Author: poetryfest

I love pennies.
I always have
and suppose I always will.
They’re unique,
so different from their
brothers and sisters;
dimes and quarters and nickels.
Metallic copper with smooth sides.
I don’t care about nickel or zinc,
nor their sparkling silver faces.

In the eyes of society,
they are worth next to nothing,
and yet they are here.
They are something.
Most people spot the little piece of treasure
and continue on their way.
Even worse they throw them out,
denounce their worth because,
“It’s just a penny”
and never give a second thought.

I think about those people often.
Good luck, as the saying goes,
isn’t the only thing they are missing.

I imagine the hands that have
touched his surface;
weathered and cracked from hard work,
now buying dinner for his family.
Busy with the insanity called life,
tossing the small coin in the tips cup.

I collect them in glass blown
jar with a piece of cork
sealing them in place.
I could take the time to count each coin–
note its birthdate and where it came to be.
The condition of it’s skin–
newborns in a dying world,
others mint from oxidation.
But I don’t.
I love them just the way they are

You love blue, don’t you? Blue like the quiet that swells sweetly
inside my throat
I like the thunder in your voice
Vivid. Spitfire to my calm. Storm’s eye & unsteady
gaze. I think I stared at you too much
when we first met. The grey skies of San Juan burning up in my eyes,
I wanted you to look at me, closer. So I undressed and
walked my bare body on the blue tongue of
that ocean you love, shyly, into the waves that swallow the careless
Just to show you how I dissolve, how my body could belong
to you or whatever the night offers.

I think life is stranger when you try, clear eyed, to twist your head and look
at it logically. Empire has its logics we’ve inherited. But I believe devoutly only in nonsense.
& you. You speak in a poetry that feels born from the mouth of my tucked away dreams. Precious.
Resonant. How annoying that I’m impatient with distance. I’m a reckless restless fuck.
You get it

I’m writing this poem in bed trying not to wake the sleeping
body next to me. I’m writing it during a job interview. My friend in front of me is in crisis. I’m writing
this poem. I’m shunning responsibilities like a poet should
for this kind of poem.

I spent 6 days splitting open//every hungry man woman lover that chose to fall under my hands, trying to
understand something true about how to entice you. 6 days, that is the labor of creation, I need just one day
now for rest. All I am is a body of failed seductions. Rose thorns through my lips. This long wretched poem
spilling like prophecy from my tongue

There’s something I can’t grasp
with the lyric right now. Like; Us on that beach, Your hands wiping my sandy feet. Ugh. Seeing you
through the noise and lights of the casino, in all black, where you watch the world twirl its flags of foreign faces, night unswallowing all these drunk bodies into your dealer’s hand. Or Your joy,
how you burst and break open and let your body sing with humor when you laugh in the mid story. Or Your
openness.
How you invite me inside the home of your voice
as you speak your treasured self to life, and read me your poems; or. Your lips. & The way you love/the city and the blue/paintings in the poet’s passage, of those lampposts in that museum you brought me to
Do you understand now, why I gave you my gold rusted, heart-
break ring. Because what use is heartbreak now. In front of a woman that could wound you back to life.

Fuck. I’m nervous. Hello, Mother of the mayhem inside my tired chest.
I want love to mean nothing to me
the way the omnipresence of air and gravity mean nothing when my feet make effortless love to the ground and my lungs melt into the sky.
I learned that listening to you.
You feel free to me. I want to know, what would you look like, free in the ocean, or
on the hot sands of Bénin. in Vodun markets, buried in the face of red witches, or
by the graves and monuments of our departed. or,
in front of a lustful mass of bodies, wanting for you, in front of something pure, like a moment of being
cherished. Or. Just.

With me
as your comrade & confidant. Your 4am poet
who’ll free fall through the chaos of discovery with you

Just. Tell me.
I am already yours in the way that I belong to anything I don’t understand, that still makes me kneel in front of the sky
And think fuck that flight I missed; look at your body in my arms my ring on your finger. Tell me, as the poem you are, what small desire sparks
when you think of me
Whatever you could you want, from me, I’ll give it to you

There are queens with expensive crowns,
And princesses with elegant gowns,
But with them my heart is not won,
For you are my perfect one.

There are models with exquisite hair,
Magnificent make-up wearing a jewelled shoe pair,
But with them my heart is not won,
For you are my perfect one.

There are singers with a beautiful voice,
Who for many would be the perfect choice,
But with them my heart is not won,
For you are my perfect one.

There are dancers who move with sophisticated speed,
Who draw the eyes of many with their deed,
But with them my heart is not won,
For you are my perfect one.

In all ways my heart belongs to you,
You are beautiful in everything you do,
When I see you, I know my heart has been won,
For you are my perfect one.

Love is like sitting down at your favorite restaurant & eating your favorite meal
Just to walk away from the table with no left overs & wallet feeling smaller based on the bill

Love smells like your favorite desert on Christmas evening when all the presents have opened, yet saddened to have to wait a year for those very moments

Love looks like a family picture on vacation with big bright smiles & hugs that were just frowns & complains of all that’s around, low & above

Love sounds like waves in an ocean or seashells at the beach the closer you get the more intense almost forgetting the sound of peace

Love feels like rolling around in silk sheets that just came from the dryer as you roll around with your eyes closed then open just to notice you never took them out the dryer

Love to me is imaginary a feeling, a smell, taste, sound, or look we want to last forever, yet comes & goes like many of the other emotions we tend to hang on

We had agreed to embrace—
so why have you crucified me?

How many hammers
sang cuneiform songs into my palms,
so that the blows on ligament and bone
might become melodies for your rituals?

You dance in Arabic—
and remain unclear.
Our translation of each other falters,
when all I meant by dance
was a justification
for the stuttering of my seizures.

My fingers,
seeking kinship with nails,
began practicing how to become wood.

This could’ve been
just a simple wooden frame—
yet without a photo,
it is more arresting.

The nails are my blood brothers.
If I were to
tear
them
off—

a collection of nothing
would open its mouth
and devour me.

Devouring—
the deepest form of an embrace.

Now that wood has grown into my body,
is this union
a graft—
or a violation?

My hollows, in order to survive,
have accepted their emptiness.
They believe
their inner voids
can be filled—
lost, maybe—
but not gone.

Then why do your fingers
slide into my holes
as if to play a flute,
while I lie forgotten
behind long, sustained notes?

You crucify me—
and now I understand scarecrows.
Each scarecrow is a corpse
of a dance.
If you opened the cracks in their wooden skin,
you wouldn’t see a heart—
only a womb,
the first witness to the tale.

C
|
R _ O _ S
|
|
S

Still hoping the cross’s intersection
is where my heart lies—
every beat of it
was meant to shake the cage.

But my heart
gave life to the bars.

With half my body flesh, half wood,
I became a carpenter
born of trees.

I seek no wood—
except
my own trunk.

Aref Moallemi

When there’s not much more to live for,
And you don’t know what life has in store,
All you see around you is a cold, barren space,
And the constant strife you have to face,
You feel no vigor pulsing through your body,
It only knows agony to a sharp degree,
Despite all the hatred and carnage going on,
You then recall the little moments that spawn,
The stuff you look forward to see,
The daily moments that bestow you glee,
And all the loved ones that cherish you,
The people you always want to pursue,
You feel more of a reason to keep existing,
It’s easy to forget when strife keeps persisting,
But caring for someone pushes us to pursue each other,
Even if they’ll be gone in the future, rather,
If life won’t be flawless,
If you often make a blunder nonetheless,
If you haven’t made a mind shattering victory,
You’ll still feel happy,
As you learn to live and love once more,
You feel warmth pulsating from your core,
Having constant bursts of inspiration,
Constantly falling in love from this revelation,
You have a whole life ahead of you,
So see this beautiful journey through.

Tightly woven bamboo floors and eyes
of Shanxi women at the hairdresser
as flat irons annealed a girl into glass
thinned and weakened by the heat.

The girl screeches at her hair chopped.
Village women snatched her childhood dress shoes
mandated khaki trousers
exchanging small for large each turning year.
Her pursed smile forced as they cackle:
A woman deserves nothing more!

To that hairdresser she returned
her fingers running beyond the tips of shortened hair.
Crystal eyes in shards
back bent from working fields.

I tell Mother I hate being a girl
crossed legs and flowery dresses.
Mother’s silt-tinted, brittle hands run through my long hair
her fingers wrap tight around the curling iron
Says I was once a girl in Shanxi…

I wrote her
Happy words
Loving words
Jump on this
carousel
with me
No reply.

Another try
I wrote her
Invitations
Affirmations
Please love me
No reply.

She broke me
One more day
I wrote her
Still trying
to give her
the world
No reply.

I’m crushed
My heart
lies in ruin
I wrote her
Again
Ink pleading
No reply.

My inks run dry
My heart is full
yet broken in pieces
She doesn’t see me
I wrote her
One final time
No reply.

I peel myself with a paring knife
red-skinned and milk-veined
a fruit bred for rot
the sink fills with curls of me
leaving behind my hollowed core
mother says sweetness is a slow death
i believe her. i ripened accordingly
in the orchard of girls
i was the one the wasps worshiped
hallowed and humming
their stingers like prayers
they bathed me in nectar
crowned me in pollen
pressed the seed into me
and called me Persephone
i did not bruise
i bloomed in necrotic hues
hollow and whole
decaying and divine
men bite and taste nothing but bitter
still i shine, from the windowsill
golden with absence
ready for the next hand
that mistakes me for hunger

Oh my son, since you been gone my mind been on the run
Oh my son, since you been gone I feel like all is wrong
Oh my son, I wish I could sing you a song
Oh my son, I remembered when I first held you in my arms. Now I’m watching you grow like
fresh crops on a farm.
Oh my son, you will be back with daddy soon,
Unlike Macaulay Culkin you will never be home alone.
Oh my son, I remembered when you first turned one
We were in Jamaica eating coconut under the sun
Oh my son, no one can replace you
I remembered when I used to chase you
When I got your first toy car you asked me to race you
Oh my son, as I have you in my arms now, I will make sure to embrace you
Others may portray me as if I don’t love you but oh my son you know there’s no one above you
Oh my son, I will cherish these moments we are having now because I know nothing is
permanent but son our bond is prominent and dominant.
Oh my son, can’t nothing stop us because we are one.
I am your father and you are my son.

Love Daddy,