Author: poetryfest

Promises
Made without fear
Now broken like glass shards
The memories linger, but we’re lost
No call

Step 1: Find a place to live, preferably one that’s cozy, a corner house, right on a bus route, close to your loved ones, make sure parking is good for when friends visit for your birthday. If you want to be thorough, check for close by schools for future kids and imagine them running through the neighborhood’s streets. Above all else, make sure it has good bones. This will be your home even after it’s dust over headstones.

Step 2: Live the life you cherished, filled with soft sunsets reflected off your dreams becoming. Water the hibiscuses, mint, and lemon tree and whisper to them your stories, until they’re etched into each petal, root, and ring. Turn the dirt to let in fresh hope with a fertilizing DAP or a pinch of Nourishment, Persistence and Knotted stories.

Step 3: When you go on university tours, the most important part to check is the grass at the Quad, will your favorite spot fit you and your friends? Laying on the grass, shoulder-to- shoulder, settling into careers grooved with urgency against the setting sun. Is the dirt filled with enough dreams that you can play back like DVDs in a long car ride to another life.

Step 4: Memorize and romanticize the routes you take everywhere. Is there space for your knees and elbows to stay sprawled. Will you be able to stay in this car, staining it with maps of everywhere you haven’t seen yet. Hole marks the spot, you can peak you will see through back to then, at the route you’ve already committed to a now riddled heart.

Step 5: Leave a little bit of yourself everywhere you go, so when you look at it through the blood red lens you might see its trail and spend eternity with re-found love left for safekeeping. Hope that where you stay last, there will be peace to be found, and when that hope can’t find you, know it will grow around you, in time, at your new home even if it
wasn’t the one you chose.

feel like the whole world has gone nuts, that i have gone nuts.
that I am broken, and that the world is after me, against me.

scum that made this hell called earth, where there are demons
with sharp teeth and blood craving… blood…to make life
to live…I need a knife.

A small child and his friend,
sworn together to the end,
no thought in their mind,
that hatred was blind.

The meaning of end,
was soon comprehend,
upcoming were fast,
ghosts of the past.

The knowledge request,
not knowing were blessed,
the answer was passed,
that day was their last.

Balkan mountains,
close to the sea,
memories calling,
the small child was me.

Dark clouds from the sea,
a new ruler to be,
to drown them in sorrow,
raining tears would follow.

Centuries old memory,
his breath is slow,
generations of family,
his wrath would grow.

Look into the eye,
to name his messenger,
it is fear in every tear,
and sorrow it’s executor.

Years have passed,
my memories shadow,
through tears have grasped,
one thing I know,
his ways in disguise,
two names I will show.

Some call it insanity,
best to not know,
testing world’s reality,
infinity as pain will show.

Faced with itself
humanity once again reveals its boundless capacity for destruction.
How hardened must our hearts grow
to endure the inhumanity we choose for ourselves?
The black clouds gathering in the east are more than a storm;
they carry the promise of a future long feared—
an omen of misery, terror, and death.
No, war will never be a relic of the past.
Even now, bombs fall from the skies,
killing the innocence of the blameless
and shattering the dream of a world at peace.

Divided and discordant, the peoples follow leaders
who crave chaos.
Apathetic, the credulous march behind the warlord,
but they are not innocent—
for in this story, innocence has all but vanished.
My prayers go to those who long for peace,
even as they clean their weapons to face war.
Their path is a steep descent into the inferno’s storms,
from which none know if they will return.

For though all know when war begins,
none can fathom the full breadth of its devastation.
Those who chase imagined enemies
will find only their own demise.
Perhaps, before their fall, they’ll understand
they were never leaders but tyrants—
always more inclined to destroy than to create.

The vocabulary of such men is woefully narrow.
In their inability to find words,
they resort to weapons,
readier to command death
than to let peace flourish upon the earth.
They shed the blood of others
to ensure their names mark history’s pages,
even if those pages are steeped in infamy.

Down with these dictators who speak only the language of hate!
Let poets rise to power,
for they will never lack the right words.
A poet will never trade a flower for a bullet,
nor a kiss for all the power in the world.
A poet will find indescribable beauty
where others see only insignificance and discord.
A poet will always pen a verse of love
instead of a declaration of war.

And if their lexicon lacks the words
to sustain the pursuit of peace,
they will invent one—a word to inspire us all.
But what word could a poet create in this war
to fully describe the discovery of pain and death
by an innocent child?
And why must they even try?

At the edge of this madness lies extinction,
and there can be no glory,
no heroes,
in a war where none survive.
How tragic it would be if this were the end of humanity’s tale:
annihilation through greed and folly

Wax figures melt
at the end of humanity.
Paraffin welts
slip and slide profanity.

Generators run low
fuses about to blow.
Long decomposing materials
from which new life will grow.

Fallow fields lie,
where for naught,
Young men
went to die.
Red dot dream
felt, not seen.
Run, don’t scream.

The cool blue seed of ruin
stokes the speed of retribution.
Wisteria for the dead and
ascetic destitution.
Rampant destruction and
caustic pollution.

The neon sun of
imperial fire
christens the chrome of
an ethereal spire.
The demonic pun of
omniscient desire
encapsulates the tone of
one sided cease fire.

With anyone left to disapprove,
the greedy live to accuse.
With nothing left to prove,
the greedy live to use.
With someone left to remove,
the greedy live to lose.

Let’s all rise,
Let’s all survive.
We are men.

All rise,
With pride.
We are men.

We will rise,
Here we rise.
We are men.

Rise my friend,
This is the end.
We are men.

Men assemble,
We must assemble.
We must not tremble,
We must assemble.

We need to rise,
With all your pride.
Let’s go for a ride,
Let’s all survive.

Men we must be strong,
No you are not wrong.
This day might be long,
Men, we must be strong.

Please listen to me close,
We must stay close.
Our time is close,
Your time is close.

Come on my brothers we rise,
We must rise for our pride.
We must survive,
It is our night.

Men we must rise,
All of us will rise.
Let’s all rise,
Here we rise.

I Dreamt I Was There When The Bomb Dropped
I felt the acid laced shrapnel pierce my bones
Beneath my feet, the ground crumbled
Like a bird, away I was carried into the air

Never again did these shoes touch the land
Nor did they stay floating in the abyss
Worse than the burns, it pains me to say
Was that my brain convinced me of what I would miss

I awoke to pure darkness
There was nothing for me on that side
But seeing as my body and I divorced
I couldn’t help but question who He was

When all was said and done
I returned to the sleep I couldn’t fear
And as my body left me once again
I knew it could never be the same

There is no war in the history we know
And in the history lost to time
That was truly won
Only common thread hanging all these so-called winners
Is the ability to be crueler than the other
But nonetheless, a winner is needed

To know your enemy is to buy champagne
And confetti and fireworks
For the war has been won by you
Or whatever you want to call the mass grave named victory

Slow process to grow pretty flower of trust
But a steady water drip can fill an ocean
So you start with fresh bread that smells like home

And then you throw canned meats and fruits into the mix
Until the foreign soldiers praise and fight over rotten peach and expired fish
Let them no longer recognize what food used to be

You leave them alone for 3 days time
No less but surely more is allowed
Let them grow hungry
Return then and scream out

“Do you need more food?”
And the foreign soldiers will cry in return
“Yes! More! Give us More!”

And that’s when you throw little dying stars at them
And watch as they grab them eagerly
Realizing too late that
They will die hungry

Father wonders how much time and emotions,
Have costed him following the foreign war,
Biasedly browsing for timeous updates,
Wishing if I could be their suicidal mercenary,
Who goes and blows a nuke that stops it all.