Author: poetryfest

And she’s just hung up a brand-new banner.
It’s a tactless candid of all her children
flustered, glimmering beneath sheets of summer sweat,
sodden in soggy starched suits and wet silken dresses.

The scene: A moment frozen of us waving her down,
wide-eyed and irritant, as if she were moments from
landing an old biplane without her wheels folded out.

You first note our burnt eyes barking from the salt baths.
Our growling scowls, growing out of motionless mouths.
Our smiles are doors opened by sesame seed keys.
Yes, this scene is the perfect portrait of her progeny.

We begin by taking turns begging her, ‘take it down,’
each in our own special method of bartering.
But she averts us with her practiced alibi:
that, ‘this is the best pic she has of us all,’
and by that she means: It’s the newest around.

When one of us hopelessly reports her post, (Harassment),
she retaliates with an album: Each image, us in awkward, unscripted poses,
wide-lensed angles of pimpled moonfields, pocked noses,
mouths brimmed of foodmash, eyes shuttered like letterboxes,
gardens grown graciously between our coffee-stained bicuspids,
avenging hairs emerging wild, like John McClaine out of air-ducts.

And when the digital dust settles, we wave our white flag emoji’s.
The posts stay hung in an album called, ‘my lOvely Children5 – Part 4’
where they will stay, decaying data bytes, until a new Y2K claims them,
or unless we finally get that Facebook password figured out.
So far, it’s none of our names.

Speak your last words to me
I’ll carry them—nestled in.
I’ll have them ring right in the ear
As if you were right here with me.

I’ll tuck your feet where you sleep—
Pat dry your tears
And draw wayward crosses on above your eyes,
Just like you did to me.

Place your hands with mine fiercely between the chest.
And hold like gold your foreign breath.
Just like the comforting care
Of the mother of a mother.

Across the sea if so it may be,
Having met several different strangers,
Biding with a dancing tongue to keep up appearances,
Speak your last words to me—
I’ll remember them.

Grief chews my ribs like an untamed hymn,
keeps me awake when the streetlights dim.
Your mug still stains on the windowsill,
cold as the hand I can’t keep still.

I smell your shirts when the house won’t sleep,
salt on my tongue where the nightmares seep.
Your laugh is a ghost in the hallway’s throat,
a knife in the air where your shadow wrote.

I beat my chest to a broken drum,
every thud asks why you don’t come.
Even the dawn feels counterfeit here,
a paper sun I can’t hold near.

But still your name claws stars apart,
scratching the sky like a desperate heart.
If grief is proof that you ever were mine,
then I’ll bleed this hymn till the end of time.

‘Gone’
You are gone,
And my love is lonely now.

*
‘Like Clay’
From love my grief was sculpted,
By the hands of Grim.
Laid bare to dry in Summer sun,
And dust again by Spring.

*
‘Leftover’
You left me with a candle,
A fervent little flame.
Yet there’s nowhere left
To put it now.
So in my heart
It stays.

Yes, they make love, whenever they desire.

Like all lovers, they make love, they travel, they share joys, they endure sorrows—if sorrows should ever come their way. They are brought together by the same fate that binds all who fall in love. They walk side by side, confide in one another, love with their whole hearts. They will not invent some unheard-of cause for conflict, nor will they add a never-before-seen hue to the spectrum of love’s brilliance. Yet this does not diminish the singularity of their bond. Like all sincere affections, their love is both unique and
irreplaceable.

Of course, they make love, in ways both imaginable and beyond imagining.

…

None of your business.

…

None of my business.

For Ollie Ambrose

My mother’s grief sounds like her joy
When she laughs
her diaphragm falls into her stomach
When she cries
her lungs carry her heart’s ache

I try to run away from both.
I don’t hide very well.
My eyes are only shut.

Her grief and joy skip
into my dreams holding hands

I ask them,
What do you want?
Her grief holds my face.
Shouts my name.

Your mother’s (mother’s) mother is gone

My mother asks
Why does everyone leave

I have no answer
I have no breath

My mother sucked all
of the air
even my air
out of the air
and her wailing follows
my mother’s mother’s mother
soul
out
out

I use the exhale
to inhale.
I don’t cry.
I don’t want it
to be confused
for joy.

There are no tears from
my mother
her anger

guilt

burns them before
they are free

I let her borrow
mine.

Eventually
my mother’s grief
leaves with her joy
skipping, holding hands

from dreamless dreams

we sit

Power to the people
Yo, I put power to the people
Power to the people
Yo, I put power to the people
You already know what the message is
Write my own lines so I’m sensitive
Told them lil’ boys they can’t mess with this
I’m the best at this, you should do less of this
Power to the people, I’m an activist
Baby we are Stars like an asterisk *
We need to annotate where our mental is
All these sentences, but where’s the censorship?
See I got my guard up cause I was scarred up, barred up
In a backwards system I ain’t wanna be apart of
Asking how I break these chains
Oh, let me hang my art up
Ever since I brought up I just seemed to be a target
Feel misplaced with many fakes
What are the stakes? Yo, I’ll hold my weight
Obliterate the old way to re-create
Annihilate to keep it frank
The time is now, no time to wait
You take your rate and leave no change
Don’t want a chain, yo that is lame, not in that lane
Who do we blame? Distorted celebrated fame
And you could keep your mask, I won’t be phased
I like my face, am I in-sane?
Out of body, body died, but soul remained
This my only way let go my pain
I used to hold it in, now can’t contain
I feel release, I see restraint
I empathize cause made mistakes
Externalize my inner states
Free of my inner-weight, revealing fate
Breaking family curses that used to generate
Breaking family curses that used to generate
Breaking family curses that used to generate
Shift, make a new day and then celebrate
You already know what the message is
Write my own lines so I’m sensitive
Told them lil’ boys they can’t mess with this
I’m the best at this, you should do less of this
Power to the people, I’m an activist
Baby we are Stars like an asterisk *
We need to annotate where our mental is
All these sentences, but where’s the censorship?
Power to the people
Yo, I put power to the people
Yo, Power to the people
Yo, I put power to the people
Power to the people
Yo, I put power to the people
Power to the people
Yo, and I put love to the people

That pink hair conditioner
“It’s gone”
And I’m empty
You took my wide-eyed gaze
On a wild ride
Through little European streets
That glowed like starlit starlight
And under lampposts
You taught me how to laugh,
Held me in your arms as I cried
Said we were forever
But forever last for never
Now you don’t call.
Or pick up the phone
And here I am all alone
Where we used to walk
When everything felt safe
And you didn’t want to just be my “European romance”
On that beach or in my bed
Well now I’m driving on a country road
Blasting the radio
Entranced by light pollution
Streetlights against starlight, on powerlines!
I never said that bottle of hair conditioner’s empty
I said “it’s gone” just like you, just like me, just like her—
Oh wait, there’s another her?
Well, how be that?
I saw it coming,
Oh no,
This isn’t my first rodeo
You never even had to say a word
Oh, you didn’t want to hurt me?
Well half-hearted conversations
And one-word replies
Don’t do that
Relationships change
It’s fine.
I gave you the better part of three years
2
But it’s fine
You made me cry in a Meijer’s
But it’s fine
I couldn’t see through the tears
I bought nonalcoholic alcohol
And dairy free Ben and Jerries
But it’s fine
I had to slink into the only beer joint in town
That wouldn’t tell my parents I was buying
And I’m 32!
And it’s all because of you
But it’s fine
I knew you’d move on
I’m so happy for you
I bet she’s great
I bet I’ve seen her pop up a few 100 times
On my Facebook
You two will make such a cute couple!
But did I really have to be the one to say “let’s take a break”
You can’t say petty things about my face
Way to make me hate her when it’s you who made me spit word vomit
Because I don’t care if you’ve moved on
We’re over
Probably my star-spangled banner
Will never meet
Your little European street
Again
I really don’t care.
It just kills me that you moved on first
To be left behind? Below? Forgotten? Erased?
Oh, I draw the line there.
And I don’t even know what you were thinking
Hell, I don’t know what I was thinking
You’re not mine
You’re not for me
I knew that even before you did
I wrote a horror story about you
I wrote a poem about you
It got published!
It was a damn good poem
3
That was our relationship.
So now I’ll just stay drunk in my bed
Writing poetry with a fancy pen
I never drink unelss its fall
But it’s February
And I’m an English major misspelling “unless”
What did it all mean?
The conditioner is gone
Our relationship is gone
Europe is gone
Those puppy dog socks you got me?
Holes
I know it’s the memories that are supposed to matter
But what good are they if they’re enclosed
Compartmentalized
In the sublime past of a substandard life?
Is my open back account
Of foreign currency
Just a practice in futility
Was that all we were?
A means to an end?
Why bother when this was the end?
Drunken, wasted, pointless
As a facial peel in the shower
What hurts the most
Is I already said goodbye
To you as a lover
2 damn times
But you know what they say
Three’s the charm
And it’s okay
My door’s always open
We have birthdays, holidays,
When we see stuff in the grocery store that reminds us of us
But otherwise,
There’s no us.
I’ll put this in math terms for you
You + Her = a nice neat prime number
Her + You Me = a quick mess÷
If that’s too hard
4
Let me put this in English terms
I don’t want to be the antagonist
Of a love story
In which you’re the protagonist
It’s fine
I don’t miss you
Focus on falling in love
You love with your whole heart
I don’t miss you as a lover
My mistake was when I started
Seeing you as a friend
But my mistake,
We can’t be friends
Because we have a past
And who am I kidding?
No one has a friend they talk to 7 days a week
Besides, it doesn’t really matter
You can’t spell friend without “end”
So, all the castles, soft words,
And more than borderline illegality
Were for nothing
But it’s fine.

It’s been 3 years
Since you left,
I haven’t stopped missing you.

They found you
Swaying in the kitchen
At dawn

I didn’t find out
Until noon
You’d already been gone for 8 hours

You were so happy
The day before.
We had said we would spend
The rest of our lives together.

I don’t know
What went wrong?
I’m sure it was something
I had said
But I’m not sure what.

I’m sorry
For not being there for you
Really I am.
Please believe me.

I am sorry