Author: poetryfest

after Cloud Atlas

…on a different galaxy, underneath
the veil of a different sky, a marathon
of rotating moons, a daybreak swatch
of suns, colors spanning from blood
orange to lime green, but familiarities
are not lost to you even in this new life.
The deserts of roaming snarlax remind
you of the cattle drives in your first life
as a cowhand working in the open Montana
range, the soft wind rustling between your
hair, riding horseback in the spirit of flock
and pasture. You still catch the breeze here
like a firefly of feelings, hoping you can
encase this memory in a mason jar of
consciousness, but it fleets with every
old life gave and every new life made.
Your favorite lonely shore is the
black tar sand and naturally olive
green waters, here on Ethonia: The
Planet of Black Lagoons, it reminds you
of a film with partly the same name
the same lover you seem to run into
in every new life. The same one who
ran barefoot through the lakefront
silt and pebble, to let you know
you’re not alone. Whether she was a
98-year-old teahouse proprietor
& you, a 100-year-old sherpa in Nepal
Whether she was a Mother Swan
& you a dashing drake in a Scottish loch
Whether she was a tentacle-lipped Terrangian
& you a tentacle-eared Kerrchangian on
the underwater exoplanet: Xelophant
in your most recent life, you were
stockers at a supply house on a colony
in Mars, and now in this new life
as you gather your snarlax, herd them
into a corral of laser-lined karaguey steel,
you can see her in the distance calling you
by a different name, from a different voice
adorning a different face, but you know who
she is, she knows who you are, and that’s all
you both need to know for the sky to transform
into a mistletoe veneer, for a routine afternoon
to be a holiday, and for you to kiss beneath
the heavens of a brand-new world

(After Ani Liu’s speculation on a future where some of us might embark on a one-way trip to space)

We need not speculate—
Seven days ago, when I was launched, untrained,
from the universe we built for each other,
you left behind two unwashed shirts in my closet.

I took one to bed, dreaming of orbits we will never complete,
mapping the gravitational fields where you once lay.

The other, a thinning atmosphere
against the vacuum of forgetting,
I wear into the world
until your scent burns on re-entry.

Every day, a light-year into space between us.

*Inspired by the art installation “Olfactory Time Capsule for Earthly Memories” by Ani Liu,
part of the exhibition Space City: Art in the Age of Artemis

i fear

those who see
only
my pain

see
only
their own

to look at me
and assume
i am drowning
in my darkness

not
reveling
in it

is a misconception

a missed opportunity

to learn
how to do
the same

Purple sunlight glittered upon a windswept plain.
Our green scaled hero stood and heard an animal scream in pain.
The hero’s ears pricked forward, and they took a leaping stride,
To discover their faithful steed writhing upon its side.
The hero cast a glance upon the vast, rolling landscape
As they sat next to their steed and stroked firmly its nape.
With a swift movement, the hero drew from their sheaf a knife
And plunged it into their steed to take the steed’s dear life.
A single golden tear rolled down the hero’s face.
The hero dropped their head and thought some silent words of grace.

In the Starlace Vaults where futures hum,
my life spins in algorithmic silk,
every path I might’ve walked,
rendered in glass-coated thread.

I danced alone
on the edge of a dying star,
sending light poems
to forgotten satellites.

They called me “the Whisper Architect”
because I built symphonies
from gravitational echoes.
I never touched another soul,
but the stars wept with me nightly.

And now I stand in the chamber
where the soul must choose,
one path to burn into being.
All others dissolve
into data mist,
ungrieved.

They ask me which I’ll keep.
The mother? The martyr? The monk?

No.
I choose the version
that loved the void
and made it sing.

Hidden away from
The prying eyes
Of our monstrous
Companions,
In a secret garden
Where black roses grow,
Fairladies
Bathe naked
In babbling brooks
Without the threat
Of being violated.

Curiosity
Is welcomed here.
There is no
Forbidden fruit-
No consequence for hunger.
The daughters of Eve,
We willingly drink the poison.

Linking our pinkies
We burst out in song,
And high in the apricot trees,
A dove joins in.

36- 26 -36
My measurements were an hour glass shape
Before children
After children
Before menopause
Before breast cancer

Doctors scooped out cancer like ice cream
a triple scoop, a banana split of tissue
until I was left with divots
valleys or hollows haunting me in the mirror after my shower
a river of angry red stitches surrounding the bottom,
u-shaped moat or the demented smile of a clown

My body is an amorphous shape
not quite a rectangle, not a pear or apple
too small in places that were too big
too big in places that were so small
the hour glass only measures time
grains of sand run faster than liquid through a sieve

She skirts the skin- settles onto your bones: a second epidermis
Fashion to be layered
And made opportune for you to digress
A drivel drama, a novel thought

The hollow in your chest barely concealed
But it is the hollow beneath your eyes that begs to suggest
Mind so young, brain plasticity learned to eat until you ungrew
Swelling into straight lines that nature never knew

A white shadow made of tailored cross
stitches rolling out tapered runs on linen squares
Forget the abyss, stare into her vanilla for that is where she tucks her truths, waiting for someone else to
seek them out to share

-Cheveux

Nothing else is more vital to a profitable
live
stock enterprise,
well- being, the world population.
We could survive without
meat
milk
most
of us would find
vegetables and grain a rather dull diet.
It’s important that we keep reproducing and reproducing and reproducing and reproducing and
reproducing and reproducing and reproducing and reproducing and reproducing and reproducing
and
you will find the legs slippery to handle and
in larger species attach a rope or better yet an obstetrical chain makes the job easier
put your hand in the vagina
try to ascertain what is wrong.

Fly me to the moon,
The bad moon rising,
Under the sun where,
Across the universe,
The sky is a neighborhood.

Hello Earth, here comes the sun,
A rust colored sun dancing in the moonlight.
An out of this world space monkey with space junk,
Contemplates life on Mars while,
Drinking a champagne supernova,
And walking on the moon.

A shining star and space oddity,
From an ordinary world
Sing an operatic space age love song,
Of the killing moon counting stars
While walking on sunshine.

Instead of waiting for the sun,
Venus in her rocket of cosmic love
Deposits drops of Jupiter,
And the rings of Saturn
On the whole of the moon.

What a wonderful world
When a sleeping satellite
From an invisible sun
Awakens on a new moon on Monday.

Mother Night no longer afraid of sunlight
Vacations on an island in the sun
Observes the final countdown of
A total eclipse of the heart with
The Starman from the house of the rising sun.

The man from Planet Marzipan along with
A cloudbusting rocket man from Planet Earth gather,
Spirits in the material world under the milky way
To unite a black hole sun with
The moon over Bourbon Street preventing,
A blister in the sun and shame on the moon.