Author: poetryfest

sometimes i think my sister and i have the same blood and i wish to cut myself until i am pure, i am cleansed.

sometimes i think she is kind, and she is sweet and a mother to me when the real one wasn’t.

sometimes i wonder if it was better to never have been born, to never have the same glass- rimmed face as her.

sometimes I hate myself because i am like her, and i pray to my creator that do whatever you want, but don’t you dare make me from the same potion you did her

sometimes she spoils me like a child with sour candy and i am grateful that at least i have her.

but ultimately, I grieve her, mourn her for all that she is and for all that she was.

i am hateful and i am demonic in her eyes, and she is the life that i never wish to live in mine.

on the face of the earth, i love her.

but I’ve never liked her.

In Memory of my Sister Rima (1963-2020)

Confined, refined, undefined, resigned to
house arrest, without guests,
pressed for eternal time,
dispossessed – where did you hide your despair
during those dark days?
In the haze of rushing ambulances,
when people cheered the nurses, then cursed them?
On what piece of dirt can we meet if we are not dead yet?
can we watch the sunrise with all those who gave up
their lives so we may continue to live,
eat in restaurants, and gather at Thanksgiving?

We buried you, eleven of us at your funeral,
one under the maximum allowed,
everyone all alone, grieving six feet apart,
after long nights of separation,
we pitched a tent next to your grave,
on the dried earth of our disappearance.
Are all those we lost, who coughed their lungs out
so we may drink at the bar without masks,
huddled together on the high seas of our selfishness?

Would you trade your hockey tickets for a respirator?
for a telescope, to look for them,
gathering nectar from celestial stars
to spike our drinks with compassion?

The first stage of Grief is Denial,
In which the subject cannot come to terms with the reality of their loss,
Though many chalk it up simply to a sense of shock or disbelief it is far deeper than that.

Consider Schrodinger’s Cat,
The now famous thought experiment that explores the theory that unless an object is observed it
can be in two state of being at the same time,

So if a cat were placed in a box with something that could potentially kill it,
It would be both alive and dead at the same time until the box was opened and the cat could be
observed.

Now,
Consider the aftermath.

How long will he wait to open the box?

Does he open it immediately?
Does he rip off the band-aid and move on?
Or does he let it sit on the kitchen table,
Staring at it,
Filled with dread but too afraid of what he might find when he opens it.

Does he wait until the middle of the night?
When he already feels so wretched and rotten so he might as well open it?

Does he wait until a guest brings it up,
Asking about the strange box behind his sofa?

Does he shove food into the crack ,
Hoping on some off chance it would keep it alive?

Or does he never open it?

Maybe he leaves it shut long after it would have died anyway.

How long does Orpheus wait until he looks back at Eurydice?
Until he opens that box and knows for sure the death doesn’t become real for him.

Until that box is opened there is some state in which his cat is alive,
even if only in his own mind.

It is the beginning of the end,
It is denial,
It is grief.

I don’t remember the sound of your voice anymore,
but I think it was a little raspy.
I have memories of you,
but often wonder if they’re real
or just images stitched together from old photos.

Many of those images stand in stark contrast:
fiery, red lipstick
sterile, white hospital bed.
warm, blue swimming pool
cold, green oxygen tank
long, tan, wool coat
clear tubes overflowing
curly, auburn hair
wrinkled eyelids, twitching.

You deserve so much more than
a patchwork quilt of random memories,
but after all these years,
this quilt is all I have left of you.

And the saddest part of it all is
most often when I think of you,
I remember watching you die
rather than watching you live.

need as such a complicated term
what most consider a bode of necessity
or a sensual desire
you coerced need into survival bones
of my body, and branded me
told me to earn love, but never worthy
let me believe in loyalty, then
siphoned every bit of life from me
depraved of self-identity, but starved
on the day I walked away
I saw your begging, thieving eyes
I never turned around

Crows carry me.
Sometimes one, sometimes two,
But never for long.
Some Crows bite more
than others, it
hurts,
But I make no noise.
Sometimes they drop me,
But never long enough.
Seeds start roots,
Crows come back.
Crows of Consistency
They tear roots out
And it hurts
Away they fly to the
next grove, Surrounded
By trees that have roots
Deeper than thought
Trees who have been in
The grove for years
Im in a new grove now,
And my roots, against my
Will, grow again.
As the dark comes,
Hic Corvi,
Here Be Crows.

So, there is no rule book when it comes to grief
no rules of what to do
There is not a right or wrong way to let a Loved One go
Because the hurt is true
You can be smiling one minute and then you break down and cry
You can be crying one moment and a memory make you smile and sigh
There will be days that it may feel that your Loved One is still near
And then there are other days realization brings along heartbreak and fear
The fear of what losing a Loved One brings is something no one can plan
Grief takes the mind through so many things, so much to not understand
It’s as if you are in a quiet, dark room with your hand reaching out afar
But then when you lean forward to embrace it’s farther than the Northern Star
The hurt does not stop hurting and the pain keeps providing ache
The memories creep in and away from reality you cannot shake
Loved Ones are permanently affixed and are never supposed to leave
But, if and when they do know that there is no right way to grieve.

A few months after he died we went and scattered Scott’s ashes at the beach. It was going to be Longnook but Longnook was closed so we did it at Coast Guard instead. It was blisteringly hot. Ron brought a Tupperware of marigolds and handed them out to each of us. The ashes themselves we scooped out of a plastic bag using recycled sake cups, the kind you pop out of the individual bottles. One by one we each went down to the water’s edge, waded until it was up to the knee. Marigolds bobbed in the water. I just want you to know that what you’re doing is very beautiful, a woman, approaching, said through her tears. Can I give you a blessing? My mother taught me how to bless the dead. Without further instruction she began to sing, her voice stretching into operatic Italian notes. The song was neither mournful nor poignant, but indecipherable, like sounds from an exotic bird. Would Scott have hated this, I wonder, or would he have laughed? When I returned to my beach chair I found a wild cormorant sitting there, unbothered for so long it had fallen asleep. Elsewhere the marigolds are floating.

O Amun I can’t share my sorrows,
For the face that hath golden shine.
That face that became a morrow,
For the world which has sunk in water of Rhine.

My soul can still remember the first visage
Of course that goddess, tough I was astonished,
To read her character from the cage
Of my mind. Her lunacy was the key,

Which caught my feelings for her luve,
I even fathomed that exceptional was her behaviour.
Though I had nothing to do for luve,
Time made us unite for the new journey.

The smile that hath the magnificent Charming
To sooth my heart I felt glory.
To make her the part of my life with a singing,
Of almighty Juno. To me She was the climax of inseparable story.

Every morrow her cacophony welcomed the beginning of my day.
I had a juvenile look from my eagpyrel to her eyes.
She used to engage herself in various childish play.
But Heaven knows why my eyes were on her eyes.

She used to say come Mr. Let’s talk about the land,
Which is free from the hunters of Hephaestus.
Where the will have not been disappeared into the sand,
Of our modern cruel thoughts.

Yes! She was a wacky girl, but what ails?
All are the creations of almighty hands.
But today I am solitary, she has become the sails,
Of the boat of my luve, which is always floating upon the sea,

Of everlasting darkness, which is the companion,
Of my time till the end. Like Ixion to the wheels.
After that no sound will be heard and I will begone,
To the soul who will be mine no separation will be seen.

But till then I shalt have to dwell
For the prayers of the soul
Which will not be wiped out
Time is a healer, though it can’t have bites over the final roll

When I was in band in junior high farting around on a trumpet I had no business desecrating like I did, there was a phenomenon among our section called the spit valve, that when your instrument got too gurgly and the brass sounded rotten you pressed down on the spit valve and drained out the mysterious liquid that had been floating around in the battered snaking tubes. We’d spray it on each other in silent hysterics, from the back row of the band, dribble it on the floor and unsuspecting flutists shiny black shoes, but when a nasally voice muffled by an oboe mouthpiece would raise the alarm of the spit valve, help teacher, the trumpets are spitting on everyone again, we, in tandem with our director, gave the winy defense

It’s not spit! It’s condensation!

I don’t know if this is true.

But it was what we argued, along with our director who only sought to keep the poor peace, that the hot breath against sharp smelling metal for forty minutes caused the gathering of condensation droplets on the inside, let out through the spit valve,

It’s not spit, it’s condensation,

I can still feel the cold metal, unrelenting,

I don’t know love from my left hand and you don’t know hate from a hole in the ground.

I’m keeling in front of you, tongue running up and down the side- it’s not spit, it’s condensation,

Your body is so cold.