Author: poetryfest

A two fingered V sign may pass the test
Even if it was not intended to confound
With the palm held away from the chest
As that choice is the safer, I’ll be bound
Signalling victory is certainly for the best
There’s not many of those to the pound
Yet if reversed and the meaning guessed
Offence is then taken, with angry sound
A sign at our Agincourt archers’ behest
To indicate more enemy can be downed
Even at a long distance, not like the rest
There are some things that I have found
And despite odd comments made in jest
May still be shown the wrong way round

Calm black
cloaked over a greying throne
Withered nettles
bring about the muffled moans
Searing light shines through to the quiet cave
A home of fading memory
and all the pages burnt of bane

Shriveled wants, withered hopes, and decomposing dreams
With all the blood of unchosen sorrows
woven into ancient seams
Outside, the elder woods,
the moon and stars your only light
Bringing about melancholic comfort
as spoken tongues send ravens into flight

Upon the pricklied throne,
Sits a twined man all alone
Laid back
His gaze on the stars that no one knows
This is our place, lay forever
Where the nettled king hides his face

i’m high as fuck right now
eyes shot straight red
i’m piped up off adrenaline
from the words that are brewing inside me
from the hurt that’s been stuck to my hip
beside me

my heart’s racing
at the thought
of what my mind thinks next

i can’t keep up
my skin’s itching
feigning for my next fix
nervous system’s deteriorating
body longs to fold

blowing my brains out
on these pages
ain’t on the schedule
but man let me tell you
it doesn’t compare
to what they dropped in the hood

its got me in a chokehold
i’m never giving it up
this high

these creations
no intervention

THIS

my liquor
fentanyl
crack
and meth
misunderstood

Wings flash. Between this theater of needled
trees, the woodpecker cruises, its nose precise
as the tip of a rocket, red crest behind

sharp eyes fierce and jagged. It claims the deadwood
trunk, no longer a tree anymore, ragged
top blackened where its towering limbs were burned

to sticks, coals, and ash during last fall’s firestorm.
The bird remembers how entire leaps of flame
razed this ravine of hundred-foot hemlocks to

stubble. Following the lightning-born wildfire,
a cloudburst flooded the mountain with an inch
of rain an hour until bodies of fire

withered to choking streamers of smoke. Today,
the bird expects the devastated stump’s loose
and silvered bark to explode under the grip

of its talons revealing an insect feast.
The termite nation beneath has spent the fall
swarming the dead trees, mining their inner whorls

of pith, cellulose, and gum. They rebuild, reroute,
masticate, digest all the elements of
this organism in its rote stages of

decomposition, an upcycled fortress
within which they build tunnels, mate, defecate—
a palatial nest gifted them through divine
calamity. With its torpedo-like beak,
the woodpecker ratchets at spongey heartwood,
capturing entire precincts of termites. Those

deeply embedded brandish pincer mouthparts,
their segments quivering in self-defense ‘til
the woodpecker’s hammering bill-strike flays them

lifeless, proteins pressed into beds of dry rot.
The staccato of its incessant chisel
deafens the entire colony, vibrates their

resolve. Those past the attack perimeter
eject and tumble into the litter of
the deep woods, avoiding the terror of the

bird’s razor beak, the hostile penetration
of its claws into fragile pith where honey-
colored eggs in glistening clumps surrender

to the bird’s violent feeding. These insects
chance a soft landing in the underworld of
leaves and lichen that serve as a bunker to

regroup—subterranean reconnaissance.
No hard feelings, only heads down and queues formed.
There will be more eggs to lay, more fiber to

macerate in bile, chew into sustenance,
more crosscuts to dig, until this latest gasp
of a tree is nothing but sawdust. And then,

as quickly as it soared through this glen glowing
in amber autumn light, the woodpecker is
quickly dispatched in a seizure by golden

leatherette armor: the joints of a Cooper’s
hawk’s legs, a predator so swift in attack
even the termites do not sense it coming.

The stealthy bird noiselessly grapples its red-
crested hostage. An explosion then: feathered
underbelly from both birds floats like dead leaves.

Each levitates while the forest, as witness,
pauses to hold its breath, then each heaves a sigh,
a flurry of down over unsuspecting

exoskeletons. Stricken, the woodpecker
cackles its shrill protest until the hawk clamps
its claws around its neck, wringing to break red

into startled, terminal silence, sensing
an expulsion—of termite bodies and chipped
wood—from its gullet, a last guttering breath.

Written by a young person at Clark Children and Family Justice Center

Started off as a baby
The life I chose was crazy

When I was young
I was smart but still dumb

I made a lot of mistakes
& some promises I would break

I started playing sports
& hung out with some dorks

Then I got a call & jumped
off the porch

I just wanted to change
the life I lived was lame

But life is not a game
I should’ve stayed the same

No one to blame
my life ain’t the same

wit Me & my bros
on a long journey filled with goals.

In my wakeful-nights
I found weakness in my strength
A loud-wish—a wheel of luck and a verve that rekindles merry
Close to familiar-whispers echoed
A dot-of-good from memory eluded me

Troubles of early May with no way
Like letters without addresses
Ashes of success like unseen rainbow
Gloomy-hopes with faithful-faith
Constant Kyrie to birth Te duem

A gamble maybe to zap a dying-being
Pictures of 11-black flashed like a cursor
A punter’s day just today
To live my dreams of celebration
You shall not was loud
Survival oh Lord—I prayed

All over!
The God-face-saver that couldn’t save gave to me,a park with shrubs and buried-blood

It throws you in and spits you out,
All that you are,

You and I in the fishbowl,
You, my tankmate,
And the glass walls,

The air, the water,
The house, the decor,
The concrete, the gravel,
The heat, the softness,

The outside of the rim, the room, and the sky,
We will never touch alive,

I’m left with a thousand questions,

But I am given the same reasoning of the 8 year old,
Wandering the pet store,
Drawn to a fish,

A reasoning that is now and not then,
Leaves me out of the equation entirely

To explore, altogether, reality’s question,
Moving away from ancient concepts,
Hence the question: What is truth?
The word is not the thing;

To end the unconscious movement of thought,
To see conscious thinking;
To observe the depth of Being
Without the division between the mirror and its reflection.

To discard all processes of time,
Such as the content of consciousness;
Neurons reclaim their existence
Beyond that futile art of self-development.

A balance arises from facts,
Where thought holds no deception
And its only utility is to write this poem.
Thus, truth is nothing but space, like love.

To exist in silence, free of identification;
To let any skill flourish in beauty
Effortlessly, without seeking reward.
A deep inquiry into true freedom.

Rumbling vibrations run through wind
feeding the air as it passes through
they hit like a padded punch
one voice to another, jumping along as they go

loud and strong they meet the ear
weak and quiet they stay
fading away as they enter
confused by the need

Seeing the voices as they come
disappear the closer it is
desire to know, to hear, to listen
lacking something that I didn’t know

sounds runs away from me
Not knowing where to go
it finds its place but does not get acknowledged
why i ask… why

I try to listen, to hear, to know
but its too quiet, to faded
I know by seeing, as the sounds can not tell me the way
seeing is knowing, listening is not

When I write of flowers
Chrysanthemums and violets
When verses promenade
In joyous description
You will know I have found peace
Within myself

For now, In the first week of war
My notebook is a battleground
Of lingering rage
The death of innocence
Of disillusioned reckoning

All I can write is what I see and expect
Streamed across the news
Bullets and bandages soaked
Draining the wounds of soldiers
Covering the hands of the guilty

War has seeped deep enough
Infiltrated my being
Tarnished my soul
Breached its way into my poetry

Blossomed beneath my ribs
Poison ivy blooming up through my throat
Convinced this world could find a way to manipulate
Chrysanthemums and violets
For violence.