Author: poetryfest

“Praise the Mutilated World” -Adam Zagajewski

Who decides what is mutilation
And who gets to praise it?

And should I smile as the only one left behind?

I’ve seen the pimpling of skyscrapers,
jutting unnaturally from a flattened landscape.
Offices on offices on
rooftop bars,
Sparkling high enough to ignore
folks,
skittering like angry ants around
tents pitched on sidewalks
I’ve seen eyes trained forward
or downward
or upward but,
never at each other and
speaking when spoken to
treated like a
lapse of sanity.

I’ve seen
houses turned haunted,
schools emptied of children,
crumbling streets filled with rusting mechanical nightmares,
weeds weaved into empty sidewalks,
and roots breaking up slabs into gravel.

I’ve seen the endless sprawl of urban blight.
The mass exodus of, first, the whites,
And, then, those who could pretend to afford it.

I’ve seen cookie cutter homes
shaped into the image of domestic bliss.
I’ve seen forests leveled for
new homes every fifteen years,
running from violence as it spreads like a sickness;
a plague of Black and poor slowly seeping into sterilized communities;
wrought iron and Jim Crow not enough to dam the flow,
but damn do those HOAs try.

I’ve seen neighborhoods turned cemeteries,
my front yard turned grave and
my driveway tombstone.

I’ve seen
blood dripping down the storm drain
And warm and cooling bodies laying on my street.

I see a for rent sign where my neighbor used to stay.
I see a for sale sign where my neighbor used to stay.
I see a charred skeleton where my neighbor used to stay.
I see a concrete slab where my neighbor’s neighbor used to stay.
I don’t see my neighbors.

I’ve seen a city rot beneath my hands and my feet.

Is it mutilation if this is all I have ever known
And will the praise stop the bleeding?

If I were dying,
I’d sit at the Thanksgiving dinner table wearing a giant turkey headdress,
And we’d have a woodcarving of my face at 18
(The age I want to be as an angel)
Hanging over the bay windows.
Every one of my Christmas gifts would be a slip of paper
Stating what each relative would get in the will,
And the ones who glanced over at me with bloodthirsty eyes
Would get nothing.
We’d have a piñata in my image
And we’d fill it with pig guts,
And we’d hit it with a baseball bat called Cancer
Till our baby cousins got all gory,
And when they cried out to their mother.
She’d wipe blood out of their eyes and say
That’s death for you,
Darling.
My death would be graphic and gruesome like that,
And I’d draw it out like the eighth Harry Potter movie.
The franchise didn’t need eight movies to tell their story.
I didn’t need 80 years to tell mine.
My Grandpa, though,
Has been dying for five years
(His cancer started kindergarten this fall)
And I’ve never once heard him mention it.
Instead, we talk about my grades
And what I’ll eat on my study abroad,
And we don’t mention the very real chance
That the day I board that plane
Might be the last time I ever see him.

We spend a lot more time talking about the start of my life than the end of his.
I suppose that’s his Christmas gift to me.

All my bloody carnivals serve nothing but my gory sense of humor;
When my kids sprinkle my ashes across Lake Minnetonka,
Their smiles will matter a lot more than mine.

Troubled soul, come to me now,
let me lead the way, take you
away from your suffering.
I promise you bliss, freedom.
Take my hand now,
let me set you free.

But I’m not done yet,
I have so much I need
to see and do.
So many dreams to chase.
Death, must you tempt me so?

Dreams in time will fade away,
your mortal life is limited.
Your time is nearly through.
I’ll take away the chains
that bind you so painfully down.
Don’t resist me, just let go.
I’ve got you.

But what about the people I love?
Friends and family.
The pain I’ll leave behind?
Would you take me so cruelly
from them?
Death, your promises are so cold,
Please don’t make me go.

Dear troubled soul,
do not cry now.
Please, take my hand.
You have to embrace the end.
With me, you’re safe.
Death is free, death means peace.
Life is just a lie.

She comes to me now, in recent dreams
as real as she ever was
Young, possible as a new day
Tall and pretty, the smell of innocence on her like wild clover

Before acceleration on a wet road
In the wondering time of her shy smile
The way her hair curled in her face
The way her arms curved around her books

It is the burning southern summer, always
Or maybe in between late spring showers
The black t-shirt tucked in
Me, dancing out a joke for a half-smile prize

In the dreams, she says nothing
sometimes grins in that pouting way, to hide her braces
But we share our moments as we did before,
Quiet, walking home in love with the sunshine

know you’re there
breath hot on my neck
you smell like meat
bitter sweaty meat
like
rotting gangrene
and boiling pork belly skin
gagging when you come too close
throat swelling
squeezing
why do you follow?
why do you gnash your teeth
and cower?
standing guard at the door
barking
spit flying
when I go to leave?
every move draws blood
from your teeth
nipping at my hands and feet

Daddy said the only thing to do
with rabid animals like you
is a bullet
to the head

When I opened my eyes
this morning
I smiled
at my dog’s wet nose
and fluffy butt
curled up next to me.
It wasn’t until
I got out of bed
and finished my cup of coffee
that I realized
today was
the
first
day
I opened my eyes
and didn’t expect
him
to be there
laying next to me.

Did you ever make it to heaven?
Have you seen the gate?
If you did, is heaven such a beautiful place?
God make himself known and put you in an embrace?
Telling you that he loved you and assured that you were safe?

I have to know Dad did he say things were okay?
God tell you the reasons for your choices, decisions, and pain?
Did he tell you about me and how I carry the weight
Of you being gone because of the decisions you made?
Now, do you smile more?
I hope your lungs are no longer inflamed
Did God help you rationalize the thoughts in your brain?

When you ask God a question, does he reply?
Or did you know the answers because of his wisdom when you arrived?
Does God reassure you that you and I are really alike
Does that scare you? We will all know in time

I often look at the situations you had
The army
The PTSD
The struggle to feel intact
You watched over me in spirit, but you didn’t help me cope with my past
When you struggled, did you also push away everyone that you had?

I have to know Dad
Did you think you weren’t worthy?
Did you have little faith and think I’d die prematurely?
I understand you were sick
You didn’t show signs of it early
You tried to take your life away
On my birthday

Do you feel better and laugh more?
Is heaven truly what we asked for?
If I meet you when I’m up there
il no longer ask for
answers

Nobody is perfect because we all feel remorse
But this pain, I can’t carry it anymore
I hope God shows you love and you are no longer torn
I hope you feel loved because I remember that you were adored

I’m older now, and I can see a bigger picture
As a kid, I was angry, but if I could talk with ya’
I would probably hug you, and my tears would fall
Because no matter how mad I was at you
I felt love all along

I have a lot to experience
In life and my soon-to-be marriage
I wish you were here so you could tell me how to manage
But If you’re looking down, you can see me looking up
I hope you feel peace and strength
I love you, Dad

I waltz to answer the subtle knocks from the terrace
A man stands in the beauty of dawn
Lost? Stranded? How far has he journeyed?
The door is opened; It is needless to say ‘come in’
But O’ how polite this man is —
Standing still on the terrace, waiting to be welcomed in.

He dons a black cloak and I am left blinded
Whenever I try to peek at his face
He holds a scythe and I perceive he wants to play gothic,
And his hands so grey, yet his grip is firm,
In the beauty of the blooming red sun, he stands,
Come in, come in. Leave the terrace.

The door is wide open,
Just this midnight I blew the candles on my cake,
And I left you a plate, a piece of my cake,
My wish is to see ninety and chickens with teeth,
O’ I left you a piece of cake,
But this man doesn’t eat. Doesn’t celebrate with me.

What is it then you seek?
You smell of nothingness and your aura eerie,
Your cloak is ageless,
And o’ when did it get so cold?
This man I believe is meek,
He is waiting for me to take the first bite.

But I swallow more than my cake,
My fork has found its way to my throat,
Cough, cough, cough,
O’ how uncompassionate this man is,
Would he not tend to my discomfort?
My body lays cold, I suck in my last breath

He closes my eyes tenderly like I was his beloved,
Nihility was his face before my eyelids obey his grey fingers,
Is this what it feels like to be dead?
Dead? Who will tend to my visitor?
My deathly adorned visitor.
O’ how bad a host death has made me become

At long last I met you
My new reason for being
For the first time, I felt as my heart flew
A future with you is all that I’m seeing

Mistakes are made
And then they’re forgiven
Yet I still find it decayed
I really tried not to give in

But you still left
Like I didn’t mean a thing
You’ve been replaced with an ache in my chest
And you replaced me too in one full swing

The death of a connection
It started and ended in the blink of an eye
No room allowed for objection
Just leeched up and dry

This feeling is recognizable
Yet entirely new
I would never find this to be advisable
And somehow I am expected to mourn and start anew

Grief is a word too small to hold the weight,
A five-letter burden, too heavy, too late.
It’s love with nowhere to rest, nowhere to stay,
A wound that won’t heal, no matter the day.

They say it makes us stronger, but they don’t know,
Grief doesn’t build us; it makes us slow.
It drags us through life, numb and afraid,
Hoping for peace, but finding only the shade.

Time moves on, but we remain frozen,
Chasing something that was once chosen.
We walk through the hours with empty eyes,
Grief is the silence after the goodbyes.

It strikes without warning, a memory, a sound,
The scent of his shirt, his voice in the crowd.
And suddenly, we’re drowning in tears,
Wishing we could forget all our years.

We brace for the blows, the ones still to come,
The ache in our chest, the weight of what’s done.
Grief is the shadow that never lets go,
It clings to our hearts, and it pulls us low.

How do you live when the light feels so far,
When the person you loved is now a dead star?
How do you laugh, how do you breathe,
When grief is the thing you can’t ever leave?

It’s a thief in the night, it’s a scream in the dark,
A flood of memories that leaves its mark.
Grief takes what it wants, and it takes all of you,
And leaves you with nothing, but sorrow to chew.

Every moment is heavy, the pain is so loud,
Like a storm that’s always inside of the crowd.
We’re hollow inside, a shell with no name,
Grief has erased us, we’re never the same.

We want to stop fighting, we want to let go,
But we know we can’t, though we’re dying so slow.
We carry this burden, too heavy to bear,
A lifetime of sorrow, a life so unfair.

How do we move on when the world is too cold,
When the pieces of our hearts are broken and sold?
Grief is the scar that never quite heals,
The constant reminder of everything we feel.

So we carry on, half-living, half-dead,
With tears in our eyes and a heart full of dread.
We smile through the pain, but inside we fall,
Grief is the silence that says it all.