Author: poetryfest

You raised me to be good, kind, and strong
Now I gotta keep carrying on.
Your words repeat like a song.
To keep carrying on.

You taught me I could do no wrong,
Now that you’re gone
I gotta stay strong
and gotta keep carrying on

You were the place that I belong
What do I do now that you are gone?
You’ve been with me all along,
So, I keep carrying on.

Why do you call me brave?
Why do you call me brave because I survived?
I haven’t many choices.
Do you mean
that:
I should not have?
that:
you could not have?
that:
something about me is different?
that:
you are worried about me?
that:
you are proud of me?
I am not brave.
I am almost nothing at all.

Can this be my plea to the gods who took you so young?
Because I don’t want to rage on into the night
As I have done on the nights before
This black-as-death, moonless one.

I don’t want to console myself with some
God-forsaken belief that there was meaning in any of
The suppurating wounds that held
Your brokenness together.

I don’t want to praise all that you were,
And the rest that I imagined you to be.
I don’t want to liken your demise to a setting sun,
Or some other ridiculous ending, to make meaning

Of a rendered wound that is utterly, brutally senseless.

There is nothing in this cold night sky
But a splattering of white smeary stars,
Not one of them bright enough to pin you to.
You are nowhere in the blackness. You are beyond finding.

And yet, you are in me and over me,
Under me and through me; my aching knows your touch.
Damn you. Leave me alone. Don’t go.
Leave me alone. Don’t go.

Tears fall like the autumn rain,
As I mourn the loss, the pain.
A heart once full, now empty space,
A soul that’s weary, a tired face.

Memories linger, a bittersweet refrain,
Reminding me of joy, of love, of pain.
Longing to turn back time, to undo,
To bring back what’s lost, to renew.

But time keeps moving, relentless and cold,
Leaving me with grief, with a heart that’s old.
I search for solace, for a place to hide,
From the ache within, from the tears I’ve cried.

In darkness, I find a fleeting peace,
A stillness that calms, a world to cease.
But dawn breaks forth, and grief awakes,
And I’m reminded of what my heart still aches.

Yet even in sorrow, there’s a beauty found,
A depth of feeling, a heart that’s profound

“It Hurts” I am weak, to cry
It hurts to remember, to relive the pain
To recall the laughter, the love that remained
It hurts to forget, to let go of the past
To move on, to leave behind what will forever last

It hurts to be strong, to hold back the tears
To pretend that everything’s fine, that there’s no fear
It hurts to be vulnerable, to open up the heart
To risk being hurt again, to play the same part

It hurts, but I’ll face it, I’ll let the pain subside
And maybe someday, I’ll learn to heal and thrive.

Not the sun that rises
But the sun driven by Ra’s chariots.
Not the hand that caresses
But the smiles that follow.
Not the war from the skies
But playing hide-and-seek in the rubble.

When you bury me
And read my eulogy
Beside my grave
Do no try to find me
In the burning facts of biography
But seek me out
In my reactions to it all.
The being you lay to rest
Resided in a series
Of authentic reactions
To events of happenstance history.

If you dream me with the angels
Dream me a writer of fantasies
Borne from a fantasy-less Hamrun.
If you mourn me alongside Mephisto
Mourn an idler reacting to an age
That obsessively curates idleness.
If in your hot tears glimmers radiant love
It is a love born from generations of workers
Who craved families over Communes.

Our souls are no vacuums
They are put together
Like the mosaics of Byzantine Masters
In the cupolas of Ravenna.
We are constructed of our age,
The accident of birth,
The events of our lives,
And the art – my god –
The art that is
Hurled our way!

Hear the old bombs
And we shatter into being.
Feel the choruses of the gilded masses
And Hallelujah we are remade.

If we are mosaics
We are living ones
Pygmallion’s sculpture
Animated by our ways of reacting
As consistent as stars’ dances
As unique to us
As our genetic code.

We are made by our dances
Dances in and around life
Our being as malleable as limestone
But as fixed as pillars.

After reading my eulogy
And drinking the last
Of my Fernet Branca
Go to the nearest river,
Throw a pebble into a stream
And scatter what’s left of me
In the water flowing
Round the pebble
Retracing its solemn course

Whatever we were,
whatever particular brand of bent,
We are few and far between.

Max thought he was evil—
He prepared myself in a child’s idea of evil arts:
Violence, magic, and song.

Strange, the naïve evils we choose.

He thought we were sociopaths.

We were violent, true,
but in a sporting way.
For us, violence was a game—

Serious, but worthy fun.
Amongst worthwhile foes.

I think we didn’t understand violence.
True hateful violence.

We were numb to our deeper selves,
we could hear,
but could not translate.
Not until later.

External reference was little aid—
a limited frame of petty shuffles
and fiction.
We had no sense of the scale of it.

Like so many mad men before him,
he went to war,
to understand what it felt like
to kill a person.

It killed him.

It is dark where I am and I cannot hope to see you
but sometimes I can hear your words
echoing off the tall walls and stone steps

I grasp at shadows trying to reach you
but you are long gone
disappeared somewhere into the gentle dark

Imagine my surprise when I wrap my hand around the murk
a silken strand of your memory
that slips from my fingers like seaweed

Will you ever come back? I don’t expect an answer,
mostly because I can’t remember what you would say

I’m trying to focus but I’ve forgotten the shape of you
the scars on your calves
the freckles on your nose
the peal of your laughter

Those old ripples of sound are evaporating
leaving a cool, dry space in my brain
I feel them as they slide into the air
and soon I’ll have no memory
of the way you would say my name

You know I can’t speak for myself, in all this dark
weren’t there monsters in my closet
or did you scare them all away?

I’m no good at chasing them out
without your help
and I don’t know how
I will ever get through the dark
without your hand
in mine.

For Heath, now four years gone from my world.

I.

one boy tossing language into a crevice

another introducing rapture to his fist
another wracked by sick convulsions
another swallowing the vineyard’s gift
another abandoned in the blackthorns
another paler than the all-seeing moon
another thieving his mother’s rings
another slim as an angel’s fingernail
another who speaks only exonyms
another—

wildest profanities
amid the sagebrush

noise carries. Where doors would be
there are gaps in the wall, impossible
to close. At night, conversations
drift to other rooms. The tongue
mutates if left with the same voices
too long. Catches their ticks and rhythms
like a common cold. Howls leak
and accompany the nighttime gossips
snitching in the dark. Others, still,
perturb the boundaries of dreamscape.
A scream is a communication, an utterance
past the scope of language. All communication
amounts to shuffling knowledge, here
a redundant enterprise, like startled birds
fleeing boys that limp and wince each step.
We all share the knowledge. Wailing
or silent, we all mouth the same word.

II.

unravel the eyesight / desist / until the foul hunger of this multiverse
sates itself on the black / and between the arcs of being, we collide

being as time / instantaneous sagebrush / spark-splattered kindling
ripe and ready for the meat / I gorge myself on the unhinged

there is no object without a making / nor a making without cost
I was not hungry / but here I came with the sole intent to eat

III.

you asked him to pray and he wrote you a gospel
you told him that the rain isn’t free and he invented thirst
you shepherded him and he taught the wolves to howl
you crowned him and he curled up to sleep on cobblestones
you gave him eyes and he had to choose:

would they watch
would they close
or would they weep?

For Bob

What I hate about this language
is how hard it is to color
our voices in the art of affection
and still it fails us.

*

My friend who bought himself
a bottle of Jameson
and a cheap motel room
folds his hands over
his loaded revolver,
as if in prayer, then reaches
his scarred, index finger
for the trigger
like a light switch
in the dark.

Tonight, I speak to him
in the same tongue as the old gods–
in their long, volleying silences.

If I could sleep this night
I would dream a memory of him:
his bent body mixing another pail
of leaden grey, drylock paint
that we’d slather
to molded, basement walls
and speak not a word
of how such a thankless task
allowed us both to breathe
a little easier than in our own
desolate homes of longing.

I would go on covering up
the domestic wounds of that house,
abandoned by its previous newlyweds
beside him, as if the paint’s pulpy,
intoxicating fluid were as pure
as autumn rain
and make each stroke a blessing
only those inflicted
by such wounds could cast.

I would believe the lie
long enough for us both.

And when we are finished,
I would not tell him he is beautiful,
even though he was, near the end
of his middle age, the same way
a worn, plastic play doll
is beautiful in the hands of a child
the moment he begins to believe
to have outgrown such joys.

Instead, I would gather up our brushes
as I always have, into that crusted,
mop bucket sink, and wash away
the absolutions that cling to their bristles
so gravely, that even the spirits,
who call us forth from such dreams,
could not judge these hands
that deny them

standing in the doorway
peeking around the door
half ajar on its creaking hinges

did the kitchen change
its color overnight
did the paint in the bathroom
crumble and peel all
while i was
asleep last night

the bedroom started smelling
like mold just this
morning

but somehow something
tells me that this doesn’t
all happen overnight

like it was a
storm building
with the mice behind
the door slowly
chewing away the wood

and the air just
grew too moist

maybe it was
the sink full of dishes
that somehow hadn’t been
touched in two months

but it’s been this
way for some years
because i haven’t been able come
and pay a visit to grandpa

but i think
it just must have
happened all overnight

because how does
all this crumble
one day over ten years
he just died last night

i thought