Author: poetryfest

I don’t need supplies.
I need your vote.
For you.
Your family.
Your future.
I taught them to be quiet.
To hide by the safe wall.
We use our walking feet.
Hide your body.
Be quiet.
Crawl.
While I turn off the lights, close the blinds.
Lock the door.
Whisper out names.
Make sure everyone is accounted for.
Some voices turn to giggles.
“Why are we doing this?”
Don’t you remember?
It’s now a lesson I teach, a book I read.
The video about safety, the one we watched.
You are just a baby.
You’ve never heard gunshots.
I follow my training.
The one I learned in a library.
Just another staff meeting.
When “What if?” comes to play.
Fire Extinguisher in hand.
I climb a chair.
I tell the children it will be okay.
Because we practiced.
They’ve been instructed to grab weapons.
They’ll use the school supplies you sent them.
I tell the 5 year olds to defend themselves.
While I wait above the door.
Standing on a bookshelf.
To use my life.
To save someone.
Someone I love.
Did you know that is what teachers are made of?
Guess what?
I still love my job.
Those babies light my heart up.
We care for them so much.
Add Human Shield to our job description.
“You must be a saint.”
They say in the hall.
To have patience for children?
Oh you must be heaven sent.
Yes. I am only trying my best.
Have a growth mindset.
After a drill, I survey the wreckage.
Wipe tears from eyes that are scared senseless.
Have a calm class discussion.
Communicate our emotions.
Ask questions.
Man, these kids are smart.
Empathetic.
Engenius.
Like “What happens if Ms. Porter is hurt?”
How? Do we? Help her?
Where do we run for the help we need?
What do you mean we run to the street?
I’ve imagined all the “What ifs?”.
I dream of blood,
seeping from,
the bodies of,
your children.
As they are scattered across the playground.
I see their corpses in the classroom.
I can hear the screams now.
The ones for change.
To the 2nd amendment.
I ask you.
Your guns?
or
Your children?
Whose future are you protecting?
I’ll buy my own markers, scissors, and supplies.
Make a choice.
Vote.
Use your voice.
Tell me the cost of a child’s life.

My garden is the most beautiful in the neighborhood
Mrs. Messer’s Garden can’t even compare
With all the grey in her hair
Her roses are wilting, them scared to face God
My roses are lifted, their heads raised high telling God to praise them
Her marigolds have lost their color, brown like the leaves that fall in the sky
My marigolds shine brightly like the sun, the orange-yellow burning holes in neighbors’ eyes
Her poppies spread far apart, forming various small cliches
My poppies hundreds in number, like kids on a school trip
Her sunflowers only able to feed herself
My sunflowers feeding the neighborhood kids
Her violets pink and cute but not right
My violets a deep burning purple, their hue fit for the most noble of royals
We both bought beautiful tulips from the store
Her’s are now dead
Mine look beautiful in their stead
Mrs. Messer’s Garden doesn’t hold any deep secrets
Mine buries a few
The only thing buried in her garden are dead fruits and vegetables
My garden houses a different kind of dead
Shoe boxes of old bones are buried in my garden.
Mrs. Messer tends her garden because she’s old and almost dead
I tend my garden because I’ve had to bury so many dead.
Mrs. Messer is now dead
I’ll plant a plot of daisies for that dead
Hopefully Mrs. Messer taken some of my flowers to greet my dead.

There is no life after death, only a pulsing energy. you have no body, at least not one you are aware of. there is no awareness, no pain, no happiness, no touch, no God or color, no writing or language, only the sound of a drill slowed down a thousand times in a vacuum of space that might be behind a wall or right next to you. the spaces of life we know or think we know do not exist. only a vibration of energy and an inconsistent fluttering of light. but light doesn’t exist. time doesn’t exist. only the vibrational hum that is us.

The winter I house-sat one of those mansions in
Chestnut Hill was the same winter my father
came to tell me that he’d

like for me to meet the
woman he’d been seeing
who I’d already heard about from one of my aunts

I took her call in the night smells of October
and when I told her that I had to hang up now
she said that she still missed her little sister every day

Well, no shit. We all did.
She died in May for fucksake
and now I had to put up

with the weeping Man with the Golden Helmet
in his broken complacent armor
of late middle age

He said, “You don’t
know what it’s like to be
in a house all by yourself” and

I said, “Look around you, motherfucker.
Just do like the rest
of us and read a fucking book.”

Consensus advice said that’s how most men are
who lose their wives
It’s not uncommon

Intellectually, I knew this
Tactically, I would not be
be treated like a child by death

I’d bury my dead like the English bury their dead
so dead, they say,
that you need another word for it

when all the emotion is gone
and one can sit comfortably
in melancholic indifference

this wasn’t about a resurrection a replacement
or a reunification like they’d have you believe
the damned Italians

always with the fatalism
spoken in fearless accents and expecting
every unwilling guest of ruin to kneel at unwashed feet

and scrub at the indignities
because the whole human
business must be ritualized

Otherwise it becomes a grief so large that
we all just sink
into it throwing feather

darts in the childhood
garage with those you don’t care to know
in the posture of surrender thinking

of nothing
because there was nothing
to think about

Sorry ya so damn scared
Of boys when they learnt
Ya jus left ya lessons

Ya all padded up once mo
All pretendin nothin happened
Out a order, they thunk?

Music then sweat, not right
Angry boys takin it out
Again and agin, once mo

ya quit, no mo

No melody’s-music, piano or lesson
Ya voice, step not
In class or on-field

Fri night’s Coach kept a-askin
Wouldnt say a nothin, you, no–
Not gonna face it, no–

Like I had to, me
Like it did us, last night, us
Both all again aging

Us watchin favored Opry
Me seen that tear, yours
Cryin out, man-tune too far real

coulda been me up-there yonder
if hada them lessons, once I
jus real good once a piano
back then, a-uh football feller forever-feared

I don’t want to die but I’m glad that one day I will
I’m just so tired
I don’t think death is like sleep
I think it’s more like being nothing
And I don’t want to be nothing
But I’m so tired of being something
Of being anything
I want to watch life pass me by
I want to stand still
I want to be an observer in my own story
I am tired of moving the plot
Is this all there is?
All there will ever be?

I don’t want to die.

But I’m glad that one day,
I will.

As the grass grows thinner
And the summer trees turn red
The sweet dew that once moistened your lips
And the hallow words of I love you
Slowly fade away

Our minds and souls were connected
In a sea painted blue

Almost as if the rain that fell that day
Was never gray

Yet if you look around the corner
Behind the sea painted blue
Hidden where most people don’t see

Is a calm scarlet sunset
So peaceful indeed

The smiling faces of us
The memories of you and me
Painted behind the sea painted blue

The memories are slowly morphing into dreams
Still as lucid as can be
Yet we know it isn’t real
Just like you and me

Like a peaceful melody
Hidden behind the sea painted blue
Is a peaceful melody

A scarlet sunset
That now haunts you at night
Turning as mono as can be
Dripping down the arms of a sinner
Washing your hands clean

I cannot let it be July again,
So my suicide date is set to June 30th.
I’ll write you one final love note darling,
For I’ve learnt that it’s just courteous.
I know you’re figuring out how to erase me,
So slowly you’re rubbing out all our memories.
And I don’t know why you treated me
Like a placeholder, like I’d always stay.
So give me a sign or a reason
Of why you couldn’t have been better to me.
For I don’t know what punctures my chest more,
I don’t know what makes my heart contract faster,
The fact that the whole time you were pretending I was her
Or the fact that our contract ended like the rip of a plaster.

You cannot live through it again,
So your suicide date is set to day you forgot to tell me.
And I know if you depart, half the blame will be on me,
For I wrestle with the penitence of denying you the right
To decimate my unconditional admiration and fight.
And it tore you in two, darling it shows all on your face
That you strive to strike me back, can’t leave me with grace.

Now your narcotic behaviour is ripping my seams,
And rusting the gold that used to tie us together.
I always thought it would be us, forever.
But how naive I was; your grail was to leave us severed.
And I truly wish you the best, I truly wish you’d stayed.
But with the thought of love, I’m back to being afraid,
For it was only your shade that I would have painted and framed.
And it was only for you that I’d let my walls cascade.

I dreamed of Icaria.
The waves lapping peacefully
No screams to be found
Anon, just tranquility and
Effervescent ethereal enigma
To breathe

To soar above the waves beneath the
Sun no fear, no restraint to breathe
Made of the waxy strings, life
To know it is precarious and
Not care.

And when I fall –
Because I will fall –
I want you to find me
In the sea, the waves
Devouring your screams
As you sob over my corpse.

The water runs red.
Paradise lost.

What is it like for your creation’s
Creation to be its downfall?
To be a bird that soars
Among the clouds and watch
That human bloom, boom
Into your domain?
Out. Down.

And when I fall –
Because I will fall –
I want you to find me
In the sea, the waves
As the haunting water
Laps at my feet knowing
Not what has occurred –
It reclaims. What was never yours.

Gagging
Muffling your screams
Another secret to keep
Shhhhh.

Give sorrow words,
Shakespeare wrote.
Lest my heart
should break.

So I tell her story to the Indigo Buntings
as they craft nests of
beautyberry and Indian blanket
in a field abloom with life.

They listen.
I think they know
my little girl who was Light
though her voice was silent.

She is in the green glades
they tell me, where swallowtails
flit between bee balm
and trumpetweed.

She sings
a sweet melody
with the wood thrush
and the nightingales.

Give sorrow wings,
I write.
Lest my heart
should break.