Author: poetryfest

The alarm doesn’t ring
but still I wake
at 3:00 sharp. It is the middle
of the night and I’m still thinking about you
and how you won’t wake up
today.

Tell me:
is it funny or sad or both
that I can’t seem to fall asleep
and you’re not allowed to do anything
but?

Tell me:
why do doctors wear white?
They’re not angels no matter how much they want
to be, higher than heaven,
on a cloud above, flagging down spirits
like lost airplanes. The nurses
who take care of you
know better; they wear blue
because they know the color
of your eyes, and they’re trying to reflect you
back to you, trying to call you
back awake. If the doctors were smarter,
the’d wear something just as dark
as the place
you’re in. I’m sorry

for all this rambling, this poetry.
Tragedies don’t require words
yet here I am, writing you away
into some notebook somewhere
documenting you like a world war,
a fight inside the skin, a battle between the bone and
blood. I’m sorry

again.Your bones are not at war
with your blood. A car is,
gravity is, the universe is, God is
at war. They all want you
more asleep than my pillow
does and they all must think my arms
now hugging a blanket named you that is not you
aren’t suited any more.

And they’re right.
This sheet doesn’t have
your Disney-prince hair, your swimmer
build, your last minute dash
of Picasso smile, your twinkle.
It only holds enough space to keep
my head above water,
not beneath it.

One last time, I’m sorry.

I just hope I can fall asleep
tonight.

But I can see the moon
peeking between the blinds
and whispering something,
the same thing she whispered to you
that night God searched and searched
and for some damned reason sang

that one could use a break,
a little nap, a rest
somewhere that isn’t here
or anywhere.

When my final day comes,
And it’s my turn to go,
When to the pain you’ll succumb,
Remember that I’ve loved you so.
Don’t fret, my dear,
For I have lived a happy life,
It’s all alright, my love,
It’s all alright.
Don’t bury me into the ground,
As I don’t want to rot,
Cremate me, spread my ashes,
As I want to be high up,
Not six feet beneath the ground.
Look for me in the clouds,
And in the bright skies,
I’ll be there when you need me –
Just look for me, my dear,
Always in your heart.
Don’t lose yourself in the what ifs,
Or in guilt or in regret,
Don’t waste yourself away,
In what you could have done
In a different way.
There’s nothing to forgive, my love,
But if you need to hear those words,
I forgive you, my dear,
For I loved you so.
I beg for your forgiveness,
For what I have done wrong,
I hope we can part ways
With peace in our souls.
One thing I ask, my dear,
For after I’m gone,
Keep me in your heart,
Remember me as I once was.
Share them with the world –
The stories of my life,
For this is the only way
The memories of me can keep going on.
When my final day comes,
And it’s my time to go,
Just remember, my dear,
That I loved you so.

There is no line
No boundary the rot draws
“she’s already dead, Dude. Don’t stop me.”

Stop talking to the wall — it
displays the Truth and nothing else
I touched the needle, I burned in hell
& she was right all along
it’s so quiet here
at the end of this song
This thread I pull & down
another we dance we pull
the moon the sun
the others, us too
I am not alone
I am here
I am tethered
My body, my choice
The Dreamer awakes
The fire alive
Down on all fours
Right by her side
She heard the wall sing
and faced it beyond
The point of no memory
to the great beyond
And I came back her
To this now to say
STAY

Buried deep within my skin
is profound grief

The spice of a steeped chai burns heat into my hands
Attempting to thaw the torment from my chest
Warm welcome escapes me

Cold static ebbs and flows
Laterally siphoning memories
Rising and falling
Gripping my shoulders
It folds me into myself
My feet nearly make a run for it

Yet I go nowhere
Feeling everything and nothing simultaneously

The once cozy couch offers no solace from the empty echoes
Where laughter, requests, arguments, and innocence once reigned
Deafening silence is all that greets me now

We get into the thick of it
Decoding the message behind the sensations
behind the grief

I miss them both
Equally, individually

Separation is the reality I have not learned to accept
Only temporarily distracted myself from

Guilt and I are at war
Blame referees
The fragmented crowd roars
Call the foul

Rage bellows silently above my navel
Unable to be heard
Demanding to be felt
Threatening to spill from my throat

My babies
My children
My heirs
are gone.

Reality sets in
again and again

No amount of sleep
Discounted joy
Monotonous routine,
or healing ritual
can restore the injustice
restore the time lost

We are forced to move forward

Tethered souls untethered
Dreams, stolen
Legacy, disrupted
I cling to the only one I have left
and seek forgiveness for the distance between us

Immeasurable magnitudes of disenfranchised grief
With nowhere to go
Listlessly I roam

Rose colored glasses peer in on me through blacked out tint
With ears that don’t hear,
it’s no wonder why words often escape me
We don’t speak the same language

Hope is a knife that I carry from my old life,
thinking I had time to reconcile
all the times that suppressed rage manifested as fault finding
Our time came to an end before I could tell you
the onus was never on you

Still, I wield that knife, fingers bloody
holding onto the possibility that maybe one day I’ll see you again
and I’ll get to tell you the elegy of how I tiptoed across barbed wire
and trod through the aches of reparenting my inner child
holding memories of our love above my head like an unforgotten victory
Making room for yours too

Between the sutras, we’ll exchange
the strategies we adopted to offset the pain
Through art, we’ll resolve our world with all its flaws

Please, sing to me of your love
of who you’ve shared it with and what it’s meant to you
Paint me a picture of all you’ve learned,
Let’s play every game I never had the energy for back then
Read me a story for old times sake
Get acquainted with your brother
Teach me the alchemy of each day you survived without me
of how fearfully and wonderfully you made it

God, grant me the serenity to accept the ways they’ve matured
the wisdom to have ears that listen
and the courage to speak the truth
To receive them as they are and not as I would have them
Give me the language to write intentionally
while I push through the cold static
One moment, one day at a time

Allow me to channel this sacred rage
buried deep within my skin
so that one day
when we find our way back to each other
ambiguous loss has somewhere to go.

In the moment of crisis
Fingers point all around.
The past, the present
The sky, underground,
Hypothetical militants,
Hospitals, towns.
Call it lebensraum or manifest destiny
Call it a land without people
Excuse the inhumanity.
When the tanks roll in
They always call it justice
Cause you can always trust us
We avert our eyes
To that which disgusts us.
Well for those who live in the imperial core
I hope you hear the rockets roar
The bombs we hurl
At the world’s pour.

To the victims:
It’s just a poem that I write.
A vain and impotent gesture
It won’t bring children to life.
Would that it could
Make the horror end tonight.
They can take your families, your lives
Saturate the airwaves
With their intricate lies
And they can throw down the buildings
Brick by brick,
But no force on this Earth can break the Palestinian spirit!

death walks on wood, singing Sarahlo, Sarahlo,
in shades of aubergine and puce.
Strides, side to side, arms swinging, past morning
glory stalks that flower
and choke their greenwood host.

It was a poisoned spring,
disease spread a pallor on the land,
loved ones died on the other side
of palm streaked windows, children
orphaned by unprovoked war.

A barrelhead of rainwater pours out
full of mosquito larvae, they squirm before they perish
on the gravely slope. A storm rips up like
hoofbeats, thrashes lightning daggers, and then,
the sound of a barn burning in the rain.

Ellen Sander

When I awoke that cold and empty morning
My mind, once warm, had been iced over
Dark clothes and shadows, like rain, were pouring
Into the souls of those few sober

Though the sky is grey and hopes to weep
The clouds are stiff, for a drop will not descend
My tears must satisfy the sky, and hope to keep
My contrite soul until the numbing end

My mind then wandered into brighter mornings
Where wispy clouds gave way to rays of heat
When your life was filled with only beginnings
Mere months before your soul’s silent retreat

A modest grave with hardly any length
Has now consumed your fresh and simple soul
Your life was spent fighting for strength
However, fate reduced you to this role

Now I’ve been blessed by you, with a sorrowful sign
See, relief from this life does often cross my mind.

– Madalynn Burnham