
All of the blood that’s been drawn,

I can’t be saved from the weight of it all.

I’m afraid it’s gonna win.
It’s gonna beat me,

and beat me, and beat me.
Until I’m only in the breeze.
Until I’m only what the animals feed on.

Why can’t I be bold enough
to tell the world not to touch me.

Why can’t I be fierce enough,
brave enough,
to force the boulder to roll down my back.

To free me.
To get to rest.

I deserve to rest.
I can’t rest.
I have a boulder on my back.

The weight of it all on my back.
Twisting my arms, grasping so tightly.
Paining my neck, trying to watch it
all happen.
Wobbly legs, loss of balance,
breath.

It’s crushing me!
The weight of all of it.

Maybe if i was in a sturdier position
I could get a better grip on the boulder.
If my feet were securely placed.
If I had the time to do this right.

Who am I doing this for?
Enduring this for?
Hurting and sore.

Is it for me?
That just can’t be.
If it were up to me,
this wouldn’t be.

The weight of it all
is crushing me.

he’s in show business,
shrew business,
buy-concrete-shoe business —
give him the ol’ college boot!
show him the door,
right through the floor,
give him what for!
the ol’ hook for an ol’ crook.
tootle-oo, caribou!
what a hoot.
reality? reel this!
feel this!
no, he can’t be
the unscripted master,
the best boy
and the beast boy
of the country, too.
doesn’t he have a job already?
maybe he needs something more steady,
day work, voiceover,
sag clauses,
common causes, all over,
with promise of an oscar-do.
(he can quit/be fired from his day employment.
that would provide most enjoyment. an “r” rating.)
watergating waterloo.
oh what to do?
ask caroline.
she’d be just fine
with a key grip
on this psycho-drama-flipgyp.
this slough of despond business,
slew business,
caribou-enemy stew business,
full of slow sorrow,
matinee and no tomorrow,
angel investment zero,
no hero, only anti-, villain, loser,
with low crow dough
and owe foe abuser,
byblow, outthrow, mudflow,
non-amuser, electro, jocko,
basto, clownmo, solo
shadow, chumo,
minnow, hollow, bunko,
crappo, schmo, faucet d’eau,
all show and must go,
repo, we po,
he life show-stripper
and stopper big whopper.