Author: poetryfest

When you lived in the mind of God
You were a hyperventilating swirling thought
Desperate to be born of Man
You chose to signal your entrance
Through the Orion
You shine,the night you were born left
Eyes captivated and necks craned

Now you murmur in the mutuba tree
Your voice a soft susurrous wind rustling the tree’s leaves
No longer a capricious thought but a dominant memory
In the lives you still touch.
Your burial was a show
On cue, a twig breaks from one of the branches
And hits the middle of my head
As if you just read my thoughts

when you fell? i asked.
a pick up line nowadays, though it’s always been stupid.

the trees shower leaves around us
like fallen stars or cherry blossom petals.

you tap your shoes to the pavement
and look into the autumn air.

we pretend it’s prettier here than it is,
that the leaves are gold and the trees silver.

it is better that way.
you touch the blood on your back

and
sigh.

we pretend it is prettier here than it
was, back then

before anyone had tumbled to earth
and dirtied it with their touch.

Scarlet flowers given and exchange of cards.
Chocolates be your treat. Much ado I’ll bring the wine.
Lips caress the glass given; poppy poison my treat is served.

I’ll laugh at your side and watch you.
A quick knife’s embrace to cut out what’s mine.
For you see it’s what I wanted much ado from the very start
Forget me not. My lovely gaze is the last you’ll ever see, my heart.

The grove lit with lilies
Their spirit strong this time of year
When we all beg for the great plucking
Yellow dawn takes us home and my lover lulls to the side
Bound to the strange and afternoons spent near the yard

The unique way to discuss death without mentioning it at
all
The cascade of the tides, yes
As we leave only a trace of your legends to sneak into the
pearly night

But I will see
Be it even if I the sole harbinger of left glares
The lonely serpent, lost touch
Another reason to leave

The fresh pond’s weight just out of reach
Its darkness sprouting from the ground
Wild horses lead us back
Sweet beauty in choice, the poignancy of letting all you
want to carry stay where it must

I speak upon the misplaced flower as I would the warmth
that drags me elsewhere
Boys left in the street, dogs and their fences, the golden
tooth of youth
All will hope yellow to be yellow again

I wasn’t born with this salt on my tongue
or smoke coating both of my lungs.
Rather, I was actually very sweet,
quite a bright honey mesquite.

This love affair with grief is growing stale,
making me skinny, squirmy, tired, and pale.
I’m constantly ironing out this much-too-heavy coat,
adjusting its buttons as it squeezes and gloats.

I want my pen to bleed of girlish little dates,
not the thoughts that cling to me as weights.
I want to paint his fingers rested upon my waistband,
not the subtle but ever-present shaking of my hand.

I crave a version of myself so freed,
a she not forced to beg, cry, shout, plead.
I’ve tried to carve her out of my skin for close to a year,
and not once has her presence seemed anywhere near.

I sit and I write and I beg and I plead.,
Surrounded by finished stories that still make me bleed.
How is it that in the year that’s passed,
I fell out of love and back in just as fast?

Dark and plushy,
a cushion too large
for my little legs.
No more hard, brightly-colored plastic.

Ceramic plates, glass cups:
settings fit for a king.
A fork too big for my hand,
but felt just right.

I am an adult now;
matured like the fancy cheese
on my grown-up pizza.

Tell me, what did you think of the presidential debate?
What an aristocratic bureaucracy!
the adult conversations that I had heard,
from my old seat.
They were mine now.

But up close,
they sound different:
like when you say a word too many times,
and it starts to sound funny.

They put red velvet ropes around museum paintings,
because if you get too close,
you can see the tiny bumps of the canvas
under its smooth, acrylic facade.

There was no aristocratic bureaucracy
or presidential debates.
There were fake smiles,
cheery lies,
worse truths.

And suddenly,
the fork was just too big.
Glass cups and ceramic plates,
too fragile.

I want regular cheese pizza,
and aristocratic bureaucracy
and settings fit for a jester.

But my legs are too big
for hard, brightly-colored plastic.

I push and I squeeze,
trying to fit into the past,
to how things used to be.
I try to stow away,
on a ship that has already
sailed.

But there is no going back,
my knees are too high,
my legs too crunched,
I don’t fit,
at the kids table.

Fresh flowers wilt,
Footsteps fade,
Childhood home,
Mother’s jewelry
In someone else’s will

Years have passed
In some forgotten yard,
A stone etched with names–
A whisper, once loud, now lost.

On some day
In some august
Some girl walks past, reading
‘Dearly missed’
The rest is empty.

And I decided.
As I walked past
that my life would be
something worth noting.
To a devotion so deep that
the stone remembers.

Under some fluorescent lights,
at some empty desk,
a woman’s gaze drifts,
as the clock ticks,
watching hours slip away.

Her hand tracing
papers that weigh too much,
holding no meaning.
Flowers on her desk
dance with more purpose.

As I sat at my desk,
staring at the glaring screen,
with endless majors.
I decided that my future
will hold more
than heavy papers.

So when my flowers wilt,
And footsteps fade,
Some yard, some year
Will tell some girl
I danced.

I ran miles away from home,
gave my shoes away to the homeless
till nothing remained to give
but when I finally returned home
a single candle burned
over my mother’s empty birthday card

The convoluted flood
of screams in my mind
rose
So I replaced it with emptier thoughts,
and pictured the smiles of family strangers

My house behind me
dilated into a microscopic spec
as my feet thumped away
on the sludgy mud path
one mile
two miles
three miles

The GPS read “two hours, 100 miles”
yet my steering wheel kept turning
for 482 miles,
and fifteen hours,
to escape the flood

My surroundings transformed
from floods to pavements
rain to sugarcoated sunlight
maybe I drove too far away
this time

I missed the chaos
so I finally scribbled “I love you”
on my mother’s birthday card
but she had drowned in my flood of thoughts
many miles ago

I grew tired
of steering the wheel
away from the flood
so I drove back,
dipped my feet in the
groggy ice water,
and
sank
in my
screams

1
The cello stands in silence, holding
Its breath.
In one baton flick,
everything changes.

2
In music, rests and notes possess equal power –
Practice both. You’ll discover
life’s balance.

3
Framed family photos hang,
smiles obscuring the fights before the
CLICK
Now, love and laughter are all that’s captured
in the snapshots’ glow.

4
Nothing will be handed
to you on a silver platter.
Chase after the waiter
and only then will you uncover
the cloche and its rewards.

5
Tempting you through the glass,
college hoodies with bold colors and stitched logos
vie for your attention.
Don’t succumb to their calls
until you’ve thought it through:
wait
for the right one to fit.

6
Instruments gather on stage,
different in shape and sound.
Their many tunes become one
and the pressure on the lone cello is
dispersed.

7
The gold-coated watch dulls
with each passing tick,
while our past shines brighter than any gilded surface.
The richness of our experiences
hold more value than gold
ever could.

8
When your fingers slip in a concert,
move on.
When you blink in a photo,
take another.
When you buy the wrong hoodie,
buy a second.
And if the waiter moves on, don’t stress.

There is always
the next one.

I.
Endless white stretches
Beyond the horizon
Devoid of color
A blinding
Empty
Canvas

II.
Discordant colors will
Erupt
With a single stroke of the brush
Shattering the
Stillness

III.
Press into the canvas
And precise details
Morph into a
Whirlwind of chaos.
Ar
t

IV.
The elegantly carved
Wooden box
Borrows my voice and
Sings to the world
What I couldn’t say

V.
Melodies flourish from
Crimson threads
Spewing from the
Cuts
Where the metal strings
Dig into my fingers

VI.
Under the
Unwavering gaze of
A thousand pairs of eyes
I radiate
Brighter than the
Blinding stage lights

VII.
Under an
Eternally bright sun
The flower
Burns

VII.
From the ashes of the
Perished flower
A sapling pushes its way
Through the hardened soil

IX.
The hint of green peeks through a
Crack in the sidewalk
Only to be trampled on
The mom