Author: poetryfest

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

My mother is dead.
My father is dead.
My brother is dead.
My other brother is dead.
My sister is dead.
My nephew is dead.
My son is dead.
When will my family stop dying?
I’m never going to get used to it.

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

1
The cello stands in silence, holding
Its breath.
In one baton flick,
everything changes.

2
In music, rests and notes possess equal power –
Practice both. You’ll discover
life’s balance.

3
Framed family photos hang,
smiles obscuring the fights before the
CLICK
Now, love and laughter are all that’s captured
in the snapshots’ glow.

4
Nothing will be handed
to you on a silver platter.
Chase after the waiter
and only then will you uncover
the cloche and its rewards.

5
Tempting you through the glass,
college hoodies with bold colors and stitched logos
vie for your attention.
Don’t succumb to their calls
until you’ve thought it through:
wait
for the right one to fit.

6
Instruments gather on stage,
different in shape and sound.
Their many tunes become one
and the pressure on the lone cello is
dispersed.

7
The gold-coated watch dulls
with each passing tick,
while our past shines brighter than any gilded surface.
The richness of our experiences
hold more value than gold
ever could.

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

back
from the dead
The Painted Ladies
tremble
in the heather
the change has come
as ephemeral Large Blues
emerge
from their buried
chamber

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

Capri is framed by the east window,
Mount Vesuvius centers in the west. Chandeliers
suspend high, trapeze artists erupting their crystal
blooms to guide a Mardi Gras of painted clay and gesso
far below ceiling

vaults. Do you recall sunset velvet splayed across marble
and moss of the ruin over there? I imagined you imagining
that glow coming from spits of lava exhaled by your crater-mountain-god, disrupting ground
more than we shook the bed. Your voice rumbled, your eyes ignited, instructing
me your lover

was that volcano, not I. It was my gift to you, unwrapped
in eternal, unpredictable threat against what I thought was only sky. Your body
flows away, mercury untamed in the shadow of that volcano, resting
your memory where it breathes potent. I lost sovereignty by its
annexation of you.
You need that volcano like seed does soil,
smoke does fire,
Earth does Sun.

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

I turned fifty this year
Which made me reflect
That at best I have twenty
Good years left before
My life is basically over
As seventy is pushing it
For a man these days
This of course assumes
I don’t get hit by a bus tomorrow
Or even later today
Or have a heart attack
Stroke
Aneurysm
Staph infection
Or anything else
That could end my life prematurely
This realization shocked me
As I basically now have the lifespan
Of a small dog
Or cat
Wow
That kind of thinking can depress
A man such as me
Who in the best of times
Is naturally pessimistic
So I won’t think of it again
Until I’m seventy
Unless I die before

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

professor says,
“picasso had a blue period, which was later followed by a rose period.
people tend to associate the blue period with melancholic sentiments.
& the rose period, with its opposite.”
but professor, i sense lingering melancholy
in his rose period, too.

need money? get naked.
need money? don’t paint.

1.
“red is light, red is love”
but why is the red-light district the dimly-lit
alleys where sex workers eye their clients,
& where sex shops sell dildos that
you know your parents never bought?
& why is moulin rouge so heart-wrenching?

2.
papa, red is the color of your leaving:
a blow i could never bandage. but it was
cadmium red, like my buttcheeks after a spanking
from you, for not getting math equations.

i get it—
you said life isn’t fair, not all sunshine & roses,
but i tried to leap over
the other side of the equal sign, over
the crimson massacre on the page, from never finding x
but i found x in the xena that you made me.

if you saw blood,
would you ask if it hurt?

3.
self-portrait as picasso,
heart on a montmartre easel
googling the going rate
for a titty pic,
painting portraits
of my patrons,
picasso, gertrude stein,
me, my father,
who pays so i can make
still lifes of red-distilled worlds,
sans a red-light district visit,
yes, i’ll paint a portrait,
of you, papa,
in infrared, or blue
on this scar, you etched
& will never ask about

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

Little girl. You’ve carried
the burden of my name
my life, interrupted
by a car crash at my
own hands for longer
then you even knew me
on earth.

It’s time you lay down the burden
of my name, my life, my
goals that exceeded expectations
because you have surpassed
anything I would have wanted for myself
or anything I could have achieved if I survived.

The burden of my name
my life, is no longer yours
to carry. You’ve started building
your paradise in the place you feel
is home. But I keep seeing you
pause. Stop. Sit down.

You are afraid of your own power.
You don’t know how to live a life
not consumed in chaos and fear.

But little girl, you are doing that and more.
Yet you hold the burden of my name
my life and it’s unfinished work
As if you dishonor me by leaving it all down.

You are my image. Nothing more.
you’ve worked harder than I ever could.
Your time is now. Your life is yours.

My daughter, lay down the burden
of my name, my life.
Your debt is clear
I need to carry my own.

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

I smoke to take the pain away
Hoping for better days
That I don’t have to stress
And just be blessed
What God blew my way

I run to take the pain away
Running just clears my brain away
Away of any negative thoughts
That I may have running through my mind at the time

Time is something we can’t get back
So why do I waste my time
Letting these negative thoughts run my mind

I write to take the pain away
Who cares what I write anyway
See, there you go
Negative thoughts running through my mind all the time

All the time like a sick rhyme
That you can’t get out of your head
These negative thoughts
They will keep you in bed

So, I smoke to take the pain away
Hoping for better days
That I can be blessed and live my days with no stress
See, I know that I am blessed
Because God has given me the best

I think it’s just time to put these negative thoughts to rest
I smoke to keep the pain away
Write to keep the pain away
Run to keep the pain away
I’ll stop hoping and I’ll start praying for better days
Stop smoking to keep the pain away
Just keep the things that cause you pain
Away
You won’t even need to pray for better days

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

Shadows
(they move)

Deep breaths
(can’t breathe)

Darkness swirls
(like the madness in my mind)

Deep breaths
(can’t breathe)

Name 5 things
(but it doesn’t go away)

Deep breaths
(can’t breathe)

Tree branches caress the window
(or scratching fingers)

Deep breaths
(can’t breathe)

What’s that sound
(just the wind, love)

Deep breaths
(can’t breathe)

Who said that?

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

I wanna go home
As the dusk rises
With the sun bending down
And thus, staying there
Until it begins to rise again.

In your car
With the windows down
Does light shine dim
And bright shading the
galaxy, the sky.

Racing down the street
Goes the gas smell and
the steam of engine
rolling and curling, identified
by the neighborhood stoop
kids.

We gather,
We gather.

Our baggage is familiar
The song doesn’t free us
It simply rotates in our
Head.
& on & on
with recognition in our
Eye.

We stare ahead at our
Futures down the road
Away from the homes
Our guts have ever known.

It is dusk quieting us down.
We’re silent now.
No singing
Just dreaming staring
At the center.
The core
Like the hot inside of
The Earth.

We burn
Like a towering inferno
Settling into the far
Distance.

Genre : Futures, Youth, Romance, Fear, Moving Forwar