Author: poetryfest

I turn on the news to start my day
An asteroid they say is coming our way
To turn our homes into piles of clay

I ask my dad if he’s feeling scared
but he just says he doesn’t care

“I can’t wait to see it take down Mr. Brown”
he says without a single frown
I say “But what about me? And you? And the town?”

“Not important,” he says, “that man has it coming!”
He goes back to work and starts cheerfully humming
Ignoring my plea that we start running

I step into class and tell my teacher Miss Bass
“At last” she says, “My days with that principle will finally pass.”
I say “But doesn’t this feel a little bit crass?”
She responds “you’d better not give me anymore sass!”

I tell the principle about our incoming doom
She says “About time I can put my mother in a tomb”“But it won’t just be her” I say with
gloom
She replies “Now then, don’t worry, we can’t just assume.”

Walking home I come across neighbor Ross
I ask him if he feels the same sense of loss
He says “I’m just glad it’ll crush my dang boss”

No one else in the town wants to make a mad dash
To anywhere that will be safe from the crash
So I walk into my yard and wait for the smash
The sky grows red in a great big flash
And everyone cheers as we’re turned into ashe

Deeply stricken by death,
I renounce Violence; May those who live blossom underneath
Warm sunsets that Bhumi embraces.
Sunshine kisses those brows that once creased with fear;
Goats that trembled bleat joyfully, yet never fully realize.
Lotus flowers decorate pillars resembling strength
They represent a feeling meant to propel tranquility.
No longer do I siphon subversive looks, stares,
Pitiful people who dust my feet, averse to military control.
Ashoka my mother calls me, So to them a mother summons.
I have taken the world into my orbit, I am careful that I don’t fall.
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought,”

When I begin to feel it…
I didn’t realize,
what I was feeling.
See,
in the beginning…
Surely I found myself distracted.
Crafted,
by societies…
unwritten lines.
Clearer the signs…
Deeper the cries…
No matter,
how hard one tries,
you cannot hide,
from the eye,
that always sees.
Force of nature,
will have one not to believe…
What being chosen achieves.
Deflective,
passes time.
Marinating…
and contemplative…
The signature is when life becomes reflective.
Mirrored Actions,
brought about emotions…
That’s caught…
At the best stages of your life…
Secrets…
Regrets…
Haven’t sat in thought…
When awakened…
just remember,
you weren’t supposed to know better.
But,
now that you do…
How are you going to continue to move?

There was a time long ago
Before the truth was set free.
When love had an even flow,
And fairness was not a plea.
Soon after the games and fun,
Would I have a chance to see
You were always holding a gun,
Just never pointed at me.
Others knew the arms you bore
And would run away in disgust.
Belief in your drive to fight the war
Allowed me to give you my trust.
In your times of needing backup,
I expected to receive your call.
Sadly you couldn’t pass up
The enemy between us after all.
Sometimes it was your foe.
Other days it was your love.
I always reached high and low
To fight and keep you above.
Finally the enemy suffered defeat,
And we reached the other side.
But left was a thing I couldn’t beat,
Something you were unable to hide.
The view of me without the enemy
Was the strangest sight to you.
There was in fact no remedy
To show what you always knew.
In a blink of an eye,
You began to throw many a stone.
I had thought I was your ally.
Your true self had ultimately shown.
I am no longer your crutch,
Or your shoulder to cry.
I will never do things as such
Since you couldn’t even try.
Now you beg for my grace
As if I hadn’t shown it before.
I can see it in your face,
The enemy has what you adore.
Did you forget I was your peer
When others decided to run
Holding nothing but the fear
Of the damage that could be done?
I was the one who was tough.
I didn’t want you to waste.
But now I see I wasn’t enough.
Your true love is that awful taste.
It’s time I say goodbye
For you I cannot fix.
I have slowly bled myself dry
Falling for all your tricks.
In the end I am set free
From the loyalty that was false.
The gun you drew upon me
Was the last of your faults.
I am left to repair what you broke,
Essentially mending my heart.
I won’t be left behind to choke,
Even if you fall apart.

I’m sitting in the car after work.
Why am I sitting in the car after work?
Why is the scariest thing my own driveway?
I can hear the neighbors shout from here.
I can hear how quiet it is
When I’m sitting here
Nothing going on.
I think too often I picture putting a gun to my head.
How many times do we have to write about a gun to our head?
Maybe I’d write better with a—
Funny thing, death.
I have to pick up groceries still.
I think there’s a game on
Maybe that’s why they’re yelling
I think I was made wrong
Or maybe I just got too full of myself.
Had this idea that I could be that thing.
That different thing.
That thing English majors write papers about
That thing young people idolize when they teach themselves guitar
I’d hate to ruin it
My car—
I imagine it would be tough to clean my brains off the interior
It’s not leather
It’s just brain matter—
Do I matter? Does that matter?
Whatever.
It’s getting cold in here.
I’m still singing the song my phone stopped playing
The neighbors aren’t yelling anymore
Maybe they were singing happy birthday
To you — to you —
My dog barked.
The world, crashing back, a raging wave but
It recedes.
You’re just sitting in the car home from work.
Breathe.

Dr. Boutros notes
how you braided yellow beads, strips of fox fur,
and dried primrose into your hair,
waxing the tips with pine resin,
trying to accentuate the steep curve of your twisted back,
evidence of a god’s touch, but
according to him, scoliosis.
On an auspicious day,
or a radiocarbon dated period,
you delivered questions
carved on turtle shells and ox bones–
the answers, the future, foretold
in the rhythmic convulsions
of your copper painted limbs,
the pooling puddles of your blood.
The carved museum plaque
only states est. D.O.D, 2 BC.
You dined on burnt griddle cake, mistletoe pollen,
and lamb since the beginning of the plague.
Your stomach contents contain traces
of rare seeds, inconsistent
with the carefully researched diets,
evidence of a ritual.
He wonders if
you crawled through the bog, sinking
into the spongy moss,
peat crusting and staining your braids.
Did you have the scent of hope?
He’ll photograph how your spine ridges
pressed patterns into the mud.
“She died a triple death.”
In archeology forums, he argues
that you prepared for the final moment,
the blade slicing through your neck, a cord corrugates,
a skull cracking blow, pain—and then
gurgling gasps, wet.
He prays that it was enough– your body for the survival of others.

I was asleep, enjoying my slow starvation, welcoming death and its sweet embrace.
Asleep when I heard him enter my territory.
Felt him slip past my guards and slide along my webs.
I was asleep.

I was awake as I watched him look for me.
Watched as he waded in pools of blood and through tall crystalline formations.
Climbed stalagmites and ducked under stalactites. Looking, endlessly looking for me.
I was awake.

I was hungry when he found the back of my lair.
Feeling along the wall in the dark, unable to find his way out.
Turning in circles as he tried to find me, the entrance, anything in the abyss he wandered into.
I was hungry.

I was blinded as he found a torch, dropped long ago by a being I no longer remember.
Using it to find his way around, he burned and broke my webs, my ties to this realm.
He cornered me in the crystals, bouncing the light around the cave.
I was blinded.

I was full when the torch slipped from his hand, dropping into a stagnant pool.
Dug my fangs into his body, reveling in his scream as I dragged him into my lair.
Drank his blood and consumed his body.
I was full.

The kitchen was filled with joy and laughter,
But my hands were stuck by my side.
No one seemed to notice the people,
Though I did, out of the corner of my eye.

They glared at me. Watched me intently;
Should I dare to turn my head?
For every time I tried to do so,
In seconds, they had fled.

By the look of their height, I think they were ten,
But their faces were blank like a shadow.
They didn’t have eyes or a nose or a mouth,
I think that I heard them laugh though.

I thought that I was going crazy,
Or maybe I was just young.
I debated telling an adult,
But instead, I bit my tongue.

I sat by my parents, and tried to ignore them,
But my mother whispered in my ear,
“Relax my darling, don’t be afraid,
I see them too, my dear.”

I am not me. There is something else inside. What you see, well that’s just a Halloween mask askew, over a face that used to be mine.

A half made peanut butter and jelly sandwich naps upon a cutting board. A ripe red tomato slice of blood pools beside it. The hour is weak. The flashing lights from the television pulse loudly, throbbing through the cluttered living spaces that now lay lifeless. The Gods turn their heads. They always do.

The new me, that is not me, what was once me, peers through two eye slots like a horse in blinders. I hear the sound of someone else breathing, a jagged knife through pumpkin skin, inside this mask. This thing that was once me, framed in windowpane, soaks in the horror show. Take caution sleeping towns and slumbering cities. Lock your doors. There’s a psychopath on the loose. The something else that was once in me is now the something else inside you. This
silicone mask that gripped my once upon a time face, now crawls over you. Through two eye slots, the you that was once you soaks in the horror show. The Gods turn their heads. They always do.

-Alex Gust