Author: poetryfest

Across the way
Resides a boy about my age.

His computer desk is parked against the window
Facing outwards towards mine.

I wonder
What goes on
On his dual monitors.

He could be doing homework
Or perhaps playing a video game.

Could he be looking out his window
And wondering what I’m doing?
Thinking about what I’m doing at my desk?
In my head,

I’ve created a scene reminiscent of a Hallmark movie
About how boy and girl meet
And decide to see a cheesy movie together
Before sharing an awkward first kiss.

In reality, I know nothing about this boy.
For all I know, he could be loathsome to be around.
He might not be into girls.
He might not even be a boy at all.

But still the thought lingers
That my soulmate might only be

A window away.

Love at first sight
No doubt in my mind it had to be
From the moment we met, my heart galloped carelessly.
Conversations lasting for hours well into dawn
Neither wanting to end the call, instead continuing on and on
Checking first thing each morning for a soothing text
or one a bit erotic testing my flesh.
My adrenaline would rise when I saw his name on the screen of my phone
Waiting desperately until the next time he would hold me in his arms with bone to bone.
Helping him tirelessly to deal with grief and health issues he suppressed beneath
So deep he sometimes felt guilty when we laughed out loud and seemed to be at peace.
Gradually as days turned to weeks and weeks to months
I started to encounter a very alarming different side
The warm things he once said were replaced with cruel words that I could no longer let slide.
The jokes he would tell and the subtle belittling he would do
made me start to question me and my sanity, sometimes not knowing just what to do.
He reminded me often of how he didn’t allow unannounced visits at all
Yet, he would accidentally show up to see me without giving me a call.
He was so loving and always willing to foot the dining bills
As he said he was different from other men and this gave me chills.
He never missed a Sunday from church and daily displayed a scripture
reminding everyone of how much God loved the world and sent his son on a professional sticker.
Spending extended time with him when he felt really sad
as holidays reminded him of the family gatherings he once had.
He cried on my shoulder and I supported him through so much
even neglecting myself to make certain he felt the touch
of a friend, a confidante, a helpmate, a special person sent you see
Until one day, unexpectedly he text me and told me he moved on and it should be the same for me.
The first person on the surface I met was so charming and so kind
While the one underneath was one who could drive you out of your mind
Always with a spare or two hanging on the branch
similar to a monkey, he could always reach back and start over the dance.
Narcissism, I found out, is definitely real
So, if you realize you are involved in a similar situation leave before your mind, body and soul it kills.

My intuition isn’t always right,
But it’s always on time.
And your answer was the one I never wanted to get.

I knew what was coming,
But you’re never truly prepared
When the knife makes contact with the heart.

What’s done is done.
No turning back now.
The time has passed,
When I wanted you more than anything.

Every morning, the realization hits:
I’m no longer part of your dreams,
And you’re no longer part of mine.
It’s funny how they turn into nightmares.
We pretend it’s not real,
Denial eroding the soul.

I’m not your cake.
You can’t keep me in your possession
And devour me all the same.

I know your game.
You can’t have it both ways,
And you won’t play me again.

I won’t settle meekly
For your feeble consolation prize—
Been there. Done that.
No thanks.

Thrown back into the circle of friendship,
My self-respect will not comply.
You liked the contrast,
Promised there’d be a next time,
But it was all a deception,
Waiting to unravel itself.

I revealed myself in the light,
Though I was afraid to.
But all this time, you remained in the shadows.

I won’t wait around, fingers crossed,
Hoping you’ll change your mind.
I’ll move on eventually—
Just like you did.

This pain won’t fade quickly.
It’ll stay beneath the surface,
But time will heal me, although scars will remain.
(Even if you can’t see them.)

You’re not aware of it yet,
But your soul will know it soon enough.
You’ll feel the ache I’ve carried.
It’ll gnaw at you, deep in your bones.

If we couldn’t work now,
We never will. That’s the truth.
Don’t lie to yourself like you lied to me.

I lost you, but that’s life.
No more fantasizing about what could’ve been.
As I drag myself back to square one.

She loved Chagall, she said, especially L’Écuyère. It made her feel like a child at a circus. When it was my turn to paint her, I chose gouache on cellulose. It made me feel like a child again at a fair. She named her seven-toed cat Marc because Chagall had seven fingers on one hand. After she died, I could never convince the cat to love me. He painted me invisible. So I got a dog. Just to be seen once more. I named the dog Chagall, a name he never came to. So I gave him away.

and when I was walking home from that room
where we all sat in that red-hearted tub
I surely thought maybe you weren’t going to wake
in the morning when I’d come back
and hold you as you vomit up everything
from the night before and the night before
and the night before and I would part ways with you
in the day with your tears staining my skin.
Even a hot shower couldn’t wash away the streaks.
But I wasn’t sure if this routine would carry on
because I wiped the blood from your nose next to that haunted
room we fucked in, while those hyenas laughed
at the tissues in my hand. You didn’t remember
and you wanted more and more, and I couldn’t watch
you kill yourself even though you think you’re only escaping a part,
the whole thing dies, and you don’t realize that or
maybe you do but I’m barely hanging on.
A lot has been happening. I’ve been catching you
in a lot of weird ways and you’re not explaining things
anymore. You’re not talking anymore,
and your mouth is too busy with things that I keep seeing
when you tell me that you just went home, but that’s it,
another lie, and I’m back to pick you up— so we can go
sleep for ten hours at my house, and then tell each other all
the bad things we did that night, and go eat fast food in
silence, and wait for you to tell me you want to go home,
instead of our home that I thought you were building with me.
But that’s the thing— I met you with another promise,
and you weren’t looking at me but an hour later we were in love.
And everything was me and you and it was fast,
and it was angry, and convoluted, and made everything taste
metallic. Even our sex was who could get nearer to the jugular.
Maybe we hate each other, and maybe our love was just the hatred
in ourselves strewn into a sweaty situation, but I’d like to think that maybe
there will be one day when you call me to pick you up and you’re clean,
and I’m clean, and you just want to talk, and we do that. Maybe I see color
again, that isn’t red, and maybe I hear something other than my own heart
telling me death is only so many beats away. Maybe I taste something
other than the back of my throat caught up in wanting to say I love you,
but also fuck you, and maybe then I can forgive you.
Maybe now I can forgive you

I breathe my own fumes, lying up late at night in subtle hope for a change of pace
Fumes of body odor and cigarettes
Menthol and blue collar work for no pay
Nicotine and hard work in hopes for a body worthy of time magazine
Olfactory disappointment towards my own personal demons
Disappointment in words written to be seen not read
Disappointment in thoughts of leaping into the history books from golden gate bridges
The holy litany of loneliness
Dreams of reading a poet’s scripture to the stoned drunks in the grey cascades of dreary dusk.
Night after night being heard by my true audience
Who gasp at the glimmer of the microphone and the pinch of the needle in their arm
Of lulling to sleep the drunks with fists sore from beating their brains in for a chance at reprieve
Nevermore! Nevermore! Nevermore! To the days of seeing the suffering as tools for a
government profit and MK-Ultra experimentation
Nevermore! to putting me on a watchlist for speaking my mind!
Nevermore! to giving me amnesiac pills for disagreeing with you!
Golden dreams of heavenly messages!
Dreams of flight and revolution and jazz!
Dreams of countless women in my arms
Dreams to prove meaningless conquests of the obscene nothingness
LSD hallucinations of a golden Ginsbergian age of 1957
No change
Drunks still unconscious in vomit on the sandpaper sidewalks of san francisco
Meth addicts still shivering, shuddering, screaming, shrieking at the icy touch of memories
before their pipes
Opium sanitization of the mind
The forsaken buddha crushed under the corporate arm of the American dream
The smoke from a cigarette welded into the iron fibers of societal discourse.
Hitler’s Mussolini’s’ Vietnams and San Bernadinos all eliciting salty tears from the well farmed
crop of capitalism called the common man
Communist satans still ruling the eastern world from the west’s point of view
Let the learned shine and write soliloquies in the starless cell of sadness you have locked us
away in.
Let the fools learn.
Let the rich understand poverty.
Let the poor be fed
Let the right men write and let the wrong men read.
Let the great men cease to die and be forgotten by the generation of tweets and followers.
America i will not be put down for the sins of my father, brother, and friend,
I will not be silenced by my fellow man as I would not silence my fellow men.
A utopia built on steel,
Built by the legless paraplegic of a hivemind of smokers, immigrants, and poverty stricken
savants.
Who spent lunch money on marlboro reds in middle school
Who despise each other at the expense of brotherhood.