Author: poetryfest

I bet I have more friends than you
hiding behind the house
there they fan their fluffy harmless feathers
passive stares and welcoming clucks
adorned with the warmth of autumn leaves and
a lonely sunset

the ground was riddled with droppings
with the precision of a minefield
hopelessly intimidating to intruders
but never for me

In that Arcadian corral
of half-eaten lettuce and dim catatonic lightbulbs
Primal wasteland
of plastic buckets and steel sheets

I take note of their lives
ones who get too close to the dog
ones we eat for festivities
ones we replace when the salesman comes with his wagon
I can confide with them
not that there is much to confide about

the other village kids would never bother me
there I rotted in recluse
no secrets no acts no fantasies no tragedies
in compensation
like the floral blankets draped over the sheltered nests
hiding their jagged fragility

I. the scent of burnt rubber is unmistakable.
its offense permeates otherwise unremarkable
conversation of cuss words and crosswords
on the daily shuttle. paired conductors speak
little, other than to deliver a series of cautiously
punctuated reminders. no smoking. no poaching.
all steps monitored. all stops scheduled. a small
child dressed in denim overalls, a B inked on both
cheeks and Tonka truck on his lap – its front wheel
spins at an awkward angle, sits two seats over.
“The air smells bad, Momma,” he cries. the woman,
eggs fried, wrapped in a belted camel coat and hair
teased as high as the rails are wide, sighs. “I told you,
baby. I left the bacon too long on the fryer.”

II. in row D, teens play rounds of spades. greased
cards pile on faux leather seats. jacks battle queens.
kings demand like-kind repeats. cushions remain less
eager to receive frayed laces than crumbs and traces
of heartless debates. wars conflate wages. as the train
rounds a corner, a woman stumbles. a sandwich, stocked
and stacked of salami and oil drops beneath dueling stars.
mustard spreads like congealed foil. clock hands spiral.
a series of punctuated letters, I A M sorry follow.
“There’s no point,” a male, eye sockets wired, offers.
“Sorrow is only a few degrees removed from rigged soil.”

III. the train stalls at Fern Rock Station. “Like Plymouth
Rock?” the child questions. “No,” his mother responds
in an exhausted fashion. “School of Rock in sequence.”
lifts end. shifts begin. again. an outbound train races.
all destinations between Here and There isolated.
underneath, on a platform to the right, a man sleeps. peace
one breath removed from piece. voices storm. the overhead
speaker dishes condolences in clipped form. “Sorry folks,
it’s the rubber. We ask for your patience while we do
our best in an unfortunate situation.” Done as much a form
of movement as none. Gone as near to GO as NO.

V. I ride the train to conserve dollars but forget that the cost
of miles accumulates all the same. I count houses, smokestacks,
and imaginary daffodils but forget that smog promotes delirium
after hours. I pull a beanie over my head but forget that heat rises.
As the train compiles miles, I miscalculate the distance between
Earth, Wind, and Fire. The conductor hums Let It Be, then calls –
All Aboard! Passengers meddle as if the exit door offers medals.
The conductor nods. a book of poetry,
of delights, peaks from his pocket.

Under the billowed out wave
Into the rock retched reef
Where you sit with your
Knees tight watching the
Stones hit the hard surface;
Sink, silt, sonder, someone
On the bottom bloodied from
The nothing feeling you
Gave to them. Perched at each
Pop of pebble to top, you
Think it looks real fine from
All the way up here. There’s
No other view but this one.
My hands wrist deep in sand.
You’re good at everything but me.

I believe the salient stalk
of crimson bee balm
will sprout again in spring
and blossom in early summer

I believe the ruby-throated hummingbird
will remember and return
to the perennial in bloom

I believe that after all the petals fall
to the oak mulch below
the sparrows will feast on the seed head
before the snow falls

When the stalk is ragged, bent, and broken
layered in ice and snow,
it will shelter the dormant pollinators
waiting to crawl again
when the sun can shine
for more than a glimpse of the day

When I transplanted it outside the bedroom window
I hoped to enjoy the scarlet display
and ensuing visitors
with the company of my partner
on a bright summer morning

But all I see is a lone mourning dove
flying out of the neighborhood
of beige vinyl siding
single-family homes

autumn is the season of rot.
before the bodies ice over in winter,
carefully preserved by the cold,
death ravages the newly deceased and
eats merrily away at the
freshest flesh and pulp. There is no
grave that escapes devourment; no
isolated case of a body left
just as it was when it
keeled into the unknown after.
love will not keep the bones covered—
mushrooms are born hungry during harvest;
newborn scavengers need to feed
on the very weakest of
prey. the dead can’t fight back.
quilts of fallen leaves provide a
rest for the soul but not the
skin. the mites will find their way in
to the holes left open. does this make autumn the
ugliest season? you think her heartless,
violent and insatiable, but she is not
xeric by choice. but you, however,
you can choose to die some other time and
zincate what’s left of you. for now.

The murmuring beauty of the glistening brook
And the vibrant chirrup of the birds
Keep gnawing the silence surrounded
By the silent standing trees of the forest.

The shepherds keep passing by the brook
Grazing their sheep
Like the clean water flowing in the brook
With the dry cracking sound dropping onto the ocean of silence
By treading their feet on the dry leaves .

Their calling to the sheep
And the bleats of the sheep
Were cutting the silence like pebbles
Thrown into a stagnant clean water body.

Sitting on a black stone by the brook
An old shepherd expresses
The scarcity of the rainfall has reduced the brook
Into a trickle
Bringing forth the bad harvest.

In English class we learn how the lotus flower, native
to Guyana, is a fiction of resilience, but under keen
Chinese eyes blooms purity in the dark. Because critical
interpretation never lies – unlike climate deniers, harms none
with narcissistic subjectivity, personal insight,
the queer naked streams and rivulets it produces
from ash-dusted inkwells, bound and gilded paper sonnets
all reversible with the tenderizing root of a whip, breaking-in
of a sand-flecked mustang lost and grazing celestial beneath
the shifting leaves of cottonwood understories – good argument.

But no words may possess where I’ve lived for nineteen years
no debater may capture any time zone, nor grammatical instructor
invade conservation with unwieldy tradition, not epic novel lectures
timed before Aristotelian systems collapsed – earth, wind,
fire, water, Ptolemaic heavens spinning vulnerable circles,
quintessence of stars, planets, antidote of all disease. In other
words, seek geopolitical tensions of a single tulip planted
in an English garden, unnatural clusters in Europe’s
Chinese courts perfuming medieval midnights. They say
rising tides and heat waves live and die without intervention,
how the four elements of emotion wash over us
in Mandarin before vanishing.

In twenty-four seasons watching cherry blossoms fall on Park Avenue
with the muddied runoff of gasoline-soaked snow, believing winter
and spring never fought, or were torn apart, loved or even recognized
one another – only consumption’s sorrows, creeping steam
treatments for asthma, boiling water into clear diamond glasses,
cirrus bubbles foaming away lead in dreams, ghostly
chromium 6 combusting liver, lungs, womb, high fevers.
Public housing’s chlorine mutations, the magic of pretending
and oblivion. For the female titan Theia bestowed elements
their brilliant looks, forgetting beauty attracts misfortune. Only
known for the children she bore, she of starry cow-eyes.
Her roving gaze searches for governmental carelessness,
crafting mid-victorian diseases of melting, torrential rains,
skin slickened in debauched contact – how the drought
is our thirst, flooded air all our gasps.

Sometimes a memory
Burns and scalds
So bad
Those moonbeams
Can’t soothe
The seething heart,
Sometimes a memory
Leaves shivers and chills
So bad
Those sunbeams
Can’t warm
The frozen heart.

Between
The moonbeams
And the sunbeams,
The ‘present’
Tosses in unwished
Gifts of its own;

The wild winds
Have blatantly blown,
With worries of the
Future unknown.

As I have grown
Accustomed to Life’s game
I firmly hold my hand
And tall I stand,
Just on my own.

Upon the silent spruce-swept land
The sweet scent pine falls soft and gray,
The moss hangs on every tanoak strand
Like some lost stream from yesterday.

The sweet scent pine falls soft and gray,
Upon the umber forest floor,
Like some lost stream from yesterday,
Silence falls upon the moors.

Upon the umber forest floor
Gravel gleams and glimmers ghostly white,
Silence falls upon the moors
Lost in my heart’s revolving flight.

Gravel gleams and glimmers ghostly white,
The trails come and slowly fade away,
Lost in your heart’s revolving flight,
Like walking through a lover’s lay.

They shift and slowly fade away,
Pac Bell blue rusted in red mud wanes,
Walking through a lover’s lay
Whose dreams we never dream again.

Pac Bell blue rusted in red mud wanes
Your heart that drifts from gravel to trail,
Like dreams we never dream again,
And lovers, with their final quarter, wail.

My heart that drifts from gravel to trail,
Calls timber to a dark unknown,
And lovers, with their final quarter, wail
In search of some protected zone.

In search of some protected zone,
Upon the silent spruce-swept land,
Calls timber to a dark unknown,
Where moss hangs on every tanoak strand
And sweet scent pine falls soft and gray,
Like some lost stream from yesterday.

Sun streaming on the water,
sprinkles of light floating,
beaming,
jumping
Through space and time
To me
Droplets on each lily pad
Suspended in water
Steadied by roots
Fat green leaves
Luscious, alive
When we look all around
A world of dreams and awakenings come alive
God-given
The temple of nature is adorned with God’s handiwork
Come see the beauty,
Created–
A testament.
See your faith–
Grow.
Embrace Divine Nature