Author: poetryfest

You were a young woman once,
in a print with frayed edges.
Black-and-white.
A bright smile, on faded paper,
worn by someone we didn’t recognize.

Children, grandchildren forget
you existed before them.
Hopes, dreams you
carried across a border.
Which border, you never said.

The woman with alive, aware eyes
who is so unlike the person
we knew,
did not know,
could not know.

A scared shadow out of touch with
normal life.
Possessed by paranoia,
unable to engage.
Intolerable.

To know you is the chance we never had
because,
by the time we arrived,
you were already lost to the sickness
of your own mind

The moon is scared of the day,
The sun is scared of the night.
I am scared of my mother,
and my mother is scared of my father.
O, how marvellous it is to be scared;
to be acquainted with fear.
To have its prickly tendrils wrap around you in a brutish embrace.
To have him seize your mind,
and take your thoughts hostage.
To have him raid your heart,
and furnish it with disquiet.
What a boon it is to be scared!
He always keeps me on edge.

a muggy season shorn of strength and hope
for terror sears the tips of minds and tongues
as madly through the morning fog I grope
and flaming death invades my coal black lungs

I fear the end of peace and joy and spoil
when fervent bright beloved weeps and masks
thus scorching fevers char and scald and boil
the zeal my soul employs for mortal tasks

I dost yet crave her hips and wildlife lips
though crimson phlegm portends malefic sting
oh ceaseless passion per my soul’s eclipse
united we shall blaze and herald spring

and yet I melt remote from daily touch
forlorn with nothing nigh to heart to clutch

(for Will Brown)

You were my student and I failed you.
And I’ve failed others.
Like the freshman, late for class,

music audible despite headphones,
who disrupted our reading of “Do Not
Go Gentle Into That Good Night.”

Did you rage as day broke with its peach light, Will?
Sometimes, to write a poem, you had to go places
so dark and so silent you fell and kept falling.

On your way back to yourself,
you got lost and we lost you.
We missed you during the final, Will.

Nothing’s more final than this death.
Will, this poem isn’t really for you.
It’s for everyone left.

I’m using a device called apostrophe.
As if you’re the urn, not the ashes.
As if you’re Autumn, not the fallen.

But you knew that already.
We covered it in class.
While you were still with us.

Before I smelled booze on your breath.
At two pm. Outside my office.
Before the incompletes.

Before your freshmen complained that you kept missing class.
That they missed you. I miss you.
Your life was incomplete, Will. You didn’t fail.

Will you wake in another world among the stars?
Will it feel strange not having the darkness you’re used to?
The darkness you used to carry everywhere?

There’s light in this puddle and my face in this puddle
and when I step, there’s a splash and the light goes away
and my face goes away but both return.

The light will never return to your face.
Your face will never return
to any puddle or mirror or classroom.

Everybody left came back.
You left and will not come back.
The bullet left the gun like curses from a mouth

that would eat them whole to take them back, but can’t.
I’m fighting my demons, you wrote to me.
You lost your way and your battle and you broke

like one of your bottles, spirits spilling
out of every shattered, unswept piece of you.
I lost Nashville and Tennessee in my rear view mirror

and stanzas I wrote in my head but not on paper
and you, lost like Atlantis, like an old man’s memories,
like a wallet, snatched away on the first night in a city far from home.

I never bought that PRS Starla we checked out together
at Royal Music, and now I never will.
You said It’s expensive. I said It’s overpriced.

You said I could never afford it. I said My wife would never allow it.
But we both loved the bird inlays on the fretboard.
Now when I visit the music store, the birds

shriek as if impaled, kabobbed.
If I touch the guitar it will scream
every caged sound you never let out.

Every day now I listen to David Bowie sing
“Rock And Roll Suicide.” You’re not alone, he sings.
I wish I’d said that. I’ve had my share, Will.

There’s a D9 chord in that song, Will.
I wish you were here to show me how to finger it.
You and your girlfriend never did come over for dinner.

Now you never will. My wife makes this teriyaki steak.
It tastes amazing. It tastes like love feels.
It tastes like the most beautiful song you ever heard.

I just re-viewed Pump Up The Volume.
Christian Slater’s underground DJ character talks on air
with a suicidal teen. The next night

he lights candles, plays “If It Be Your Will”
by Leonard Cohen, and weeps: I never said “Don’t do it.”
I never said that. I never said You’re not alone.

I’m not really talking to you, Will.
I’d just as well talk to the West Wind or an artichoke.
Everyone left, I’m talking to you. Don’t leave.

You’re not alone. You’re not alone. You’re not alone.

I am a lost soul,
Blighted, bruised,
Condemned to wait
For what will never come.

But still, I am not idle;
I drift, aimless, through desolation—
A desert, cold and cracked,
A barren land devoid of life.

Here, hope is an illusion.
Time—wasted and worn,
A currency that crumbles to dust,
With no worth,
No meaning.

I suffer in silence.
Success is a mirage,
Filling my head with visions,
Of outcomes unfulfilled.

And yet, I dread the moment
When minutes slow to molasses,
And hours stretch like shadows,
Days blurring, their edges softening—
Until months drown in the fog of madness.

But still, I walk this path,
Persisting through the void,
Remaining in the silence.

I wonder—
Am I damned by fate,
Or a fool at war with myself?

Government-sponsored is what labels are,
All because I wouldn’t sponsor
My daughter’s father—he reminded me of my own.
Though he tried to warn me,
I fled when I was fed up, had enough.

Determined to see a bigger picture,
I found myself ordering
A mind-altering pitcher.
Poisoned by persuasion,
I jumped aboard a sinking ship—
Rotating on the rosters,
No time for a relationship.

Full control of everything,
Even when flashing lights warned me:
I was actively malfunctioning.

Raised in institutions,
Fleeing transitions—
After the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Solidarity made choices—some uncertain.
Wasn’t it always?

Was I created out of love,
Only to collect rocks, stickers,
Bruises, and trauma along the way?
Gravitating to learned behaviors—
Who supplied all the party favors?

“We’re celebrating.”
Why? It’s a Tuesday.

Preexisting, rewritten,
Never sure when they’ll listen
To the whistleblower.
Oh, wait—
Isn’t that so-and-so’s daughter?

“We should help.
Work her to near death.
Have her find a narcissist.
She’ll be sure to get pregnant.”

This time, don’t let her get an abortion—
She’s had three of them.
Could she even afford it?

Get her drunk, fill her up.
Don’t tell her about the STD.
Guess she’ll just have to live with it.

So far gone,
Infiltrating every fiber of her being.

“You’ll never have kids again,”
I heard, as I held my three babies close.
Surgically repaired: one, two, three—
You’re left with one ovary.

At least you won’t bleed monthly.
No, just internally,
Depending on how this all goes.

There’ll be good days.
There’ll be bad.
Well, after the childhood I had—
A feather in the wind of bad beginnings.

I couldn’t go down that path.
A child with no dad, no mom—
Horrible odds, if you do the math.

Government or not,
I got the help.
Fought for the help.
Escaped my fate,
Rose back by myself.

An immigrant navigating,
Flourishing young minds
That, too, didn’t choose to be born—
But are here.

With every organ and fiber left in me,
I’ll fight for our sense of being—
Their sense of belonging,
To this world,
As human beings

The Countdown begins
When?
November 5th, Jan.6th
OR
Is it
When does the countdown end?
I have heard one question and one statement over and over
Are you better off
We will fix it
I hear words like
I am traumatized
I am wondering I am leaving
I am scared
That is not better off
That is not fixed
That is…
More of the same.

midweek broke this new year in as a long fast—
the topsy and turvy in my stomach won’t quickly pass.

see, the sweet notes of hope don’t always dance atop my membranes in practiced routine—
no, today my thoughts stumble, sashaying away in silence, a sordid sort of vogue.

I step into a spotlight that only my eyes can truly behold,
chasing melodies of serenity moving just a three-count away from me—
after and after my heartbeat,
perpetual metronome evading me.

whiplash: rushing or dragging?
my feet: iron cladden?

madden, I:
madden,
groove, I:
try grabbin, but
can’t seem to
catch it;

disjointed patterns even in the way my chest fills,
air passes—
breathe, sun, breathe. this year:
watch me tapdance in marvelous fashion!
catch the pitter-patter of my fluttering pink-matter in vim and vigor,
a needy sort of passion!
let waves wash over me, forever crashing, but
instead of whittling away as if brittle beach crafting,
as i’m sargassum-fashioned:
won’t let buffeting push me into riptide, backwards.

nah, it’s on that buffeting i’m breaking fast in—
affirmations of an in-process crime of passion.

In 2024, I fought for my soul,
A battle beneath a sky torn apart.
The storm raged, fierce and relentless,
Heartbreak shattered, pieces of me lost.

I faced my fears head-on,
The weight of grief pressing down,
Waves crashing over me,
Unforgiving, unyielding.

Yet in the chaos,
A whisper broke through—
Like rain on parched land,
Healing my inner child,
Mending the broken parts.

I sat in stillness,
Alone in the dark,
Rebuilding, reassessing,
Learning from the storm,
Finding lessons in the struggle.

The clouds didn’t part overnight,
But with each storm, I found clarity.
The thunder no longer a warning,
But a sign of growth,

Each flash of lightning illuminating
Paths once feared.

Now, as 2025 unfolds,
A quiet optimism stirs.
Fear still lingers like distant thunder,
But it no longer grips my heart.

For the horizon gleams with possibility.
Not because the storm is over,
But because I’ve learned to stand in the rain,
To trust the rhythm of the universe.

This year has just begun,
But already, it feels like something has shifted.
I’ve changed for the better,
And for the first time,
I believe I’ve weathered the worst.

The thunder may still roll,
But I stand strong,
Ready for what’s next,
With hope in my heart,
And the strength to face whatever comes.