Author: poetryfest

Submit your Poetry to the Festival. Three Options: 1) To post. 2) To have performed by an actor 3) To be made into a film.

RHYME Poem: The Blade Bipolar, by Mason Urish

What state of mind might I be?
The Self-loathing? The Anger?
How dreadful, it is, to know not me.
Who might I be without her?

The blade in my hand cut me deep,
But she managed even deeper
Each scratch I thought made me complete.
The well draws me ever deeper.

What state of mind might I be?
The Manic? The Frenzied?
How unpredictable my mind can be,
To look at happiness and envy.

Oh to be a rock among the storms,
To know thyself forever and more.

RHYME Poem: Confusion, by Corinne Wagner

What do you want, from me, from this, for you?
What are you looking for, you hopeless man?
Have you not thought what you might be forced to?
Was it your heart that made this silly plan?

You try to be subtle, attempt to flirt,
Make your comments and pretend that you joke.
I may not know much, but I am alert
Of actions and words that you so evoke.

It is no good that my own actions might
Confuse you that I might feel the same way.
It is not mutual, to put it light.
Apologies if you thought that I may.

And yet when the alarm bells go to sing
The restaurant we left hits with a ding.

RHYME Poem: The Box She Left Behind., by Eddielyn Favor Roberts

A whisper of wind curled low like a sigh,
As the girl with the eyes like storm clouds passed by,
She left me a box, small and strange in my grip
That trembled like thunder before it could slip

I looked up to speak, but she’d vanished into air-
No trace on the pavement, no shadows, no stare,
The Cardboard grew warm like a heart in my hand,
While silence around me began to expand.

Inside, a sphere on black velvet did gleam,
Glowing with whispers that echoed a dream
“Help me,” It breathed, from deep within light,
As shadows moved just beyond my sight.

I stepped on the bus, with the box held tight
Into the unknown, swallowed whole by the night.

RHYME Poem: Their Moment, by Edward Palmer

Their moment had come where the truth was told…
From that point forward nothing was known.
All that remained is the constant flow
that stained their minds that had come to a close.
Their minds bestowed only what is allowed.
Allowed to be harvested at the time of the burial shroud.
The shroud erodes as the moment draws close,
but the lingering effects seemed to beam the most.
They stumbled many times, many times did they trip.
They tripped on the steps that they thought that they missed.
They missed the steps that they thought they had took,
They took the steps that they thought that should.
Too many times did they take the clear path.
The clear path calculated with all of their math.
Their math did not equate to the sum of the goal,
so they sold all they had and all he had was their souls.
They decided at that moment that they would no longer trip…
Trip on the steps that they had already missed.
The goal was in front, and they continued to fight.
Fight for their freedom in each other’s mind.
His mind held him back, for it told him the lies.
The lies that he repeated made him fall by the wayside.
She cracked and crinkled each time that he fell, but will no longer for
she
has escaped from that hell.

RHYME Poem by Madison Mclawhorn

Please my love, treat my heart gingerly.
Tell me why must you abolish my light?
As they gnaw their teeth viscously.
They laugh at me out of spite.
As terrible as I am, I must confess.
Never have I seen people so vile.
My, they are so ruthless.
Do they think with their head or does it spiral?
Perhaps they learned to think this way.
They close their eyes, clenching their fists.
What really can they say?
They’re too far gone into the abyss.
They close the door, they try to hide.
Can they really sort their lies out?
No, but their time they’ll bide.
They are found by the truth’s snout.
The ones we see as friends disappear.
Were alone. In the cold darkness.
I still can’t see it, though it’s crystal clear.
Another lie, swept under the carpet.

RHYME Poem: Invictus, by Matt Cooper

The dusty thrift store on west Central Street.
Is where I bought the typewriter your elegy
Was written on—A gray Smith-Corona.
I feigned that Hemingway and Pamplona—

Were things I understood as you shivered.
Yourself to the heavens you delivered.
The blue marble, the road, the page not ready
For you and your soul scared so unsteady.

I drove up to see your Gran-Gran in Montana—
Listened to her smile’s Savannah
Try to shed the light on wherever you went—
Now your birthday’s just how we weep for Lent.

The long tentacle of the man of war
Jellyfish, or the thorn of Lion’s Mar—
You’re one of these now my very best friend
Even to the typewriter’s busted, buried end.

RHYME Poem: The Last Days of L.A., by Noah Dunn

I wrote myself a poem today —
much to my disgust — in hopes
to offer something else than shape or meaning,
like, perhaps, a word
with weight and sizzle-crack:
a bridge of lightning bright enough for aping
those between those motes of light
that I have always found to look like you.

Like you: all sprawled beneath the vine-hung sky
in Grand Hope Park. Like you: with runny
nose and bloody knee,
the t-rex on your t-shirt announcing
how you thought about extinction
as you fell toward the dirt
in geologic time,
or you:

with clever, busy hands
encircling dandelion hair
into a sheaf
like the treasures off the threshing-floor
to better press your cheek
against the snot.