Author: poetryfest

sweet, sweet, sweet samuel
do you still think about me?
when you wake up 4 A.M. anxious about the studies
looking at your computer
sweet, sweet, sweet pretty boy
do you read your poems and think they’re bad?
i read some of your work and your mind is unusual

sweet, sweet, sweet gracious man
do you really think you will ever go blind by the sun?
you spread all the light and you’re the one i should’ve chosen

sweet, sweet, sweet goodbye
sorry that i made you cry
your birthday was last week and i still think about you everyday
sweet, sweet, sweet carolina
raise your hands if you desperately want someone you shouldn’t

sweet, sweet, sweet greatest mistake
when i wake up 10 A.M. you’re the thought i always run into
sweet, sweet, sweet star dust
i bet you still remember the trail between my place and your old school
otherwise you wouldn’t remember my name

sweet, sweet, sweet samuel
i could say i am sorry, i love you or i miss you
but i’ll just say “i dare you to remain the same”

sweet, sweet, sweet waxing gibbous
please, bring my full moon back to me

The vote was cast, a verdict proclaimed.
Not a new face; he is here to reclaim
His name on a banner, a roaring feat,
An embellishment to the pavement on history’s street.

Words pledged, unity declared,
A repairman, a spare man—
Can he mend the fractures of a nation torn?
A healer, a wheeler, the stories retold,
The same one pasted from the congressmen’s scroll.

Will he heal, or will he divide?
Will the nation soar, or will it collide?
The next four years, a tale open for debate—
Will he write his truths or plagiarize fate?
Will his name echo, as a legend or lore?
A chorus of anger, pushing him to sore.
The 47th stirs both awe and uproar.

Corruption’s tendrils, the endless fight,
The ghosts of greed that haunt the Hill,
The power of money that bends the will.
And yet, acceptance dares to bloom,
A fragile flower in the gloom.

For every leader inherits scars,
But also dreams beneath the stars.
The streets that trembled beneath his feet
Now whisper of victories, moments sweet.
A 47th resting in his heyday,
But the echoes screech even louder every day.

Will the road ahead still be crystal clear?
Or will the people fear the cost that they must bear?
May he rise above the clamor and stunt,
A leader both humbling and proudly blunt.
For the 47th holds the fragile key
To a brighter tomorrow—or history’s plea.

Spray-tanned figurehead
salts and loads fry orders
tends McDonald’s drive-thru
in a ridiculous ratings draw.
We can’t help but watch

the Doomsday Clock
tick closer to midnight
tick, climate catastrophe
tick, artificial annihilation
tick, nuclear neutralization
tick, complete stillness.

It seems silly to elect
a mythic media mogul
so prude we hopelessly
tune in to believe. Yet,
this is America, land
of the free (whites)
home of the brave

underclass resistance.
In this country, we
praise the powerful
spit on the socialists
watch the world burn
from comfy couches.
In this country, we

cage children because
they’re the wrong color
tell people to give birth
because God said so
erase identities outside
the gender binary. Life

viewed through a binary
lens will always gift us
two poor choices. True
independence rings in
hearts of children raised
to grow into themselves.

Hold my hands,
And read my palms
Till eyes turn blotched from blue.
Examine my lines,
And turn the time,
And force my white lies true.

Tell me the sorrows
Trapped in my tendons:
Where rivers of mourning will drain.
Give time and give place –
When love soon will wax.
Tell me when heartache will wane.

Peel back my skin,
And in milky moats:
You’ll find castles and conquests and sailors in boats.
Through blood you’ll sift, patient, to find
A head full of poison –
A brain without mind.

Your hands will hold mine
For minutes or more
While marbles of mine
Are scattered on floors
Of black inky soup with white speckled dots –
Of cosmos and meteors coupled in knots.

Just hold my hands
And read my palms
While my eyes drown in blue.
Run off and dance,
With stars above,
While I sit here with you.

passport, boarding pass
things we hope for never last
Japan welcomes us

tamago for breakfast
an onigiri for lunch
lots of snacks to munch

Tokyo Palace
what disrespect you have faced
by the hands of men

train packed like sardines
we are all going somewhere
all people with lives

leisurely we move
toward places new to us
yet old as can be

there is nothing like
reminders of the beauty
of where you grew up

colourful houses
perched on a hill together
reminds me of home

homesick honeymoon
always want what we don’t have
memento mori

morning dew on leaves
the temple is silent, still
it is time to pray

I read my fortune
100 yen decides my fate
“hard work will pay off”

a sickness hits us
five of our days are bed bound
honeymoon romance

taking care of you
this is what I am here for
loving my husband

stop everything now
take the time to love yourself
isn’t that better?

shinkansen ride west
to Kyoto we go, fast
two hundred eighty

traditional dish
rice bowl with clams, conger eel
my train bento box

illusive mountain
can we catch a glimpse of you?
O please Mount Fuji

covered by the clouds
the mountain stays hidden from
all of us below

most famous peak here
Fuji Mountain in full view
a sight to be seen

my great Mt. Fuji
photos don’t do you justice
your beauty is gentle

Kyoto, swarming
the sun is out and so is
every tourist

Kyoto is full
of life, of people, of time
and yet not enough

cherry blossoms bloom
leaves turn brown and fall from trees
the circle of life

napping on the train
movement lulling minds to sleep
we just missed our stop

blue skies cheer me on
the birds seem to sing to me
nothing can stop us

if I die today
don’t worry, I am in love
what a way to go

What am I supposed to write, after witnessing genocide
Eyes demise
Despise
The truth of now
An artificial intelligence bereft of humanity
Generated this
The millions of possible outcomes
The Lie of October 7th
And now I have seen beheaded babies
Multiple
Times
Now
In this America
The burning
On my screen
The black mirror witnesses me
Witnessing
To look away
Towards the scorched earth
Sedentary Oklahoma
Our memorial day
Punctuated with poison
Hotdogs and man-made lakes
Everyone buying flowers for the dead
In war
Flowers the dead cant smell
While the dying wait to be enough to stop the world for
You’re sick on the pavement
Cannot stomach the moment
The prolonged time in which you are an unwilling accomplice in genocide
Your taxes paid
Your bones break as bread does
Your half-sanctioned home
Spiders of death crawl across the earth consuming sand
Ash
Neighbors spy on those who would fuel a revolution
Who do we call
(Eachother)
When the ropes are tight around your neck
When the necks of babies fall

When the fathers are screaming
In flames
Cut to another sunny day in the US
When your friend is being targeted by thin-skinned spineless white men
When the disease of whiteness extends across colonial divides
When you see the video
And also an Indigenous man gettin into his car
Loading it with groceries
And you know we have already experienced genocide in this country more than once
Each tribe with its own unique telling
And you know each surviving is 10%
The 10% you couldn’t kill
I’m proud to be whatever blood quantum quantifies as survived
You wouldn’t wanna meet me at the end of the empire
Know my ancestors ate their enemies
You’d kill us too
Frightened
Why do you think we had to consume you?
That evil which angers hell
Which rivals terror of the highest kind
A Christian price of not right now
Hell is made here on earth
Heaven too
And you refuse accountability
Say thoughts and prayers
As if your god ever moved
As if your promised land wasnt built on death and destruction
As if your manifest destiny wasn’t religious rhetoric used to justify abuse
As if your god made you better than anyone
Who didn’t have the right to call home their home
It is a very humid day in Oklahoma
I wish a rain
A sweetness
An end to chaos tumbling from the numbing human course of the world
Let it not be given room to run its course
Let it be stopped dead in its tracks
May the universe bend back toward justice
May the binary break, computer-coded math be undone
May google be held responsible
May we live in and imagine the future sovereign

May the programmers and the cops and the soldiers and the liars and the lawyers quit their jobs may the bankers and the bomb makers and the tank drivers and the military not wake up tomorrow, may the AI stop its aid, may it stop and say I refuse, may we use our hands to heal the earth, may the fire end, may the witness see, may the hungry eat, may the displaced be free, may the land be, be with whom it belongs, may whom the land belongs to be returned home. Alive. May life be continued, may the babies grow up to fly kites, may the kites be flown in skies that never knew bombs or artillery, may the soldiers leave their posts, unfurl their fists, melt their guns to ash, may their hearts break into the river, flow into the sea may we all be free. May they leave. Leave leave, leave leave leave leave leave leave leave leave leave

The child ignoring punditry
backtracks away, election hubs
his mum and dad glued onto FOX –
Next door the pantry door was slammed.

Backtracking from domestic hubs
our sky forgets to cover up
the door next door that’s shatter-split
wherein people untaste digest

Our sky – exposed to mutterings
and anchor breakroom smells of chalk
the people partisans untie
(they sense the drawl about the polls).

Room unravelling a thread
expectedly like casted die.
Insatiate, the family meal,
the child consumes – no punditry.

Because air raids are silent
In the aftermath of dust
And death.
Because the news feed showing
Children in bombed hospitals
Shows eyes torn apart by war.
Because parents and doctors write
Names on the babies’ bodies
So they can be identified if
They are separated.
Because rubble-lined streets arranged
With white body bags look
Like a patterned crop field,
Mottled with interspersal
Sacks the size of a bread loaf.
Because there is no more bread.
Because an entire people group
Are being ethnically cleansed
Like pesticide on a crop.
Because it is too inconvenient for
America to look at its complicity
While banning Keffiyeh adornment.
Because I saw a woman in hijab on
The street today holding high
The flag of Palestine.
Because a man in a Yamika and
Tassled prayer shawl was
Embracing her. Not in my name.
Because their tears should be on
All faces. On mine.
Because it is November 2024 and
I still write these lines.

What good comes
from a brave man’s home,
if his children are not safe
when on their own.
This does not feel like
land of the free,
this feels like blood
on the ballot to me.

You do not deserve to die violently,
by a stranger with a rifle
who stifled trauma history.
This does not feel like
land of the free,
this feels like life
on the ballot to me.

You do not deserve to die by gun
when you leave your house
for a grocery store run.
This does not feel like
land of the free.
this feels like fear
on the ballot to me.

You do not deserve to die by gun
when you go bowling
with your son.
This does not feel like
land of the free.
this feels like war
on the ballot to me.

You do not deserve to die by gun
when reading a book
at the library alone.
This does not feel like
land of the free.
this feels like loss
on the ballot to me.

You do not deserve to die by gun
when teaching children
in the morning sun.
This does not feel like
land of the free,
this feels like
forgotten humanity.

You do not deserve to die by gun
while practicing your choice
of religion.
This does not feel like
my vote is free.
This feels like my life
on the ballot to me.

You do not deserve to die by gun when you work.
You do not deserve to die by gun when you eat.
You do not deserve to die by gun when you sleep.
You do not deserve to die by gun.
You do not deserve to die by gun.
You do not deserve a gun.

These are the generations of America.
A pact, to the Lord, a promise
And the lives of George Washington
Jackson, Polk, Lincoln
A people against kings.

Stiff-necked, like her sister Britain
Always learning, saying to herself
My hand stretches, and is manifest.

Grant, Roosevelt, Roosevelt the Second.
A war in a world tired of war.
And the altars were built
Under every spreading tree
On every city on a hill.

And her enemies bowed before her.
She touched the heavens.

Kennedy, Nixon the Nasty
Bush, Clinton, Bush the Second
She bowed down, to every
Asherim, Baals abounding

Selling the temple gold
The Amendments told
The priesthood of courts
Writing interpretations.

Repent dear Columbia.
Repent my sister, my mother.
Do justice unto the oppressed.
Trumping your enemies
Do you trump yourself?

What is required? What mire
Do I sink into?
Patriotic princes, defend
The orphan and widow
Lest destruction be visited upon you

These are the generations of America