Author: poetryfest

the air tastes like rot
like something buried too long beneath your indifference
a million voices choking in the same breath—
but you’re here,
waging wars on libraries
tearing at the spines of books
while your people are crushed beneath ceilings
cracked by storms they couldn’t escape

does it soothe you,
banning the trans kid who just wants to
exist?
to make laws out of fear and call it
protection,
while the soil dries to dust
and rivers crawl slower than your
sense of urgency?

you have no answers—
only distractions:
who gets to love who,
who gets to read what,
who gets to live how.
but the ground splits open behind you,
swallows whole towns,
and you have nothing to offer
but the clench of your fist
on a red pen,
underlining the names
you’d rather erase.

priorities?
a mother watches her child
wade through a flood
to reach the house
that isn’t there anymore.
a farmer breaks open his own hands
searching for life in a land
you let die.
a child breathes their last
while you’re busy
deciding if they had the right to be.

and when it all falls down—
when there’s nothing left to govern,
nothing left to rule—
will you call it victory?
is this what you call priorities?

Purpose of a mannerism,
shed I but a tear betrayed
when that boy was shot;
and resounding gasped a
world aggrieved, for their
youth perceived itself
where bullets hail ever.

Life knew once that fight
belongs where good men
die; though wherest once
dwelt a kindred has since
become enemy to another.
Wiser was a rock that
perceived itself shaken.

Kinder was that day
before this night fallen
upon the silt of gauntlet
so fraught dear of lies;
and to believe kind will
duly should have seen
where goes the hand.

Late, we are, to believe.
Early we become to war.
Cancel, for tooth and jaw
should be the law; and
fire has its crown in the
annals of time where
once regal knew brave.

They renamed the Gulf of Mexico,
erasing history into dust.
The Mexica civilization, who we called Aztec.
Their great empire crumbling into rust.
A name can hold so much power,
Words stomping with all their weight.
The Gulf of Mexico holds the legacy
of those who came before,
The brutal, the ugly, and the great.
Colonizers and colonized alike,
The name reflects the history of the place.
Yet the government changed its name,
Indigenous history that they don’t want to face.

Why am I ordered to degrade my rights on the constitutional amendments?
What are minorities are facing besides killing their future?
Where should a young intelligent male do to keep his house and family safe?

Falsely Accused!

Who do we label as the evil beings in the eyes of all mankind?
When are the hunters going to surrender themselves from this cycle, we call Reality?
How do we look forward for a true savor for our own kind?

Falsely Accused!

I am at a standstill between
two meanderings on
the flat, soggy dirt of an island.
There, on the not so far banks,
shouldered with wisps of dandelions
ready to leave their nest and forked weeds,
rests a beast.
She is a kindly beast, but a beast nonetheless,
coarse fur attached to loose skin atop rough sinew and
hardened muscle, eyes dark as coals without flame.
They query my rigid state underneath once-brushing willows,
now holding their breath, waiting for their queen to pass judgement
on my fate. My shallowed head dares to stare upon her gaze,
understanding few live once they have.
While words may be my preferred manner of communication,
I am still animal enough to recognize a decision has been made.
A soft and firm wind comes around the corner at the gentle nod of her head, upstream of the
meanderings, brushing my hairs and the willows;
they follow her Majesty’s orders as their tender branches impede my gaze.
As the willow branches softly fall to their sides once again,
She is gone.

Wildflowers Wilting in Grief,
Wildflowers in all corners of the earth,
Sewn by the souls of girls forgotten by their fathers,
not the product of a virgin birth.

Their spirits drift across the wind,
and they land somewhere safe and wild,
They rest in a sea of grass, and behind
a barricade of trees as they soothe their inner child.

As wildflowers, forgotten little girls,
soak in the rain and bath in the generous sun,
But greed pollutes the mountains by their father’s sons,

There is no rest for little girls forgotten by their fathers,
No, not even when they are lonely wildflowers,
For they will always have brothers.

stamped mountains
stuck to blue skies broken
by dusty clouds draping over in
paper strips glued down on
the stickered horizon of
orange felt scraped along the peaks
shining through those cirrus layers
of cotton and charcoal
promising crisp air and dark
green macrame tracing over slopes
of rooted forest
knitted with dried amber specks
spilling over in
waves cresting out of sight
while purple shadows trough through
canyons of roses in dwindling
light along nature’s canvas

Crispness,
Early morning dappled sunrise sending tendrils of
light through wispy clouds cutting the slumbering
earth’s crispness as she awakens for the new day.

Sultriness,
Permeating warmth, emanating from the earth,
sending steaming tendrils of light that create
shimmering hazy sheens and the sultriness causes
cicadas to sing.

Mottled,
Dappled leaves, multicoloured red, orange and
yellow, are illuminating tendrils of light as
luminescent beams through mottled tree-lined
streets that are now rivers of brilliance.

Placid
Dormant lethargy, quiet idleness waiting with
tendrils of placid light that barely warm frozen
earth, resting in hibernation and inactive icy
inertia.

There are little doors
where life slips through
everything which has been built
and neglected
and viscous, but still in motion
all the world is compost
what now? a little whiff of your own worm and steam. yuck.
in short, i am talking about an infinity of little rainbow balls
suspended in a void
endlessly spiralling into themselves.

Shrouded as it is in the fear of giving over
it is the tingling strings, a snake
that lies behind a film which covers it all
and no, Jan, I’m not talking about Autumn Sonata
imagine, instead, a dissociated young fawn,
writing philosophy dissertation on; ‘defacto sensory forbearance’
in a moment of heat and invisible weeds
they give it all away
i’m talking about something
more adjacent to the rainbow balls
don’t you see them too?
those little bubbles, leaving as they go
stopping up the spaces between spaces

You see just now I stopped living behind my eyes
just like that time last year
when I realised I split in two
at the age of six
and my magical lover found me all watchful
still waiting in plaid pyjamas
in the basement of my body

Connected, yes, now, at least, to something
which you felt was missing
but that grief, that anger, that heat
that has been waiting too
the cobwebs grow thick at home
grace always tends to make me feel a little nauseous

And shouldn’t I apply for job
here comes the shame
reverberating off the slammed door
aren’t I just, sort of, well, lost
and poking around in things
in a way which is somewhat
psychologically unhygienic?

the worst part about the past
is not that it happened but
that I remember it
after the earth has scorched
whatever reason
smoke and fire,

mirrors and we have flown
south
hurting new and we have
hurt our own

I remember when there were
blue skies
ozone and
the birds were in the air,
fish in the streams

now nothing remains and I must
cling to
the memory.