Author: poetryfest

how often something occurs determines its value

adaptation requires consistent inquiry

what stoma think of exhaust plums
birds to marinate on power lines

what gills sigh in diesel
parched carcinogens
to lick the carbon dioxide

I snagged my first catch when I was six
pole strained
slight expectation
fell to the bottom in
lull of agency

We screamed
gills riggling

what left a body ridged

with blood oozing
out the eye

Written by a young person at Clark Children & Family Justice Center, 10/30/2024

My Heart
Your smile, your chocolate skin, your brown eyes are so hard to forget
Whenever I’m around you, nothing’s wrong,
I miss the way you hold me and the way your hands gently caressed mine
I miss our lips touching and us being eye to eye
You make me feel like I’m not a waste of your time
So promise me you’ll always be mine
That night you rested on my thigh I knew you were all mine

2:36 am.

“I want,” she wrote in her laptop journal,
her fingers pecking at the keyboard like
a bird seeking seeds. “I want sunshine.
I want robins, daffodils, parades with balloons,
a glass of red wine over a candlelit dinner.
I want to hold someone’s hand,” as ice
droplets froze on her bedroom window.

She picked up her handheld from the nightstand
to read his text, again. “This isn’t working, Jen.”
Four words after their eight months together. In the
second month, she said, “I think you’re the one, Jim.”
He smiled and nodded. At the fourth month, she said,
“I love you, Jim.” He smiled and nodded. At month seven,
she asked, “What can I do, Jim?” He shrugged and looked away.

She wondered why she wasn’t enough. She wondered how else
she could have made him happy, as she tugged at the bandage
covering her left forearm, her nails bitten and bloodied around
red cuticles. She pried one edge of the gauze up and pulled it from
the scabs of her newly inked arm, decorated with a heart and two initials,
J & J. Jen read his four-word text, again, then she turned off the
handheld and shut her laptop, the light extinguishing like a flower closing.

The ice on her window started to melt in rivulets like exclamation points.

2:47 am.

It’s been two hours since you left
Another man has already been here
Penetrated me
Departed
And I still think of you
Profusely

It’s been six months since you left
Countless bodies in between
But no hearts
I think you took mine
When you withdrew your presence

I’ll use anything to justify
My sole obsession
With trying to unravel your mysteries

Such otherworldly enigma
Has disrupted my connection with reality
In the most beautiful of ways

On the brink of utter collapse
I lack the ability to store
These unidentified feelings

I might just let them explode
Into a costly decimation
Of any possibility of you returning
And bringing back my pulse

You might never venture
Into the depths of my being
Out of a fear I am unrelated to

Yet my euphoria emulsifies
Into all the threats you have faced

And I
A weak
Shattered
Surrendered
Concept of a person
Just seek your love

It was dark when he rose
Another morning, another day
His bones wailed complaints
Telling tales of their age

He lived alone now
She had passed years before
He boiled water for his tea
Gnawed stale bread, and cheese

The music was still in him
He knew he must play
It was lonely without her
His music brought her back

The day cold and windy
She would laugh against the cold
He longed for her sun
Busking, and thoughts of her

He looked in the mirror
Combed his white hair
Remembered a younger man
Mostly he remembered her

He locked the door as he left
A long walk lay ahead
He wanted to be early
To lay claim to his place

He carried his instrument,
A small folding chair,
And all he would need
To last him the day

Stone walls, waist high,
Lined the road on both sides
He had walked it with her
More times than he knew

With her he would run
He would dance down the road
Today was a journey
A long walk on old legs

When he got to the town
The shops were all open
He found his spot vacant
And set down his chair

He sat against the wall
And took out his instrument
The case he left open
On the ground just beside him

Like comfortable gloves
His hands found their place
His left found the buttons
His right found the keys

Tapping his foot
He squeezed the box gently
Notes filled the air
Head bowed, eyes closed

That’s when saw her
He knew she would come
She laughed and danced to his music
He played it for her

Passersby left him coins
They praised his sweet music
But he, never heard them
He was with someone else

He played until dark
Eyes closed, gently swaying
Never stopping to eat
Or leaving his place

When shops opened the next morning
They still heard him playing
The sun rose to his music
And a woman’s sweet laugh

That’s when they found him
Still in his chair
His foot had stopped tapping
His hands now lay still

He’d gone to be with her
To join her in dance
They danced with the sun
Music still in the air

We are not the hush of history,
We are the sound of what is to be.
We are not shadows, dim or weak,
We are the light that dares to speak.

Still they gather in their towers,
debating rights that were always ours.
Still, they carve laws into our skin,
marking the battles we’ll never win.
Still, they cage what love creates,
as if hearts can obey their gates.

They trade our dignity like a debt,
a promise made, but then they forget.
They turn our bodies into land,
etched with laws we never planned.
But hear us now, our chains will break,
for we were born to rise, awake.

A woman’s body is not a field,
not a war to lose or yield.
It is hers, her power, her choice,
her truth, her rightful voice.
Love is not a line in the sand,
but waves that crash and take the land.

So let them argue, let them fight,
Over borders, wrong and right.
Over walls that crack and fall,
Over wars that end us all.
We stand here unshaken and proud,
our silence louder than loud.

For power is not in fists that fly,
but in the ones who won’t comply.
We are not waiting, not asking to rise,
we are the storm in their quiet skies.
And love unshackled, wild, untamed,
will rise when all else burns to flame.

The good citizens of the Only State wake
each and every morning to reruns of Forrest Gump.
They enjoy a four-ounce cup of regulation chocolate
milk and a gummy bear vitamin. Then to the bath house
for a good soak and a State-monitored enema.

Today is the Day of Unanimity. Universal suffrage and mandatory
disclosure. Your vote is tattooed on your forehead. We all must choose
the Benefactor in Chief, the source of our guaranteed incomes and free tuition.
Now the government selects student majors. We clamored for it and we got it.
The end of liberty and the secret ballot.

They took my friend Jessie away for kissing someone of the opposite sex
in a sting operation in Malady Park, a well-known wooded area where
nymphomaniacs look for heterosexual perverts. My friend got picked up
for drinking out of a large Styrofoam cup. He dumped his state-dispensed 4 oz.
Jolly cup designed for kale and fish egg smoothies and guzzled home brew instead.

I live with my State-authorized male partner. Our incomes will double if we marry.
We are expected to adopt and raise three children, two from the Ivory Coast and one
from Nepal. We have six months to accept. If not, we will be castrated and turned
into State Drones, our right to live together rescinded and our workloads doubled.
We will be marked for early death, 45 for men, women at 50.

We’ve both been targeted because we are old enough to remember living
in a state of liberty, back when people were permitted to go outside to eat,
defecate, or fornicate at will. During the Confiscation Wars, we lost our freedom.
Permanent curfews are now imposed along with Contentment Schedules.
Millions have been gassed. All guns now belong to the State.

Freddy and I are given privacy once a day from 8:45 pm to 9:15 pm. Water is allotted
from 9:16 pm to 10:00 pm for showers and toilet. As we have no kitchen, no eating
is permitted within our dwelling, not until we adopt. We take our meals at work. My
school serves three a day, each at 750 calories. I must watch my weight. Obesity has been
outlawed, so I must maintain a BMI below 30 or I will be recycled for body parts.

Gratitude sessions are held nightly. I missed mine last night and will be fined. Freddy
attended so his salary will not be cut. If this continues, Freddy will be assigned a new
partner. I will be sent to live in a prison complex for the Ungrateful. No one has ever
graduated from Gratitude School; it is a lifetime sentence. The Benefactress herself
is known to loath the Ungrateful and personally supervises the punishment blocks.

Testicles removed in Castration Clinics from males who refuse adoption are fed,
it is said, to the Benefactor’s prized herd of Shropshire rare breed hogs, bred for her
and other royals exclusively. Severed organs are scattered on pasture lands stretching
as far as the eye can see. It is rumored that the pork is sold at $1000 per kilo to private
armies throughout the world. All other meats are banned except rat and dog.

Today I learned Freddy has been assigned to a reproduction unit. If he sires a child,
he will be released from adoption duties. I must report to Gratitude Learning Center
#267, just outside Maya Angelou City. My life is over. They revoked my teaching
license. I will be required to track signs of “adverse proclivities” and “perverse yearnings”
among men who surf porn sites. They will be targeted for “imminent” elimination.

I just found out I will be castrated for my failure to fulfill my social contract. I am
to be renamed and given diversity training. Despite my preference for male companionship,
I must bunk with three lesbians. They, too, have been identified as “unproductive” and marked
for early termination. They can earn life extension credits by working in brothels and sex clubs
for refugee laborers. They’ve offered to teach me techniques needed for earning credits.

Some trace the end to the Confiscation Wars which, admittedly, were brutal. Others,
to the Supreme Court’s decision allowing the Benefactress to disguise herself as a Person
of Distinction, in a digital mask of Marie Antoinette, Queen Elizabeth and, recently, Neal
Armstrong in full drag. She is a well-known transsexual. The new Constitution forbids
a man with a penis from serving as Our Most Honorable Mistress.

A letter contains a secret.
A precious little secret the connoisseur decodes from a letter.
A precious little secret the river has engraved on the silt and fleeting sand.
For the connoisseur to find out if he would ever.
Who else will find it out if not he,
who else would remember and cherish it in memory,
who else would have thus kept it like a treasure?
His precious little treasure unfolds he.
Her precious little secret so carefully the river had left in a letter
for the connoisseur to know if he ever would.

In a letter washed into his memory in due time
The river communicates her secret to the connoisseur.
The river answers to him her life’s question.
Her life’s question she answers to him.

Knowledge dawns in the connoisseur with a letter,
With a secret contained in a letter,
The river brings him to light
from his dull, decrepit darkness.

To the all-pervading light of love
An open window the Connoisseur is
And so is she, his river.

Yours Faithfully,
Most faithfully, most sincerely,
All her love she pours into a letter,
the river does.

In a precious little letter that she left
for the connoisseur to keep like a treasure,
The river inscribes her lover’s name.

[Aadila, the name in Arabic literally means honesty, sincerity, and fairness.]

Heavy thoughts pull my mind down from the light
Voices and sounds race in my head and take flight
Step after step , weight piles on me
No matter how fast I walk I can never seem to flee
I cry and I scream , estranged from love
Feeling alone in this fight , reaching above
A thousand stars come together , building an angel made of care
She pulls me up , spreading her sweetness in the air
A break from the anger , the stress , the fear
Her soft soothing voice say “it’s okay dear”
She hears me , my sadness , my pain and all
She holds me gently, her soft hands saving me from the fall
I finally feel like I’m not alone in this thousand year war
Her kindness helps me lift myself off the floor
I forget the feeling of love no longer
Bless this sweet girl for helping me be stronger

You have some newly knitted skin
over fur I loved to pieces
that feels so soft
while drooling all over you.

On a diet of candy
and not right now they tell me
you’re drying on the porch
until I just can’t live without.

I’m dragging you along
your biggest stitches
and blabber in the one that’s gone.
So slowly you turn thin again.

I love you so, I love you so!
Even more with button eyes
or when you need to
leave again, bit by fluffy bit.