Author: poetryfest

I wake up with words in my ribcage
Little black bugs in damp-mangled leaves
Vowel fingers in gloves of death’s image
With nothing but black soil for sleeves
I could scream but my voice is not there
The sky has fallen and fills every crease
My bag of dreams is all turned to lost air
Everything is soaked in ooze of dark grease
I am cramped in mud Imagining your face
This is a love letter on dried lacewings and fleas
And beads made out of the sludge of this place
What were tears hardening into drops of disease
Tears turned to dried blood stuck in my eyes
I string them together now a necklace of sorrow
A shibboleth and mojo I know you will prize
Look how here forever there is a tomorrow

梦想家
dreamer

一

Perhaps her dress wouldn’t have been so frayed if she stayed home;

their car sputtered down I-82 as albuterol in her throat tasted like apples

she breathed in

and the air smelled like chewed peanuts and
summer air run over by gas and oil

she thought of the dog’s bowl drying out, weeds in the sidewalk,
a $500 medical bill, an old treehouse filled with nails

her smile fell like a wilted moonbeam;
he reached for her hand

二

Perhaps she misplaced her childhood—
by his cigarette lighter, at the crossroads of lower quay and the south bridge,
by the open sea, in the sand where she tried to patch herself back together

grainy sound of voices on the other end of the line, poured glasses of wine,
footsteps bare in the forest beside deer prints and oak

三

To the water, voices
another story of peter and wendy:

she couldn’t stay
he couldn’t leave
too young to be love
too old to be anything else

and that’s where they meet:

on the verge of living

where we realize what we’ll lose
in order to chase the sun—

to be a lost boy, a lost child: an expectation, a gift in certain hands
to be a lost adult: a liability, a lamb

四

In a field by the highway, they tear up wildflowers with running feet;
her dress catches thorns and petals, becomes stained with pinks and yellows

their car flashes from afar, some form of help on the way

later, she’ll write abut the sunset piercing an ocean ahead,
through a fog of smoke from his lips,

how her smile will return with the tides.

And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
I’m lonely–
I’ll make me a world. —James Weldon Johnson

SPOKEN

Long before earth, or mountains, oceans
or sky, sun, moon, and stars,
horses, pigs, Prairie dogs, lamb, and
fish, whales, crocodiles, shrimp,
the Aspens, evergreens, palms, redwoods, oaks,
or eagles, sparrows, hawks and finches
termites, moths, worms, or cockroaches,
Dahlias, lilies, sunflowers, roses or weeds;
Long before man and woman, boys and girls;
three words crackled through the atmosphere,
splitting atoms and molecules and scattering quarks,
forming galaxies and universes,
“LET THERE BE.”

There’s not much room left for you.

But you jump in nose first anyhow,
No matter how I flinch, no matter how I yelp.

You say I shouldn’t be afraid.
It’s not natural.

“…if you’re scared under the water, just find a bubble.”

Spilled over.
Everything is ruined.
Everything is wet.
Wet and ruined.
Things will never be not ruined and not wet.

Words go flat in the mourning. Words go flat when you arrive to an auctioned home.

Sometimes I forget why things got wet in the first place. But I know how your car smells.

I would know exactly who you are if I had just met you or saw how you kiss a child’s head.

Spilling over.
Everything is dry. Not yet wet. But the glass is shaking and…

How long do I have left with you?
How long until I forget your face?
how your car’s smells?
how you kiss a child’s head?
How long until you love me and then hate me and then love me again?
How long until I’m grown and then a child and then grown?
How long until it’s dark and then it’s mourning and then it’s dark?

Will my body make it out?
Will I drown before the sun comes up to dry my wounds?

You were almost biblical:
A guide, a guardian, a saviour
Shining, with the bright light of hope
Set deep in your eyes
Flying off your tongue
Anchored in your hands.

You were an extension of myself
Or rather, I was an extension of you.
You gave me your eyes, your warmth, your whimsy
I gave you my love, my trust, my devotion
With my tiny hand.

You did not have an easy life
But your spirit was unconquerable
And now that your time has come
And my eyes are all but desiccated
All I will say is this:
These words were born of pain and pen
You were one.
You were all.
You will never be again.

Gynaecomastia: Enlargement of a man’s breast, usually due to hormone imbalance or hormone therapy.

When I was thirteen and first arrived on campus,
you two helped me gain attention during football
preseason. Bigger areolas topped by little
chocolate hershey kisses dripped with sweat
as mahogany mole hills tussled with Job Leva.

In the weight room, dark knots extended to boughs
above the bench, but below the rusted bar. Crevices
or black hairs of thread covered the ski slopes
groomed after every shower in the locker rooms,
dormitory lavatories, under bridges, in open quarries.

If bra fillings got grades you two black minions in my
Underground storage closet would be a solid “B”.
Potentially a “B+” when I was younger. Now that
I am older, my melons are still here. Maybe cause
I climb trees on the backs of corn husk leaves or

chief cheesesteaks from Al’s on 7th street. My roommate,
Miles, was amazed and shocked when he saw you two
just recently. His eyes bulged in disbelief, “Damn Will, I
Aint know you had chi-chi’s, TITS, Tay-tas, Twin Peaks
that grow by the week. The internal rivalry of your bodies

Twin cities–Minne and Paul. I ain’t know you had two
midgets wrestling in your front pockets. How do you see
over them two oblong CoCo puffs? Do you look around them
Or is your cleavage enough to see straight through?
Did boys laugh at you in the football locker-rooms too?”

Unhooked bait in the name of closure, sat… Just a Skeletor.
Funnily enough, I saw through the bluff.
Suddenly, if it was never clearer before…
“Real eyes, recognize real lies.”
On the flip side…
“Real cries, expose real tithes.”
In the power of boundaries, one will inadvertently…
Succumb to entitled aggressed behaviors.
That only dumb down their words.
When the manipulative measures have run its course…
Emotionally guard yourself. .

Rotting away I wait,
Glazed attempts to reap resolution.
Walk away to ensure you stay,
Abuse the allure of my elusion.

It’s not as simple as “self-sabotage.”
My affinity to total annihilation.
I’ve selected your burial plot
Without any chance of cremation.

No chance you leave this world,
Your ashes inert in an ocean.
You’ll forever be preserved,
Under six feet of devotion.

Why don’t I just take up knitting?
Weave yarn instead of dependence,
Who the hell am I kidding?
These hands have only ever woven malevolence.

I must look plenty pitiful,
Nodding at my lethality like an old friend.
They all start to say I’m fixable,
But they’ve never really seen the end.

One.
The Gods promised to make me holy before wrapping their fingers around my pretty little throat.
They devoured my
heart
like the ripest orange, grinning as red dripped down their chins, and I never felt more
alive.
So I proffered my lungs, my liver, watching their greedy mouths tear through my supple
flesh. I begged them to take more,
but they did not like the taste of my pulp and peel.
I crumpled
to my feet as they left me
gutted and bruised.

Two.
They say there’s an orchard in Athens filled with golden apples, granting immortality and
boundless love to those who eat one. I dragged myself to my small fishing boat, but it shattered
against the first swell, and I washed back up on Troy’s shore
empty
empty.
and alone.
I tried filling the gaping holes with the sweetest fruit I could find, but it was not enough –
I cried, begging; please plant a seed,
it doesn’t have to be golden.
Honeydew
Elderberry
Lemon
even Pomegranates will do
So I can at least pretend that there is something left of me.

Three.
I can’t go home anymore. It makes Mama cry. She said I am like a ghost who has forgotten how
to pass through walls. “Little Ganymede, why did you let them take your heart?”
Oh mother – have you not seen me?
I am a dumb animal with liquid brown eyes.
A cord of rope dangles from my neck, and I gaze at the sky
wanting, craving, like all boys do.
Dancing in fields sweetened by wildflowers, grass tickling my ankles –
I dare to dream.
At the edge of my vision, the forest looms.
Wolves slink between the thickets, white teeth grinning.
But I turn to face the sun instead and wait for someone to tug me along.

Zero.
I am twelve years old. Mama’s cooking wafts through the open cottage windows,
smelling of something sweet and tangy. I can hear her putter around the kitchen, scraping clay
bowls while humming over a bubbling stew.
Outside, I splay across a warm rock, chewing on a piece of wheat while our flock of
sheep bleat lazily. Feeling sun drunk and drowsy, I close my eyes, soaking in the life around me.
The hum of cicadas, the gentle breeze tugging through the grass.
I am surrounded by it.
A sudden shiver runs across my spine. I peak one eye open, spotting a large eagle soaring
just below the clouds. It drifts on unseen currents, flying lower and lower.
I sit up on my forearms, blond hair tickling past my cheeks. I track the bird, making sure
it doesn’t dive for the lambs. But it doesn’t even spare a glance towards them, instead circling
around me.
Once, twice.
I grin.
The Gods are watching me.

Shovel cracks into dirt once again.
The force,
ripping callouses open.
There’s blood on my hands
at least it’s mine.

Six feet after six feet down,
maybe another six to go.
I’m not sure how far
is far enough,
to get me away
from this thing.
All I know is what I’ve known for years;
bury it deeper.

Shoulders ache, head aches, I ache.
The exhaustion is so intense it might kill me.
But I’ve said that before, and it hasn’t yet.
Just a few more feet I tell myself.

Shovel cracks into dirt one last time,
it snaps
and breaks in two.
I finally snap.
Everything is breaking down
and after so many life times so am I.

I cry,
I sob,
I swear,
I scream,
Until I give up.

Come morning
everyone will see the thing
I’ve tried to hide
I’ve tried to bury.
And I don’t care.

I’m tired
and if i spend another moment
trying to hide
I’ll never leave this grave
I’ve unwittingly dug for myself.