Author: poetryfest

Focus on something smaller
Something fixable
Don’t try to tackle world peace
That’s much too difficult

Unobtainable
A non fruitive dream
Yet, I’m supposed to hurrah
At the basic, unsubstantial little things?

Watch the news, Your Vote Counts!
Why can’t you see the bright side?
Focus on the things we can change.
You know, our section of the world is doing just fine.

Fine!

March soldiers into foreign territory.
Burn and pillage arbitrary lands.
Declare war on a country too small to disagree.
Is everything better now?
Are we at peace?

No, that’s much too difficult

I desire
warm cold water
falling rushing
night day
clear vision
storm or calm
I need
books on shelves
paintings on walls
clean satin sheets
feather pillows
windows with a vista
I dream and dream
see your face
try to remember
your name

She sat with war in her eyes,
between her fingers,
clinging to her skin
like incense
anyone could pick up the smell
miles away.
She was more war than woman,
more loss than human.
Her body a refugee camp,
thronged with
her people’s sadness —
In war, everyone is kin.

When she parts her lips,
lead-pellets come running
down her chin.
When she speaks,
we can hear revolvers spiralling
down her throat,
the syllables flaking off
into bullet chips.
Her parents and three children
she left back home.
Sometimes, we suspect they are
permanently grafted
onto her skin.
At night, she dreams of her children —
One faceless body
of human tragedy.
Her husband’s lips curl like rope.
around her neck
When he whispers how much
he’s missed her,
the words drop off like missiles
onto her heart —

War may have taught her
to give love,
but it has made receiving it
her worst fear.
When she was little,
her mother used to sing to her
to drown out the sound of bombings.
Now, she could have her ears cemented
and still hear the bombs.
Her mother’s face
was a time-worn wallpaper.
It peeled away.
She had skin scabbed
with bombed houses,
stomach littered
with rubble.

Her father was one long strand
of prayers,
his arms two minarets
rising and collapsing
for worship.
With his beard,
he could map out
the entire land
and brush the debris
off bombed cities.
Throughout her childhood,
her father recited Al-Baqarah
more times than he addressed her
for speech.
Now, he smiles from her wallet,
the smile almost a cringe,
his beard sometimes
tangled around her heart.
Even the young men
who come to visit
with coconut oil
and Vaseline pots,
grease her with more shame
than love —

What war has made her into,
love can never undo.

I found it in the attic,
behind the armoire,
cobwebbed in darkness
and time, a photo album
faded as Kodachrome and
loss, and on the pages,
slanting askew from yellowed
paste, I saw my father.

He stood in a row with other men,
waiting. They wore starched uniforms
in Navy white, bad haircuts, skin showing
above their ears where hair had hidden
the sun, fists held tightly in anxious hands,
and ashen faces. The world was at war.
He had enlisted with hope and fear and ancient
duties to ideals grown like midwestern wheat.

I never met him. I was born 27 days after
his death at Pearl Harbor, 16 days after my
mom heard a knock on her door and saw two
men in starched uniforms, their eyes downcast.
I couldn’t feel the flames he felt. I couldn’t breathe
the water he inhaled. I couldn’t hear his screams
as he sunk along with the Arizona, his flesh
on fire, his dreams deferred like winter wheat threshed.

Decades later, I stood as he had, my haircut as bad,
my uniform as starched, my fears agitated as propellor wash.
I wouldn’t board a ship at Pearl. I trudged through sand in
Iraq, IEDs awaiting each step like vipers, bodies exploding
to repeal an enemy’s 9/11 attack. My troop had taken photos,
too, one day to be stored in darkness. We stood in line, young men
pretending strength, waiting for sacrifice to ideals. From the album,
I felt his eyes, his past overlaying my present like a specter of prophesy.

A smoke coming
A fire igniting
And a bloodshed, am recalling
Sitting by the side
Feeling the heat radiates on palm
The fumes, I smell
The terror and hell
As I was sitting by the side of fire
Flames are coming on the other side
Heavy eyes reflect the growing blaze
As the downpour of fire,
Downpour of screaming voices from afar
The firestorm take over
And so are the reminiscent of the warfare
The smokes start the trigger
And ends it with another
I sat there, watching the gigantic monster eats
Fire and war share a great affinity with each other
Both are hell
Both destroy
Both can be put off in many ways
Both are greedy
Yet, war brings out the most devil in disguise
With fire, you’ll feel the hottest of the hell
With war, you’ll feel the devil of the hell
Bombs and canon were the music
Of the old, ghost town, that now were gone
As I hear the crackling sound,
A siren from a distance,
Monster flame’s gone
Walking through the ashes
As it is like walking through all covered bodies
A hell from my mind
Keeps my legs loose and numb

The sky is choked with smoke,
black veins crawling across its skin.
The earth trembles beneath boots—
some marching, some running, some lifeless.

A boy grips a rifle too large for his hands.
He was twelve yesterday,
but today, he is a soldier.
Tomorrow, he is uncertain.

Screams twist through the air,
a symphony of steel and suffering.
Blood sinks into the soil—
it does not choose sides.

A man cradles another,
his uniform torn, his body too.
Whispers something soft, something lost
before the last breath leaves open lips.

Somewhere, a mother waits.
Somewhere, a child asks where father has gone.
Somewhere, the world still spins
while here, everything stops.

The war does not care.
It devours.
It burns.
It leaves only ashes in the wind.

You’d think Christians would be quick
to advocate for anybody but the devil.
Yet who is first to complain
when David throws his stone?
Ambushing the noble Goliath
like a gutless coward
before he could meet the shepherd
in more honorable combat.
Sword vs. Crook
Tank vs. Tunic

The Pious wait for a
Rapture in progress
their eyes glued to the heavens
as the trip over the clothes and corpses
of the meek and the merciful
unaware they’ve been left behind.
Those persecuted peacemakers
withered with neglect, if they’re lucky
at least die in when God calls them home.
The cold ground, for them, a warmer hearth
than these houses of Unconditional Love.
Those less fortunate, seen by their saviors
discover just what God’s children do
to the least of their brothers.

Sitting pretty in their homes
long since forsaking their earthly church
it’s sermons too long, it’s pews too hard
(and not to mention communal!)
Modern missionaries sow from the sofa
reciting scripts, never reading scripture
so their message, not God’s, can be spread
in 30 seconds or less.
Them belly full
reading Matthew 19:24
and thanking God for the man
that fit a camel in a Cuisinart.

One day, I woke up with two left legs

Don’t think it’s easy

At every step, I stumble
The shoe doesn’t fit
I keep walking in circles
leaning leftward
But to reach the right,
all I have to do is walk too far left

I don’t walk fast because I always have to think where and how to place my feet

Many times, I need help
With direction and with balance
The most important thing is a steady arm,
the company

It’s not easy at all
But both work just fine to dropkick a fascist’s face
I’ve tested it

(Make America Lame Again)

If Jesus was a man, He was written by a woman.

He would have been an ally A brother And a friend.

So why do you give me a Jesus you don’t understand?

Why does your Jesus say it’s okay to follow me down alleyways as I squeeze my partner’s hand
tighter and tighter terrified you’ll grab me and say how I have sinned while I only care that I
created the cancer that makes me a mother you scream that I’m a murderer (like I don’t
know that) I’m walking faster shaking more struggling with my keys against
the fight or flight that killed my fingers my car can’t unlock fast enough
and this parking lot is so much bigger than it needs to be I see a face I
think I know oh God she taught my grade ten physiology she knows
every pastor in the state an advocate for the unadvocatable
(at least that’s what she thinks) I’m scared you mangle
the words inside my head screaming out “you
fucking whore, do you not care for human
life?” I hide my head to save you the
burden of knowing the face of a
murderer matches your
daughter’s I open the
car door and you
grab my arm
YOU GR
AB MY
AR
M

why would you do this to me?

If Jesus was man, He was written by a woman.
A woman who would understand the hypocritic shouts of slurrers and southerners
Would do nothing but make a woman want to cry, And a man feel empowered.
As if I was nothing but a body for pleasure and parentage.
If Jesus was a man, he wouldn’t be like you.

.

I think you’re forgetting something
Listening to too many mouths running
Promising to protect your piece of the pie
Swearing somebody’s out for your slice

I think you’re missing something
Between lines in the dirt there’s nothing
You can see connecting us to them
I think you missed the obvious evidence

The blood in our veins that all bleeds red
Our yearning to lay our children safe in their beds
Altruistic values that encourage us to do what’s right
The whole damn message of Jesus Christ
“You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien;

You were aliens in the land of Egypt”

But I’m just an atheist quoting Exodus

And believers don’t even listen to Jesus

Yeah I think you missed something
Empathy, compassion, loving
You got the marginalizing memo instead
Only matters where your own baby lays her head

I can’t comprehend those blinders you wear

To compartmentalize and justify what’s unjust and unfair

To suspend empathy and sympathy for a certain demographic

As if human rights are dependent on geographics
Oh my your Christ would not approve
He’d strip his church of your twisted truths
He’d chase you from the pews, overturn the tables
Where billionaires eat and remind you of the stable

No room at the Inn?
For the least of these, the immigrant?
No food for empty little brown hands?
No sojourner welcome in your land?

Yeah I think you bought it for a price
The fear mongering preacher’s and politician’s lies
Your precious piece of the American pie
But you missed something between bites