Author: poetryfest

Tears trickle life grey
one drip teasing time.
The days end
hope drains amber and gold
out of the backlight blue battling black.

The dimming moon fades
behind onyx invading horizons.
Hushing roll of rain
begins lightly crying on sunset leaves.
Soon a storm
will cleanse more than the trees.

The sky closes tight
echoing deep thunder
scurrying the shadow wolves
like forest squirrels.
Societal storms are seething to exist
crumbling wisdom into the wild darkening.

Teeth bite
lightning shatters the mountain’s hush.
Cracks of white
shouts between silence’s screams
tremoring crimson rivers flow under
bruised and battered twilight.

Shelter sought under
what is now nothing.
Distant starless howls
call to arms an anemic fight.
Cultures standing for centuries fall
gnarled roots give way.
Rinsed of riches
war’s worthless rivers rise.

Ripped raw
debris flows distractions
down on them all.

Falling to the sky
last breaths mist fog
on forgotten ground.
Morning mercy moans misery’s pain.
Blades of green sanctuary
catch hues of dripping morning sun.

Dawn’s wind whispers
the wishes of warmth
for war-soaked steps.
Ageless, bothered branches
intertwine a haven
under emerald fluttering leaves.

Daybreak suffocates
in sunlight’s sparkling
cradle of contentious canopies.
Terror’s tempest torments
long after dark squalls sleep.

Freshly washed from last night’s storm
shaking off the despair.
A furry face shimmers a gaze
inviting life from torrential nightmares.
Traveled paws teasing tenacious time
a tail sways freedom from tears.

Daylight no longer hears
howling in war’s night storm.
Lone’s wolf eyes are gently looking for
the hues of life after dictated disasters
calm.

1.

He guiltily looked at pictures of hurt young children
Told himself he was a psychologist and did it to
better understand his patients—That was a lie
Caught at this he received a ten-year sentence
in a federal prison, a sentence that he didn’t survive
He never hurt a child—looking at the photographs was
his attempt to vanquish his own sad, violent childhood

2.

I’m retired yet I still have nightmares about my
working days—But they’re false
Nothing real bad happened then
Now, I’m in my seventies and all sorts of
scammers take me, an old man, for an easy mark

If we fail to care for the earth it will, in order
to preserve itself, kill us all

Scammers will tell you of their rock-like belief
in God who is with them throughout their days
(Jesus is my savior) That they’re patriots
(our country—hooray USA) and that they
are very good people, very good people
whom you should trust

I’m having none of it

As a form of life, were I to believe in God,
it might comfort me to convince myself that the evil
will suffer and fail and the good will win every battle

Nonsense

Socrates taught us that there is no worse fate
that can happen to a person than to learn to hate
knowledge, truth and reason—He didn’t fear death
because he knew (was convinced) that when
the soul leaves your body, your soul is immortal

Work distracted me from melancholy

I can both believe and disbelieve
in the immortality of my soul
When I die will new generations remember me
or will it be as though I never lived at all?

As for hell, hell isn’t anywhere
if it’s not here with us on earth

3.

Oh how they love those cats and dogs
They find the affection in them that they can’t
get from other humans—“My dog taught me
how to love” “I love my dog”
“I hug my bug-eyed cat”

Its senseless to look for in others that
which can only be found in yourself

I knew her for quite a long time
I’m still not sure about her
especially when she aggravates me

She’s highly neurotic
Somewhat exotic
Very erotic
I loved her

If your passion comes from great love
and you’re young
The wisest thing to do may
be to yield to it with everything
you’ve got

4.

The United States is slowly becoming a police state—
with unmarked vans, masked police, secret lists and
false denunciations
With loyal powermongers in charge
who don’t know what they’re doing

As our mean-spirited Russian friends brag
“Give us a person and we will find some sort
of treason”

In their day they thought Mussolini and Hitler
were the greatest politicians in the world
But there’s no such thing as the
greatest politician in the world
Mussolini was shot to death by partisans
and together with his dead mistress displayed to the public
Hitler committed suicide
Caesar, who “boldly crossed the Rubicon”, to destroy
the Roman Republic was assassinated
on the floor of the Roman Senate

48% of the American public are ignorant idiots
And our “dear leader” with his cuts to their education
aims to keep them that way

He too, like any scammer, pretends
to believe in God—Celebrates Easter
in the White House—However, he doesn’t
even pretend to admire the kindness of Christ
He’s cruel, unruly and in search of revenge

This lying scammer got elected, as they sometimes do,
by telling lies to the naïve American people
Our billionaires tried to pay him off—
As when Hitler was elected, eminent civic leaders
thought they could control him
They couldn’t control him and instead
became his puppets
Just like any dictator our “dear leader”
can’t be controlled by such billionaire trolls
He won’t be their puppet because
he’d much rather be their king

The Slate River is rage-cascading
down these stark black slabs
splitting herself on sharp hewn boulders
every second
spilling over as froth and rushing
onward as if nothing happened
And this
every day
not just the ones some
city dweller like me happens to take
a day off from the usual grind
to notice,
calling suddenly suspect yestermoment’s
chance encounter I’d credited with having
saved my soul.
I only ate enough mushrooms to be given
over, somewhat, to awe;
Not enough for a truly
religious experience.
Still, all this!
Dislodge my metal bottle
and the careful architecture of my pack
preserves its spot for easy reinsertion;
I’d mistrusted myself enough to have
thought of everything in advance.
Wild raspberries
and tiny, high-mountain strawberries reward
my new-keened observation with a sweetness
unforeseen,
–and suddenly unmerited
it seems.
Better to leave the forest’s fruits
for some wilder creature, one who does not carry
her lunch on her back
or time her trip to trail’s length.
Aw who the hell do we think we are
or need to be?
Coloradoans march by, their packs heavy
with lightweight everything one might need.
Having “bagged” their fourteener, they caution me
in passing of storms approaching; turn back.
I amble on, gel-lackadaisically
through lichen-speckled rock outcroppings.
I nod to the trees, or bow deeply, as the psilocybin urges,
and smile to the passing conquistadors
relieved that I
am blithely not married to summit,
not even to saddle,
that a walk in the woods
is still quite simply thrilling.

Am I in a capsule?
Is time a round thing?
I stare into the unwillingness of the wind and wonder
Are the stars quite as bright when you go to space?
I watch the spiral oceans bleed into themselves.
Here I am, bound to the endless thoughts that tie us together.
What if I can’t undo the knot?
What if I am trapped in the known forever?
Too afraid to look at the stars.
Even if they are less bright,
I can still see.

With all that we are, there’s no point in pretending
that despite different starts
complementary hearts
we haven’t got the same ending.
No, you know, as I do
that we’d best get to mending
the dreams, our schemes
the reams still unbound
pages of stories of where we were found
they’ll tell tall tales of the glories, we own it
‘til the moment that both of us live underground.

Come on up then, raise your chin, let’s begin
there’s a whole world of battles around us to win
we deal inspiration
feel for each new sensation
correlation, causation
cessationless study.
So little in this life is simple or easy,
but friend, please believe me
there’s fantastical thinking worthwhile to tend, as you’ll see.

Abruptly

the call and the journey become something more
unlocked window and door
mountain and moor
fountain, I’m counting to get back off the floor
We may not be wise, but we’re trying
in the night of the soul
still undying
all that we can control
is the step after steppe, though a prairie becomes me
all flower and fire
beauty and dire straits plated without the tediousness
of the mire, with its obedience less
to an author, but rather, the story itself.

Still, there are legends worth living
efforts worth giving
though I know we’ll find ways to fall short.
It’s the fight that will make us
not like combat, that’s tasteless
but the spark and the hope and the care
in each lungful of air, making fair all that ice would distort.
No freezing rain, no selfish gain
no cycling of fear and pain
can split boulders unseen
between shoulders and spleen
We’ve got guts if the cuts of learned helplessness
can’t turn us into only what’s been.
It’s our tale if we take on the telling, the toil
I’ll be helper and foil
and someday
light-years away
we’ll stay shining with worms in the soil.

A sliced ember white adorns the royal blue sky this night, promises in its wake or the slumber of the mournfully dead a chance, rather nonchalance for would in stride be caused no harm nor folly and any impediments, naught.
Next to her I see a figure shimmer, a chandelier upon close inspection it revealed itself to be, and taken am I back in time, to an age I desired, the time I was all too happy to surrender to her majesty but arrived she never, and yet I seek her still.
The droopy veil her eyes obeyed every single step she takes, her fanciful stride. Wage a war for she bequeaths me charm,
O mister, apologies,
Have I caused an inconvenience? she asks
Foolish I, bright eyes, mistake the brightness for an intervention divine and disappointed in myself say, Not quite, I just wasn’t expecting you is all.
Her face stoops, low her hands remain clasped, she sits in her little divinity and her I can only wretchedly scorn. What brings you here, miss?
The shawl now shrouded her body, but make I could her bosom heaving, petite she was, her corset perhaps held her figure intact, her hair ebony straight, the shawl brown she under masquerades.
I’m here for your advice, she says, astonishment perplexes me, for I have been under the weather off late and my days of discoursing intellect have long been strayed astray.
Death.
A jolt scintillating shiver down my breast makes it way to the very testicular realm,
Now all the more wary and curious my being itself makes.
Death.
She pounces upon me like a tigress in heat, and kisses me with perfect, almost too perfect teeth, kiss her back I, her hands off my coat aloud reject, my attire discarded all too quickly.
Let me be the blessed one who made love to you first, and bestow us upon the crux of curses.
Harder than rock solid I was, breasts perky hers I kiss, end up biting hard, and startled I am for a man gentle I thought I was.
See? I always knew your nature inherent, embrace it, let none be it’s abhorrence.
And we fuck. Like wild animals.
She sucks my dick like she means it, an agreement unsaid our eyes make and she gets atop, devouring me, draining my very sanity. My eyes shut themselves.
Death. She smiles.
Death. My wishes gratified.

The line between a hero
And a monster is ultra-thin
An unrecognizable partition
Where one side is exalted
And the other is sordid

Intentions mean nothing here
To the observing eye
And those watching your moves
Are interpreting your actions
Always in relation to them.

Closed roads and bullet holes
Have an influence; it’s generational
They leave those already scared
Wondering who the good guy actually is

I sit here, in this cathedral of my bones, watching the rain fall through the stained glass of my eyes.
The fall
of
each
drop,
washing me clean like holy water.
Absolving me of my guilt and shame and cleansing my soul.
Refracting the light of the Son through the colored panes of my eyes.
The light… His light is shining, glowing, inside this cathedral of mine.
As the hushed songs of the water become a balm to my lamenting soul.
This Sanctuary where my heart and my desires are both sacrificed
at the altar of my God.
Mournful, keening hymns e c h o between the arches of my ribs.
These holy tears fall
unbidden,
like, r
a
i
n,
down my face.

Neither of us think we can do this much
longer. Q’s mom got abnormal brain scans

a bleed a tumor Q’s gotta help with
the bills.

dad says it’s his fault— the stress of being
his mother and all.

Q’s worried this one will be it. He has a dream
her head fills

like a water balloon on a spout. The weight
of it all— head kinked bent neck— fell

like a Marionette when you drop the strings.
Q drowns in the fluid—

Q says I really just want to … his voice dissolves
like summer does in autumn.

We kick the silence down with our boots and
carry a patient to a second

floor apartment— piss stains on the carpet,
old food on the nightstand,

shit stains caked the sheets. I hear
her tv click on as the door clamps

shut. We walk the floor as the boards trace
our steps

like old ships tethered by rope—the woven
fiber starting to unravel.

Flick, but for one moment

lest the flame lick the world down

kid, you oughta know better

hit it once more, you damned fool

hold the flag just right,

give it color now

deep breaths now — feel — feel

better they than you I say, oh come

I told you to lean in close and smile

snatch the other side quick you

snuff it out with the little ones

be you war and love and dumb, cry

now we’re just as everyone and lie

blame the wind for pushing you too

let your eyes be filled, good vibe

mock the sun and sky and shine and die

kiss the scar and tongue the screen and be

breathe, now the clothes are plundered walls, falling to the skin like stars

pull the plug you’d once dreamed up, to the bowl it goes and grows and

freedom means obey

eat — kill — die — feel

this one here’s for rotting times and books and iron bars and life —— Cheers!

fastly turn the channel friend, crawl inside with open chest

fan the flame upon your feet

you are going higher to

the lowest that you’ll ever be

when they come to call you down

show them what they bade you be

screaming at the end of you

——just never tell them you got it from me