Author: poetryfest

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I hide from him in the weeping of the rain;
I fear him at the shrinking of tides;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,—so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

Originally written by Edna St. Vincent Millay, revisited by a survivor ninety years later.

Seasoned jilting from the pelvic bone
of a much younger woman,
wondering what truth loving naked might bring to the surface—
whether the human form is just a mirage
of silk roads and maps for those ports of mongrel stars
and never-ending sailors,
who fish to dig for gold in places
that become a condiment for all that lives and is alive.

Perhaps he lives to become one of them too,
for his eyes are a true tell of the boy king
that appears in all his poems,
haunted by silhouettes made of gunpowder.

But how can a man who was once brave enough to become a soldier
slip out of his own crown jewels?
How does he watch true diamonds
get cut to pieces by helicopters?
How does he die before he can truly live?

Wake up, dear king,
before the crown jewels have fallen,
before the blood diamonds are expertly cut and refined
back to the Congo,
where the women will again wear them—
this time as a reminder of everything you have lost.

wear what ever you wish to wear
but should you mess with those who cross dress
the courts will not fail to put you in jail
You needn’t be honest or kind or any of the other virtues you’ll find.
There is no place for such shit in the new white American mind

the only rumpus is the moral compass
Jesus loves you, you know he loves you
for what ever you do in a man style shoe.

Jesus tells us hells hottest ghetto is reserved for a man in a stiletto

drag is something we never do in public view
if we love the lord, no matter how bored

Your mascara will run and that spandex will stink
when you are crying, stuck there, frying in the clink

even a dress for the sake of sarcasm
is seen by the lord as a sad mental spasm
it is something completely abhorred

You can dance a congo line, that’s fine

make a Chinese dragon with its tail waggin

all swaddled in a play
of pink paper machete

but put on a dress and veil and you’ll go to jail

You can dress like satan
take it to the max
be a guy in a sheet, add a torch
you hates blacks

but put on a dress snd a veil and you can go to jail

in what now? a dozen states?
put on sequins and you temp the faits

t’s just crazy what the conservatives are creating
they don’t even care about the nations credit rating

but same sex dating
god forbid
keep it hid

throw democracy over the fence
nothing there to recompense
mortgage fraud
not the least bit odd

but should you digress
to a mess in a dress?

The right wing grins
Jesus didn’t die for those kind of sins

put that Lemay on public display
and you better have family connections
that can nudge the right judge
to give you leave to find new directions

community service
therapy and all

otherwise

you’ll be the bell of the holding cell
wondering who to call

Propped under the Tree of Dreams
I am finally free.
Staunch ideas of intelligence & intuition
are ever changing; ’667’ I exclaim!
Blood unshed tears uncrown
War and Peace are finally clear.
There are no time for scruples
I do and I done
9’s all around me; I can finally Rebirth.

717
The tree is not vociferous, nor does
It beg me to follow Gematria.
‘The number Of a Man’
Was never my favorite
598^ taunts me she hurts.
It feels the manliness I have
Just manifests into lascivious gaze
upon flesh no matter
My eyes are wide shut.

Yet standing in the Heath and Bracken
In the arms of her shade,
Her embrace sprinkled with dashes
Of heaven they splatter
My face.
Cradled I feel the touch of my mother
My sister my brother my vices my sins and
Flesh transforms into flesh
Breast transforms into flesh
Heart transforms into Seraphim
and the Heavens 1414 and the smell
of wood chips resting patiently on concrete
beneath the Swing-Set
And the rough bark of Locust Trees
That I rest my unlabored back on
Where I find two seconds of relief
222

Got in a bit of trouble
A few years back.
It cost me very dearly.

Grew up in a Godly home
Never missed a service
Or a summer church camp.
My parents’ faith it was,
Not mine.

A rough crowd lured me away
A little at a time.
Innocent enough it began,
Weed and beer and wine
Peer pressure,
Rebellious risks,
Euphoric ecstasy.
Acceptance
Enchanted me,
Enticed me,
Enslaved me.

My parents saw the spiral
Down and away.
Refusing to fund,
My “wicked ways”,
I took to taking
First from them,
Then malicious marauding.

My friends turned out to be
No friends to me
More addictive drugs
Then abandoned
They left me scott-free.

Addiction clouded
My mind
My judgement
My determined
Destructive
Decisions.

Then…
On a torrential night of rain
The station attendant held at gun point.
With cash-filled bag
I backed away.
A sudden dash
A trigger pulled
A bullet blast.
Shot in the head,
I left him for dead.
I panicked,
Dropping gun,
The cash
And fled
To my car—my dad’s car.

With pounding heart,
I heard the car doors slam.
Uniforms approached my house.
Held my breath
For what seemed like years,
Waiting for my bedroom
Door to crash.

My mother shrieked.
To the window
I dashed
To watch my father led away
Cuffed
In a policeman’s grasp.

“You’ve got the wrong man in there,”
I said to the sergeant at the desk.
His eyes filled with tears.
“I wish I had a son
Who loved me as much
As you must love your dad,
But son, you can’t take
The rap for your old man.”

“NO!
Wait! You don’t understand.
I DID IT!
My father is
INNOCENT!”
I created such a fuss,
They brought my dad to hear my pleas.
“The boy is LYING!
Now take me back if you please.”

Destroyed,
When I heard the judge delcare,
“Guilty of murder
Death in the electric chair!”

I went to visit
Once only.
Two hours
Before he was to die.
His head was shaved
Two hours
Before he was to die.
He looked so different
Two hours
Before he was to die.
He looked at me
Two hours
Before he was to die
And only love was in his eyes.
Two hours before
He was to die.

“Dad, why didn’t you just tell
Them it was me?”
Silence…
My God he hates me
I cried and cried.
Then his foot
Tap, tap—tap, tap
Clink, clink, rattle, rattle, clink
Went his shackled chains
Then…his voice…
Soft…
Full of love…
Nothing but love,
“Because I wanted you to know
How it felt to have someone die for you.
Now, my dear, dear son,
Live
Like
It!”

Dug in deep, a rotten keel,
And marked with faded letters gold,
A name that now he hurts to feel,
Reads sad upon the splintered hold.

Unmoved, the sky weeps empty tears,
They flood the desert beneath his eyes,
Where mournings spring will not appear,
Sunk deep beneath some earthly lie.

Glittering curves of brine and gold,
Emboss this sunken ship of state,
The lie, a promise written of old,
Stencilled by the good first mate.

Above the sky and below the sea,
It rolls a bitter and longing sigh,
But the bold corsair, so wild and free,
Can no more sail than he could fly.

Valley and vale mark his high brow,
His eyes are sunken inland seas,
Primaeval wilderness is his crown,
And within, an ocean’s memory.

The rain it binds both land and sea,
Grey shores fill an unflinching stare,
Fleeing to hide where Eternity,
Still bats her eyes and braids her hair.

“Eternity” she swore to thee,
“No ending we shall know –
Just you and me, upon the sea,
My captain, how we’ll roam.”

Eternity in painted strokes,
They but hold him from despair,
They keep alive those forlorn hopes,
That the ship might be repaired.

Hewn of oak, the captain stands,
Eyes fixed upon that golden name,
A stunted tree on foreign sand,
Forever to remain.

“I’m so fucking broke it’s absurd,” Floyd noticed the tear inside his jacket pocket. There are miserable times and there are the best of miserable times. Weeks had gone by and his dog Sue had been eating from the hand that fed him, trolling along on a loose rope. And then gone. Floyd remembered having found Sue running outside the Hermann Park late one night in February. He was sniffing at something lying next to the kiddie railroad tracks, an old muffin or something. He’d lost his tag and was without remorse. “Hey there buddy. Didja find something good?” It wasn’t snowing; it hardly ever did in Houston. But it was cold enough. He looked like a dog named Sue, like the old Johnny Cash song, and it seemed like Sue took pity looking at who Floyd was, or at least the way Floyd wanted to believe he was, backwater and fatherless.

Floyd got up off the curb and kicked the gravel underneath his weathered, old Doc Martin boot. Or was it crushed glass? He walked down the Bowery and lit a borrowed, given Marlboro. “God those taste like Shit!” Floyd thought about the conversation with the bartender at 2A, the musician who had some demos produced by the guitarist from Patti Smith’s band. The guy who knew his amigo from the art camp for disaffected city kids up in the Catskills. He was from Illinois, and was a decent musician, kinda Marshall Crenshaw. And he was friends with Handsome Dick of the Dictators who always had a Super Bowl party at his joint in Brooklyn.

There wasn’t much to the scene these days, Floyd thought. God, I wish I’d been here back in the day when CB’s was the place. You could crash anywhere downtown easy. Now it’s all stock-market exploding inevitable cock-suckers, he thought. Floyd had been staying for a while at the commercial space on 44th Avenue in Long Island City, but that wasn’t going to last forever. There wasn’t any plumbing except for a shower on the floor below, and you had to bring water up the four floors of back-and-forth stairs that make it seem twice as long since the elevator was usually broken. And it didn’t make it any easier that he was supposed to pay the dude who lived there, and had been making excuses the past few months.

There was a nasty smell coming up from the subway grate, the bizarre mix of urine, fish, sweat and milk that is brewed by an invisible witch on and under the New York summer streets. “Man, Sue would not dig it here,” Floyd muttered to himself. It’s a dog eat dog world. Or, a dog eat cat world… or something. Man, I should go back home.

Floyd wandered into a liquor store on Delancey and checked the prices of bourbon. He walked past some bridge-and- tunnel girls buying cigarettes, who’d probably lost their way from the PATH train. There’s a Korean place over by the beginning of the Williamsburg Bridge near Essex that’s cheaper, he thought. But what’s the point. I’d have to lift it anyway. Floyd wandered down past the barrage of international sweat- shop clothing stores and wondered how all this got here. The Ritmo Latino record store with the Tower-like Celia Cruz and Tito Puente airbrushes, and of course hell-hath-no-fury in a fluorescent dungeon McDonald’s. He turned up Essex, since Jenny his favorite bartender at the Johnson’s bar on Rivington would give him a few drinks on the house. He showed her some guitar licks and changed her strings sometimes.

She was like my surrogate mother
when I first came to the valley
& got into the industry. She was actually
banging Frankie Muniz at the time,
not on camera, of course; he was in his mohawk phase
& hooked on junk. He’s clean now, drives
the pace car for Nascar, weird right?
But her, I haven’t seen in years, we had a falling out,
I don’t even remember over what,
& I’m sure neither does she; it’s sad, really,
we were like that, use to watch reality Teevee
& drink white wine all night, go to the Anitas in Van Nuys
for hungover breakfast burritos & chocolate shakes.
I saw Frankie the other day, though,
at a fundraiser for chihuahuas with glaucoma;
he had on this gorgeous & ungodly expensive English suit,
(the royalties from Malcolm in the Middle
must be brilliant, it’s on Teen Nick every hour it’s dark)
& was drinking a bottle of Evian.
He was perfectly polite, but really,
I don’t think he knew who I was, only remembered her slightly.
It’s whatever, when I sign this new deal with Brazzers
I’ll be making bank.

Hey, listen up, I got a message for the crew
I’m feelin’ fierce, got my confidence brand new
I step into the room, heads turnin’ my way
I’m servin’ looks, servin’ sass, here to slay

My outfit’s fire, my makeup’s on point
I’m walkin’ tall, got my shoulders anointed
I’m a boss, a queen, a superstar
I’m makin’ moves, breakin’ rules, goin’ far

I’m lightin’ up the night like a superstar
My presence is felt, near and far
I’m unstoppable, untamed, and free
I’m slayin’ the game, and I’m makin’ history

So bow down, haters, and take a seat
I’m the one and only, can’t nobody beat
I’m on top of the world, and I won’t apologize
I’m slayin’ the game, and I’m feelin’ alive.

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.