Author: poetryfest

i dreamt i was the Earth
last night
cradling continents
in my weathered hands

whispered wishes on the wind
“tread softly
dear ones”
as they slumbered
unaware
concrete cities rising
steel forests sprawling
smoke seeping into pores
my lungs heaving
a labored wheeze
glaciers weeping
“what have you done
to me?”

a murmur rippling
through molten core
ancient rhythm stuttering
the seasons
a tilt too far
floods fires droughts
the scars i bear
the fevers i can’t shake
“i am not infinite
i am fragile
finite
tired”

yet i spin faithfully
our celestial waltz
cling to me gently
hold me in your heart
terraform your souls
plant seeds within
before the last stars
wink out

Tick–Tick–Tick

Ticking slowly means all clear–Quick ticks are an incoming air raid.
I was lifeless on the stairway to my flat. The domes of
St. Isaac’s could not raise my spirits. It took a screaming
Stuka dive bomber to rouse me. I could not wake
my companions.
Their dead frozen fingers stick straight up on upturned
palms supplicating an angry god who took their conscious with
out their knowledge.

Tick–Tick–Tick

I’m alive now. My heart races. Its beating matches the metronome.
Only last night it was used in The Leningrad Orchestra. Last night
the bassoonist died, collapsed from starvation. His last breath was into
the reed. It made a somber note over the sad city. The thawing icicles
cried outside, mourners for one one-thousandth of the departed of
that day.

Tick-Tick–Tick

I run under a bridge that spans the Neva. Old women collect
water through a hole. A woman jumped in here yesterday, took
her own life rather than eat her dead children to subsist. I think
God will understand, when he comes back into our lives–
If he returns. If we are still here.
The bombs rain down. The saints atop the cathedral watch
motionless giving their benediction to the destruction.
Windows shatter. Even the bodies of the Tsars shake
in their tombs on Hare Island. There will be none for
the victims. No regal marble headstone or even a plain
marker. Just a common mass nameless gaping hole.
A grave which the bomb helped make.

Tick-Tick-Tick

All clear. My mind is free to go numb–My
heart matches the metronome. I do not live.
I exist.

I love you!
I love you more!
I love you more than cake!
I love you more than pie!
You are my sugar cane,
No, you are my candy cane,
Sweet splendor, dancing on my taste buds.

I love you!
I love you more!
You are my rainbow after the rain,
Shining bright, keeping the dark away,
A streak of light cutting through the black sky,
You will always show me the way home.

“I want to bathe in the sheets of stillness and quiet and introspective calm.”
…as it is healing balm for both of our souls…
…forehead kisses and back rubs…
…to dream with our eyes open while basking in the grace of silence and solitude…
…that’s the reverie illuminated by candlelight…
…so why fight when it’s so much better to surrender…to the daydream…as it unfolds and
envelops us in a loving embrace…
…for this…is a safe place…
…for this…
…is…
…a safe…
…place…

Title & Poetry: Sonically Bittersweet
(Subtitle) & Quote: My Muse [If You Know You Know]

From my late-night garners of ashy memories,
A voice echoes in every thought,
A chant to look back on an album long closed,
None of it fits in the hymns of praise.

Nine tracks, lengthy tunes of my throes,
And one deluxe, an unreleased song of joy.
Perhaps I should sing to what should have been
And put that image on all the babies I have seen —
All that I have seen, beauteous like he would have been.

Hidden curves, sumptuous coutoure…
Where men watch intentionally the ocean of beauty my body’s face wore…
As undying thirst reign in their veins for a grasp of this sweetness place…
Where at birthright I had rivers of unending beauty contours…
That brought open beauteous doors…
Of men reaching for my utmost endless touch…
Where I reign as endlessly such…
They beg for accrue of my undying body perfection…
Until love’s deepest bluest ocean…
Through a reflection of glass…
This contour that undyingly has…
…the perfected perfection of a truly must…
…that it be given such unending praise from the most undying handsome
face of this world’s plentiful place…

Google says that it can last
For up to five years on average
Beginning between the ages
Of eleven and sixteen
The latest it will run its course
When a late bloomer turns 21

Hit by a Mack truck
Square in the chest
At eleven, fourth grade
Growing inches in a year
BO and sweat stains
And my very own puberty stache
Bu that was just the begging
Of the hair

At twenty-one
I am still growing hairs
New places all over my body
Curly black shoots
Sprouting on my shoulder
Like trees with not enough water
To go around, spaced out
On my lower and upper back
Beginning to grow forests
A bayou by my ass

A ridiculous prank
On Gods part
I commend your sense of humor
But who the hell grows
Hair on their shoulders
And no one in their right mind
Meant this when they said
They were looking for someone cozy,

I stopped growing
Four years ago
Have had a full beard
For so long
That college friends don’t know
What my face looks like
And yet its still growing
They never warned you
Puberty would never stop
Just a small thing left out
Of seven years of health class

I’ve seen the dads and grandpas
At the pool, real life bigfoots
Hair like a second coat
My Puerto Rian Jewish ancestry
A hairy one indeed
Is starting to worry me
I shiver at my potential fate
And I pray that puberty
Will be in the past at 22

Your slow motion smile in monochrome: 1925,
an overcast afternoon in Canton. The moment

possessed by the zeitgeist–your ghost
entered as a warning sign; the only mourner

at this sacrificial rite. You were dressed
in all white, posing as a figurine of snow,

the jade-boned & ice-fleshed goddess in that Cantonese folklore
who wades the river and ends up disfigured. A photo:

your face blurry as a premature mural; your downcast eyes
watched as the raindrop stains turned copper

on your skin. The bullet sowed into your spine
was sprouting into a skeletal machine

that kept you alive as an unfinished statuette
poised above the pedestal of a crumbling country.

There is a footage of you talking, walking
among an ever-evolving shadow of faces (history

anonymizes us with identical numbness). Your gaze
floating over the camera, an extinct language trembling on your lips –

you were in agony and I exit the page to replay your funeral
filmed by some of the earliest cameras in this country. There,

your lead-white smile hang like a cold sun beside the flag.
I fantasized about coming back to you –

going back to stop you in what ways I can: hands
vainly grasping for the wind streaming out of your throat; lead on

with wide-open unseeing eyes. The two of us
sleepwalking in this landscape of oblivion and pain.

Mother,
I lost you.
But you’re still there.
But you’re not here or there.
I can’t talk to you
When we speak it’s so empty.
It feels empty.
I wanted to fix what is broken.
Everywhere I go, I feel empty.
When we converse, it’s worse.
One more day, one more talk.. One day
I will get so broken like you..I don’t want that
I chose silence because my honesty never changes your
Actions. You won’t sober up.
I know you will never be sober.
I know you feel pain, your pride is in the way
When will you get help to regain those who still love you.
Even when it hurts to love you
Will it hurt to just let go one day?
I don’t want to be you.
I don’t want to be him.
I don’t want my life to depend on the bottle.
I just want to be happy.
I’m drained.
I feel empty.
I feel hopeless
Insecure.
I don’t know you any more.
Mom is a distant warm memory, faded, dissolved
No substance. Just alcohol. Emptiness.
You will never understand or make changes for your daughters.
No matter what I say, I know it won’t change where your priorities are.
The truth is I am exahsted.
I ignore your calls.
You drain me.
You pain me.
I can’t keep doing this anymore.
I miss you.
I miss you
But you aren’t there anymore.
You are far gone.

No
The grass was not greener on the other side

In fact, it was dead

Crunchy under your feet, and yellow
It grew up like straw and was tangled into the lattices
Bees and spiders made nests in it,
and you had to be aware of the ticks

The dew clung
and sparkled in the light of the sunrise

I did not kill the bees and spiders
I did not mow
I planted moss and wildflowers
I had a drink on the overgrown porch
and said hello to the swallows

It all remains quite uncured

No
The grass was not greener on the other side

But it was mine