Author: poetryfest

Narrated by Val Cole

POEM:

What should we make of a country that takes
Donald Trump as its leader
a second time?
The first time could be seen as an unplanned marriage –
that pounding head waking up the morning after in Vegas
married to the wedding singer moment.
But the second time? Knowing what’s passed between you?
After finally getting the chance to raise your unheard voice –
who would make this choice?
They know he won’t change but they’ve missed the wild swings of their Toddler King.
Apparently.

Oh, imagine Donald Trump the toddler.
No, not the grown man behaving badly but the real boy
small and stumbling and awkward, the occasional bump on his knees when he fell
counting on others to teach him how to share his toys
how to keep breathing when the focus shifted from here to there.
Someone should have shown him how to win and how to lose – with grace,
should have lit up at his delight, that smile on his little face.
Maybe someone did. But the unquenchable thirst to be first
came from somewhere and I can see past those burned down places in his heart
to that small boy still not sure of his worth.

And now? He crashes through the world like a dime store King Kong
poorly manufactured and smelling like fear
to all who come near him;
climbing his way to the tops of tall buildings
with pulleys and strings and ropes and things
hoping no one will notice he’s plastic and broken
and made mainly in Moscow.

He’s not content to simply be President of those United States,
to fix all that’s been broken with each word that’s spoken. It’s not enough.
He wants more. He starts with his nose pressed close
against the window of the Oval Office –
not even President yet, he proposes Canada be the 51st state,
supposes Greenland can be his with a cheque (payable at a later date)
and demands that the Panama Canal be returned – to him.
I imagine him stamping his tiny feet
as he wanders down empty and echoing marbled halls
chased by the unpaid debt of promises unmet at home
before he throws his sprawling ambition
against everybody else’s walls.

Canada won’t riot when the Toddler King calls our Prime Minister
the Governor of the 51st state. We’ll stay quiet.
But Greenland’s tied to Denmark and the Danes won’t play
the toddler’s game. They don’t ignore him or redirect him.
They firmly decline his offer and a biting satirical claim makes the rounds
in their name:
Why doesn’t Denmark run the States
if the job is too much for him to handle,
why don’t they create world-class education
and health care without corruption or scandal?
Under their cool and steady hands, the satirist reassures us
in a social media post
the country could be transformed from an empty mass of land
into a great nation. Again. He hopes.

The real Danes have a storied history of pushing
their Viking longboats out into the nearest sea
when the tides are right
reaching boldly towards their goals even if it means they have to fight.
These modern-day Danes aren’t looking for trouble,
don’t joke about conquering their friends
but, like all reasonable folks, they look for fire
every time they smell smoke.

Some people treat the Toddler King’s extra-territorial posturing as humour.
Can’t you take a joke? they say grimly
but nobody is laughing. Nobody dares smile.
Even Canada speaks up –
Isn’t customarily sorry after a while.
United for once from rural to urban
we give up on our neighbourly ties one by one
starting with Kentucky bourbon.

My mind wrestles me from sleep most nights
eyes still burning from the shock
of my latest social media feeds I lie
wide awake and wondering
If it’s too late to turn back the clock
so that Donald Trump the man
could let Donald Trump the boy
out of his frozen ice castle to play
before the Danes release their Vikings
and the next Great Age of Invasion is on its way?

Narrated by Val Cole

POEM:

Am I disgusting for letting him strip my shirt from my skin so I can feel an ounce of what I think love could possibly be? How can I hate my body so much, but then also only believe a man could ever want me for my curves, a braless chest made for his hands. I want to scrub the remnants of his scent from my skin and also bask in the fact that he wanted at least some small fraction of me. Shh, don’t talk, it will ruin the moment. The moment where I draw the line and say my pants should stay on. A few moments later letting myself go because he wants more of me so I give and I give because at least there is something of mine he wants to take. Not my heart. Not my mind. Something is more than nothing, right?

Narrated by Val Cole

POEM:

April 1, 1946
Hilo, Hawaii

It was the natural thing to do,
send the whole class
to play on the beach.

Where else could you enjoy recess
on the shore but the Aloha state?
Reflective Popsicle green waves topped

with whipped cream, every child’s fantasy.
Even the tide a dream, drawing itself
out like a final breath,

span of warm, tan sand reaching halfway
across the world. Teacher smiled,
permed hair breeze-dancing.

How pleased she was for noticing
how the expansive shoreline beckoned
that morning. Come, it whispered.

One glance out the window,
spontaneous alternative
from fenced playground.

Shouts. Beach balls. Tag. Globs
of wet sand lobbed to make the girls squeal,
laughter so much brighter on the beach.

Joy reached the heavens. Bare toes and
tiny arches etched delicate motif
of life, Zen of impermanence

that was supposed to erase
their footprints, not scoop them up
and swallow them.

The cries
of careening gulls were all that
remained.

Narrated by Val Cole

POEM:

when no one knows,
the wind will gust
again and again
until the final push
and the dead Elm
crashes in darkness –
and you won’t even know
it happened.

In darkness

Spring wind reforms
with pressure and gravity –
the touring planets
and conspicuous moon
cycles – the turmoil
of a planet in motion –
in a universe that never
sits still, never waits
on you.

Some March night

change has come, and
you are surprised? This
was foretold by the perpetrators
you blindly follow – and by
prophets you ignored,
or ridiculed and cursed
in your stupid self-
absorption.

You don’t know

how the wind blows,
so how can you make peace?
Preoccupied with pettiness,
you can’t possibly know
truth – love dissipates –
brotherhood falls headlong
on some sobering night
at the spurious mercy
of March wind.

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.

The night is young, the vibe’s so tight,
Music in the air, it’s feelin’ right.
The beat drops heavy, heart’s on fire,
This moment’s bussin’, pure desire.

We rollin’ deep, no need to flex,
Everything we do is top of the specs.
Laughs flyin’ high like stars above,
Every second feels like a kiss of love.

The food’s hot, it’s a flavor blast,
Spices hit different, time moves fast.
Friends by my side, we ain’t gonna miss,
This life is bussin’, pure bliss.

Catch the vibe, don’t miss the flow,
Bussin’ moments, always let ’em grow.
In this world, we just vibe and ride,
Chasin’ the joy, nothing to hide.

As much as I want to respond to the phrase “Have a great day!” with “Don’t tell me what to do”, I just smile and nod my head hoping that they go away. Why did we start saying that to people? Why would we wish that on people? I know I shouldn’t sound so cynical but honest to God I can’t help but think about this all the time. What if I’m not having a great day, or even a good day? What if I want to be miserable because everything else is just so miserable. I wake up, I stare at the ceiling before dragging myself out of my bed, and then I dress myself without checking the weather because I can’t be bothered to check my phone. I know it takes two seconds. I imagine what it would be like to have a good day while listening to music, and for a split second, I feel all right. And then I think about everything I have to do for the day. I know I don’t live a subjectively bad life, but most of the time I like passing the time being quiet and negative. It’s just so easy. I’ve thought about the reason why I’m like this and honestly, I couldn’t tell you one specific reason. My friends tried to diagnose me as well. Over the years we all have known each other, they have found one reason for my constant pessimism: I simply hate people. I need to be alone. So no, please do not tell me to have a great day. You telling me to do so will change absolutely nothing. Do not project onto me. Go about your way.

4.14.22.
Written as a Samsung Note dictation while driving from Newton to Wichita, KS.
No clouds were in the sky.

*Hang Me in the Tulsa County Stars by John Moreland playing through the radio on repeat.

After thinking about it for a while I have come to realize there is a reason why I carry around that old pistol in my guitar case.

And sure it’s because I like guns. Fuck it! No, I love guns. I like it that they’re loud and I like it that they’re shiny and have interchangeable parts that can be removed and put back and fiddle fucked with at will.

I like that Simplicity. Because I’m that simple and always have been. I’m a hillbilly so I like the bang bang of it

I like the boom bam bam of the sidearm that can make your bickering neighbors shut the fuck up at 4:00 a.m. if fired up at the sky with a safe angle

I like that I could remove someone from this Earth with it. Though I would never do that —at least not with malice in my heart. And I would never remove myself from earth with that old rusty pistol—

Because the idea of making my mother cry forever these days makes me so goddam tired.

At the end of the day for me it’s nothing more than a bow and arrow just moved forward a few hundred years.

But the reason I carry around this pistol in the same carrying case as my guitar? It’s just good luck, buddy. It’s cursed good luck—This gun. It’s a .22 that almost shot dead my stepfather who used to beat the shit out of my mother.

And it was owned by a dirty cop—my uncle. And my dirty cop uncle was an Indian—

And he was a decorated navy Minesweeper in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam.

So, it’s a trophy kinda. But It’s a pistol that I swore one day I would bury in my grandmother’s grave up in Custer County because again—it was cursed.

Hell, my cousin—the dirty cop’s son—almost shot himself in the temple with it.

Though it misfired at that particular moment. The hammer clicked and echoed across old Benton lake—reminding him that it wasn’t quite time yet.

And I pray on that. I pray on it because this pistol keeps not killing anyone

But yeah, I swore one day I would bury the gun the way it needs to be buried—the way things that try to kill people and that are owned by criminals should be forever. But no, I carry it around every day because in some ways it’s an instrument just like that old guitar.

And it scares some people that I carry guns around. But the thing is, they just don’t realize the truth of it. They don’t know how important these talismans are. When you carry around something that was once owned by Outlaws and you don’t use it the way Outlaws used it—

That makes you a curator and an appreciator of the annihilation that could be but never really will be—the annihilation that by god, never has to be!

I carry around this cowboy gun with me wherever I go. Because I know it was once held in the hand of an Indian who at least in some small way looked a little bit like me. He was not a cowboy though. He was an Indian who remembered the Tonka Wa Reservation like a good scary dream.

And I think about the fact every day that he held this gun in his hands and put it to my stepfather’s shaking pissing face and he said, “now listen here you little motherfucker!…If you lay another hand on my niece… You are going to see what Red means forever and nothing else.”

And I take pride in that. It’s a sick Pride. It’s a pride that poisons Hearts, but I can’t get over it, baby.
and it’s because I do like guns. Now— I don’t like all of them.

But the special ones, the ones that end Wars and the ones that you stick in motherfuckers faces to get them to stop being the way they are?

I like those guns a lot. Yeah, I love those guns. Because when you familiarize yourself with those instruments—the kinds of instruments that can stop pulses in a single moment—You realize that it’s possible to hold wild power in your hands and just laugh at it as though it were something flaccid. Something muted—a fun toy memorializing a war
that used to be fought over and over

At the gasping expense of entire races of people.

I love that. So, I will probably go on carrying around this pistol with me forever. Because it is cursed, yes.

But it’s also a totem for good poiesis—

And I love that more than anything in the world.

It’s funny too—because one night in a bit of inspired thought, I removed the cylinder in front of the hammer, behind the barrel, above the ebony hand grip and replaced it— I replaced the place where the bullets used to go—with wadded up bible verses that had my mother’s name scribbled on them.

It seemed like a ritual. A real one. Not just like in church when you kneel and it’s supposed to mean something.

So It helps me write songs—this pistol—and I know that it’s dangerous but that in my hands it never will be.

Never again will it be held to a man’s head—

Any or especially mine!

It will only help me mend

And

Remember

them;

You said the world wouldn’t crumble
if you touched me.
You tried importing comfort
to a body that dieted
on native fear.
You tried undoing
the workings of Culture
inside my flesh
and couldn’t see how deep
the Culture
‘did’ me.

I remember before going out,
as a little girl,
Mama would always
curtain the panes
on my body
while the neighbours’ girls strolled
shutter-less
and un-draped.

Even then, I knew
what the Culture gave some,
it took from so many.

I remember envying
how the daylight
flirted with the other girls
and wondering why the Culture
never touched them
as hard
as it touched
me.

Even then, I knew if I wanted
the light to break through my glass,
I had to let it
break me —

You said the world
wouldn’t crumble
if we touched,
and I said
it will, it will.

In this story,
the world always crumbled —
When the cherry blossoms
ripened on my chest,
when school boys
gripped at my dress trim
for the first time,
when I used chalk
to powder my face
and pinched my cheeks
for two minutes straight
to feign some rose-colour.
In my story,
the world always crumbles
in some way or other,
and Mama goes
and fixes it for me,
the neighbourhood’s Imam*
fixes it for me,
the Culture fixes it for me —
I don’t know for how long
I let their fixing
break me.

And now,
after years of window-sealing
and glass-shutting,
I can’t tell
if my panes were breaking
or simply opening up
when we first started
touching

Io, the old flame gutters in the crypta!
Flame of the Sol Invictus, dying, reborn,
Spilling gold as in the age of the Dacians,
When the plinths of marble bled red beneath Trajan’s boot.
Hail, Mithras! Hail, Christos!
Dual masks upon the one eternal face—
And the temple remains, foundation sunk in Albion’s loam,
Veined with the whisper of Enoch’s tongue.

Through nave-light—sepulchral—
The crusader kneels where the phantoms whisper,
Twelve elder shades in their orbits about him,
Twelve-fold in Saturn’s cruel passage—
A wheel turned upon the lot of men.
The psalms rise—psalms of the bull’s throat cut,
Of Bethlehem, of blood and bread made one,
Cresting on the air like the wail of Rome’s last oracles.

O’ pale moon of the hearth, his wife;
Her hands clasped round the child’s soft skull—
A babe as yet unscribed by fate,
For now but a whorl of breath in the spinning void.
She speaks not—only the hush of cloth,
The susurrus of veils unwound; fate’s tapestry.

Then the bell—Ah, that infernal knell!
That Saturnine toll, unmaking!
Out beyond the cloister, the destrier paws,
A black-hoofed omen, sleek as Ereshkigal’s hounds,
Bridle bound with sigils of Mars,
Steel spurs that kissed the bones of Hispania.

And the crusader—he mounts—
Gold and shadow writ upon him,
Sun-masked like Apollo of the faltering lyre,
Yet heart a dirge, mouth parched as the Sibyl’s.
Eastward! Eastward! Where the stars in retrograde
Mark the hour of slaughter,
Where Mithras’ old altars wait beneath Jerusalem’s ruin.

Ah! Jerusalem, blasted bride of Solomon,
Torn veil of the sanctuary—
City of sevenfold grief, harlot of conquests,
Where the feet of Caesars crushed the cedars of Hiram.

Blood pools in the suq, thick as Lethean draught;
Slaughter in the streets, each arch a vaulted requiem.
Steel upon steel, the tympanum of Mars,
And the muezzin’s call—sung now with a faltering breath—
Meets the organum of crusader hymns;
Chant echoing chant, faith ripping into faith.

The crusader moves—a shade among the fray,
Sword lifted like Anubis’ scale—
Here is the measure of men,
The weight of their sins carved in flesh.
The Saracen leaps—
Scimitar arcs, a crescent blade to sunder him—
Yet Fate, the old and blind king, guides the crusader’s hand.
His blade—a baptism of iron—
Plunges deep into the hollows of his foe;
Red libation unto the sand.

Years churn like Ixion’s wheel,
Unrelenting, unmerciful.
Mercy—a thing of poets,
Wilted as the laurels of fallen empire.
Cinders float where temples burned,
Shrines blackened; the Tower of Babel felled anew.
Allah’s moon, once bright, now hangs in the sky
A cold, rusted sickle.

And the crusader—behold him!—
A shadow cast in dented steel,
His eyes void of Saxon light;
The cross upon his shield—
Once bright with the white of saints—
Now marred, now worn,
A relic of ruin.

Through fen and fog, he comes,
Not the golden youth of Heaven’s grace,
But the revenant, wraith-draped, silence-bound,
A blade unburied, unshriven.

The hedgerows whisper the old names,
Names that still pulse in the ley-lines,
Names that are sung in the tongues of the dead.
The village—unchanged, yet distant,
A relic of time’s immutable cruelty.

Upon the door, his gauntlet hovers—
O’ the threshold once warm with his wife’s breath!
Here, where his fingers once traced her cheek,
Where his child’s laughter rang light as Orpheus’ lyre.
Yet—what voice is this?
Laughter, bright, unburdened!
A child’s voice, familiar—yet unknown.

Then her voice—
Calling, shaping the air with his name,
A sculpted breath, brittle, breakable.
But the crusader is no longer;
Only the husk of war,
A wight, a wraith, a thing tempered in sorrow.

His name is lost—
The road calls, unrelenting.
And so he turns, fading into the dusk,
A knight of silence, bound to the long pilgrimage,
Never to return, never to rest.

And behind him,
The bells toll—
Not for him, not for the dead—
But for the road that swallows all men whole.