Author: poetryfest

Submit your Poetry to the Festival. Three Options: 1) To post. 2) To have performed by an actor 3) To be made into a film.

RELATIONSHIP Poem: i love you and i’m horrible at it, by Sophie Briggs

he looks out over a city clouded with purple confusion
and the gold of the fading sun glints in his narrowed eyes

he looks down at me: do you wish i was impulsive too?
no, no, i backtrack, no. that’s a part of me i hate.

i explain: i used to have to make quick decisions all the time
and it stuck with me but it’s something i’d like to lose.

(actually i used to not have a choice most of the time
and now it’s a power i, too, abuse. this part i leave out)

well, did you mean it when you said you love me? or was
that just something you said in the moment, out of nothing.

i did mean it. and i pity him for it. it’s terrible luck to be
loved by me. i step on the glass of broken hearts each time i

try to walk. it’s laughable and terrible. love is far from me, love is
dangled in front of me and snatched away. my relationship

with love is worse than my relationship with him. i see his
hands shake and he can’t even look at me, and my throat

closes as his anxiety ows into me, although anxiety is not
something i naturally have (it comes with thinking before you act.)

we are dierent. he takes a measured breath:

girl whatchu running away from?

never him, always me. i love him as a stranger in my own skin.

RELATIONSHIP Poem: This is a poem about you, by Nico Ricciardi

Slip into the mirror a moment
See this
I am the knife I am the steak I am the hungry dog
Here is the blood here is the bandage here is the wound
Which one is me which one is you?
My visage in the shining glass
Seeing me is seeing you
I am the silence I am the warning
Here is more silence Here’s the clanging of alarms
like desperate angels trying to sing
It doesn’t have to be pretty being understood
The pyroclastic flow of
love and pulp
and
lungs and smoke and mirrors
where I’m best at loving you.
Now
step out.
Memorize this and tell it to yourself.
I will hear it
I’ve written a thousand poems about me;
that’s also a thousand poems about you.

RELATIONSHIP Poem: A SONG FOR PAPABEAR, by Renata Ngogo

Today I love you,
I’ve loved you for quite a long time,
I’d love to love you for the rest of my time,
Only if you choose to love me all the time.

I won’t lie that I’d love to see you love someone else,
I’d love to be the one you choose to love,
For I truly do love you,
Moreover, I love loving you.

I wish you’d known the depth of my love for you,
Or maybe at least understand how far I’d go for you,
But in this heart of a broken bird,
Is a series of broken lines,
That do not seem to make sense,
But sound like random chirps.

RELATIONSHIP Poem: Dad, No Elegy, by Stephen Mead

This snow is appropriate, finally enough
after a winter of global warming here in the northeast.
Dad, it’s all been too strange to predict what will happen
to good farming weather come spring,
as I picture your weathered farmer’s fingers
planting potatoes, making mounds.

I picture them so easily alive in some other place
for although this snow is not bitter, it signifies closing
with the wind’s damp whiteness finding our cheeks.

Yes, a thoughtful tarp shelters us, iron staking
heavy Dutch blue plastic sky like a suture
for the sleeting sheets of surrounding grayness,
but the shade’s still too cold to focus on mourning.

Mourning, the word of course conjures Victorian rites,
at least black arm bands & carriage horses
sober with their freight.

Instead, your hearse has a polished bullet-sheen
& this limousine’s too modern, too missile-like
when you were the peacefulness of earth’s salt
&, at age 89, still a harvest.

What is grief then if not the Ashokan Farewell
my partner plays on his cell phone
to at last let our swollen feelings spill
with something like loosening?

There is no ease to letting go,
our huddled figures round your hole now seem to realize,
touching the wood of your coffin as if giving up protest
against goodbye.

I ask the diggers, the directors, if we can toss your roses
upon its gleaming oak, but they grunt ludicrously about stains,
then reassure that those blossoms will be placed as is custom
once the carved metal cover is fitted upon your slow final lowering.

We acquiesce, taking petals as mementos
to mark the surreal passage of this day,
but approach the stems the way the snow does,
something inside of us falling further too.

In Spring the old grindstone from your farm
my partner made into a fountain
will collect the welling rings.

Garden or not, in the new twists of global warming,
we’ll think of you & mom then settled together deep
while the rising geyser gushes, indigo foam
like melting snow, creating flame.

RELATIONSHIP Poem: Love & Hate, by LaRena Darrow

Have you ever hated someone you love or love someone you hate?

It’s a hard thing that’s easy to do being with someone like you,

It may seem confusing to most but not to all due to fate,

The constant hail of negative words and lies to suit the things you do,

It’s easy to hate how you are even though I love you so much,

It’s hard to love the person that you’ve become since we started this,

It’s hate that causes me to act the way I do because of such,

It’s easy to love what you & I once shared and that is what i miss,

I couldn’t love the hate you made me learn and how I feel about you,

Does the love fade and hate start to grow it’s starts to devour my soul,

Hate spreading with every harsh word spreading faster then you’d ever know,

Spreads even quicker from the lack of accountability for your role,

The love dwindles quickly was it ever even there to begin with?

If love conquers all then hate must be strong to overpower love,

Honestly I think the whole true love is nothing but a myth,

Love was the cover for your cruel head game so you knew you would win,

Turning love into a dark, evil, and calculated premeditated sin,

There must not have been much love I shared it wasn’t enough to win with you,

Since love is blind poor thing never had a chance, couldn’t see it coming I would have never knew,

Love was already turning dark using it’s only defence,

Hate’s dark shadow appeared years ago I remember the day,

How love lasted as long as it did there was no close call as to how much,

Why did love stick around for so long and did it just simply go away?

Can a person feel love for someone and hate them so much?

Since hate made itself at home and love is no longer what we seek,

Still not sure how it snuck its way in could we keep alive or is it too weak?

Something I will never put myself through to hurt like this ever again,

Hate has taken loves place between you and I as of here and now,

The hate can’t be erased and it has now ruined our future together,

Ruined any chance our love had in making it to our forever,

Love was there that whole time and somehow survived the abuse,

20 years is no walk in the park with a narcissist like you have slowly become,

After holding on so long my grip is slipping but I’m still holding on to the nuice,

So the end of our love had come so for you and I there is no use…

RELATIONSHIP Poem: getting older, by Rebby Onken

it is a privilege to grow older
every year takes me further from the harm
and towards a future spinning forward on

you were there, you remember, you cannot forget:
me, my head, splitting like a melon thick
life struck me hard and cracked it
between expectation hands

I wept, watermelon blood on the floor
all who saw it cannot unsee,
the young in me turned to black seed
them, I swallowed, to carry on

now the ages turn, fresh on june mornings
every year, I wait, turn toward the wash of achy bones
my melon head, grown back by hands
like yours, leans in for more

love me, why don’t you, in the hours while we wait
press your breath into letter-envelopes like sevak says
then we can be in the same place out of time

if you miss me more, beyond the cutting paper we exchange
we’ll get on 20s zoom and listen to 80s bauhaus together
then time will collapse—
me into you, you into me

you can just be here with me,
and I’ll be there with you
then we’ll grow old together
but get younger all the time

RELATIONSHIP Poem by Marianne Gagné

The majestic arches of the doorway
Resemble the doorway to our love
The steps to the bottom
Like the challenges we face
A clearing before the bottom of the stairs
Reminds me of an alter, walked down upon by a bride
The sky although bright has many clouds in sight
Leaving fate a mystery for any problems that may come
As sudden as the rain is when our love began
And as pretty and peaceful as a morning dew
When she says “I love you”
Hand in hand down the steps
And down the aisle with joy
We wait for the clouds to clear
And look upon the bright blue sky