Author: poetryfest

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

every other day we’d ride downtown on the EL
back when you could still hop turn-styles
even in the winter; especially in the winter
we’d put on our coats and head out to shop the bakery dumpsters for dinner
there was this one deli where yuppies from different buildings met from seven to seven each day
on the edge of the loop and the gold coast neighborhood
they baked gourmet baguettes and scones and every kind of bread you could imagine
– a lot of these joints now compact their trash,
even back then some would lock their dumpsters
in a world that teaches greed, even their trash is somehow sacred…
however, this particular bakery would toss the extras out every night;
which usually consisted of hefty bags with pounds of good meal, untouched and separated from the store’s trash bin bags full of perfectly good half eaten sandwiches
we’d bring home sometimes ten or more pounds of fresh gourmet baked breads, sweet confections, scones and pastries
and the house of 13 to 20 of us would live on that
the slum lord threw us out when he got sick of the health department on his ass

and the clueless jump out boys raiding us over and over
never finding a thing
except, perhaps,
an empty syringe – for all the dope was in our arms by nightfall
nothing ever lasts for any of us,
I suppose
the young poor still manage to navigate across the great divide and gravitate towards each other

and the old poor get too old to move and die alone

we don’t know our shit from shinola and neither do they

and I guess it’s for the best
the phone still rings and the old new replaces the new old
and flies – gnats – cipher nectar from our dreams
in a world of cages and emotionally parasitic lives
we still reach into our pockets hoping to find that laundered, crumpled 5 dollar bill with the magical face on it that will hold us on gasoline for just one more day

a crazy hope; penny side up
I miss the scones.

In the barn, Ol’ Red waits, a silent friend,
Its red paint faded, but the heart beats on.
The cross in the rearview still stands to send
A prayer to the skies, though Grandpa’s gone.

Scents of oil, of hay, still cling to the air,
Like whispers of the past that never leave.
I climb inside, his presence everywhere,
In every engine purr, in every breath I breathe.

We’d ride dirt roads, the truck wheels churning,
Through hay fields where dreams were wide.
His voice was a gentle hum, stories grinning
With each turn, every mile we’d ride.

Though time moves on, Ol’ Reds here, still and true
A piece of Grandpa is always there to view.

You stole from me
The love I gave freely
To walk the streets
And sell your body
For money
To get high,

But Crack never paid you back

You got so high
Puffing on glass pipes

That you disappeared
And reappeared
At random
Times
But crack never wondered where you at.

I never knew why crack made you act like that
Throwing your life away,
No job, equal pay,
Cursed like an urban nomad
Lost in a desert of shame
Yet crack never had your back.

Our tears and pleas
Meant nothing
As you changed
From a loving mother
To an object of pain

We cried for you
Prayed for you
Paid rehab for you

But you never changed
In fact, you relapsed
Again and again
Needless to say

Crack never kept you on track.

So I wrote this poem
To remember the saying
Through all your days
As an addict
I’ll tell you the same
Love wasn’t enough
In fact, it was in vain
But one thing remains—

Crack never loved you back.