Author: poetryfest

You’d always let me stomp out your cigarettes
or toss them out the window on the highway
while you’d tell me your empty regrets and
whisper plans to skip town by Friday.

You’d put one behind my ear to hold back my hair
and tell me you bought the Reds just because
they matched my lips and the way I look when I swear.

You’d smoke one every night before bed,
and ask if I’d ever wanna let you go
I smiled and told you I’d rather be dead.

You’d leave the buds on the balcony
where we kissed for the very first time.
I’d sit out there whenever the hour turned blue
until I felt your hand in mine, intertwined.

You’d blow smoke to the stars when I wasn’t around,
and stay up for hours on the phone.
We’d talk until we were both in tears
and realize we’ve never felt so known.

You’d pull me in whenever you finished the last one.
I felt the softness of your hands and told you to go,
but you only held me tighter and asked me to wait for the sun.

You’d smell like cigarettes in the mornings,
and count my breaths while sleeping,
You’d always try to convince me that
maybe I’m something worth keeping.

He sits with the curve of his back pressed
against the cold, indifferent brick wall,
where within, among the glaring fluorescent lights
regular people shuffle along with their zombie walk.
The tendrils of chill seep through his torso,
curl about the tips of his fingers as they protrude
from his thinning and fraying fingerless gloves,
and nibble at his toes through the cracks in his worn shoes.
His matted hair gathers in thick branches across his drooping shoulders,
hangs over his eyes –
eyes that have seen the underside of our world,
the side that regular eyes notice not –
blue eyes with cracks of red veins reaching across the white.
Coughing, his lungs a-rattle like the change in his tin cup he shakes in the air,
he wheezes as another real-world person walks out of the store
and begs for change to put food in his belly –
Regular Man turns his head in disgust,
his kind almost always do –
and the beggar drops his cup to his side once more,
waiting for a person, a good person, the right person,
to show him a rarity in his world –
a kindness.

56 miles
to treadbare sneakers
and blisters to friction
and rest
are neither for boys
nor lazy.

They are quality miles.

There’s an aging letter in the drawer of my nightstand
It lays hiding in plain sight
On top of my grandma’s fake pearls
And papers that were lost on their way somewhere else
It doesn’t call out
Just plain white printer paper
And though I always know it’s there sometimes

I can forget
For long periods
It’s everything and nothing.
It’s worth reading every so often
But I carefully push it back into the blind spot.
Dip it into a bath of negative ions
Nullifying any power it may have
While I continue outside the drawer.

It’s written neatly in someone else’s handwriting.
Although it says everything I needed him to say
In near bullet fashion, the sentences race to their end and stop abruptly.
Then another.
It’s everything I told him in the last chapter.
Hell, I hired the counselor.
It’s deja vu or a face you swear you know.
And every so often I take it out and gently look over the dictation,
The guided voice and pen.
And it’s just enough doubt
To stay uncertainly searching
Outside of the drawer.

I can’t help but savor you to bits,
Like an idea wedged between
sharpening teeth,,,

The taste a dreamlike quality
That I suckle on

I long to sink into you
My flesh a mere symptom of yours

… I can’t help but gnaw on
your parts unknown

Your eyes affixed to my heart,
Ragged and raw
And true

Every kiss begins with Kay

Every part of you is sacred

That untamed magic of entanglements
Your mouth, the mouth of the wave washing over my eyes

In its magnificence, can you see it?

Your arm,
Of the clock that ticks me to life

I sop up your prose from where your lips part,
Rising and falling, nectar on your tongue

At the tip of your nose is where my love nests,
Upturned to some god-

Nothing is for certain,
But I’m sure about you

First she’s sour, then she’s sweet,
Sickly, even.

Looking me up and down,
I feel her eyes unthreading me.

You’d be surprised how long a breath can last,
I bow my head.

I’m a slut for wearing shorts and a tank top in the summer,
I should change.

When I emerge in my jeans, and 3 quarter sleeve,
I’m suddenly beautiful and modest in the 110 degree weather.

I just need a hug,
I guess I’ll throw some dirt on it and call it a day instead.

Dirt doesn’t fill the hole..

Maybe a snack would help?
She says I’m bored, not hungry.

So instead, I sip on escapism,
In an attempt to convince myself she’s right.

She is right,
Always right,

Never wrong,
Never misremembering.

Her word is law.

She’s a provider, sure,
Of fear, resentment, adversity.

Smothered in delusion,
She tells me it’s my fault.

What is?
“Everything.”
It is absolute.

My lover is so pretty,
Her eyes truly sparkle bright.
I would love to create art to show you,
In charcoal, dark and light.

Or perhaps I’d paint instead,
Maybe a poem would suffice.
Her eyes are so enchanting,
No art could ever be precise.

Nothing can capture her beauty,
Or the lovely flow of her hair.
Her beauty leaves me breathless,
In awe beyond compare.

I couldn’t be more lucky
To have her in my life.
She’s more than just beautiful,
She fills my world with light.

A foreign feeling forming
I have grieved before, but not like this
How can I heal if the hurt hasn’t come yet
But I know exactly when it is

The time between this moment
And the one where you’re set free
Is reduced to days on a calendar
Menacing minutes mocking me

I’d like to indulge in this intimate instant endlessly
Enveloped in your familiar arms
Faint fingers feathering my fearful fringe
Soothing silent suffering

Suddenly, I’m all alone again
Your face fading from view
Because I can’t make a moment stay forever
And the same goes for you

Luck has made you feel above faith
You have control of neither one,
Yet somehow misfortune has passed you by
You’ve nary been tested in a way that would require anything greater than a wallet

Luck would have you believing that you’re too smart for faith,
The latter being something for fools or weaklings

But it is only luck which has shielded you from misfortune
Darling, misfortune is merely late to your station
You’ve never, not yet, whispered love nor gratitude into the ear of one
whose life is being taken before your eyes

Your perfect eyes
They wear bifocals now

My lip trembles as I write, knowing that what has been peppered throughout the lives of some,
will likely befall you en-masse
That your short time left must now accommodate a lifetime of sorrow
How terribly unlucky

When that time comes, and as sure as the sun rises it will,
I ask myself if you’ll look up, or down, or in
If you’ll curse to the sky with a shaking fist
Or if you’ll plead with things unseen

No matter
The otherworldly is not accessible to those who’ve spent such time disbelieving
Your soulagement will be the breathing room that will come in short bursts between
other unfortunate events to follow

Lucky you

Albert Camus wrote that Life is absurd.
That’s what I’m thinking about when I look at her.
I feel the addict gene they told me I have,
somewhere between the tumor and smokey lungs
contorting
to match the mold she’s carved out with her words.
She’s filled me with them,
and she doesn’t even know it.

Life is absurd, I think,
watching her fingertips make lines in the sand
of this background noise.
I see the space around her,
and I see what she takes up of it
and I am envious.

To be jealous of abstraction, is what it is to need her.
To know the vice that holds you,
and to continuously negate seeking a form of virtue
to combat it, is what it is to fall
into something like love.

I am well versed in the aching of it.
This is all familiar, but I don’t mind in the least.
I agree that Life is absurd. And in absurdity
I find a small corner of sanity
that looks something like the crosswalk by my house,
as well as a reason to continue on living.