Author: poetryfest

it’s christmas day 2013 and your chest hurts
but you finish making family breakfast- just like every year.
a 95% blockage and immediate heart surgery

my sisters visit you before I do.

it’s christmas day 2023
and you finish making family breakfast- just like you have the past ten years.

it’s summer 2008 and we are walking in the creek
when the red-handled bucket begins floating away.
You run to save my favorite bucket.

it’s january 2024 and we are walking to my car.
The stone wall is getting too high for you to step over
but I hold your waist so you don’t fall.

it’s february 2024 and you are walking out of the bedroom.
When your leg gives out I offer you my hand
but I don’t want to let go.

it’s march 2024 and your muscles are twitching- dissipating.
ALS medication adding two to three months to a terminal prognosis
but we know prolonging will never be long enough.

it’s july 2024 and your first grandson is named after you.
I watch you hold him with a pillow supporting your arm
wondering how many times you will hold him
knowing neither will remember what it feels like.

O dear drowning brother,
I warn you of the coming disasters
That rain ash on your village
Heat kettles in your lungs, and
Mark your psycho-soul onto a
Nautical chart, thrashing, thrashing
In the emptiest place.

O dear damned brother,
The waves break on the sun struck shores
And pull china dolls and army men into their currents,
And Christ and Vishnu and every animal god
All wash out of memory
Like wine stains in salt water.
You are sensitive to this, I know, you see
Everything glowing in the firelight beneath the cities, feel
Everywhere enough space around you to raise your
Arms and fall any which way.

O dear death brother,
It’s all about the altars, isn’t it?
It’s all about the choirs reaching harmony
And the children sleeping like angels —
Is that a migraine buzzing in my temple
Or the low tenor of God?

O dearest brother,
Remember the crucifix pitched above your baptism?
Polymer Saviour, bloody and true, life sized —
And he did not meet any eyes,
He looked to the stained glass window,
To the world, to the walls of the tacky holy place
And pictured in that moment he is as faithless
As I, on the threshold of those unending nights,
Infinite winters and dead seas.

O dear deserted brother,
The mountains cast their shadow
On your place of prayer,
But they have no intent to speak of.
It’s just the order of things.
And I love you even when
I have lost myself in cruelty,
And I love you even as we drown
Certain that love will die with us.

O dear disaster brother
It is my pleasure to witness your madness,
It is my pleasure to join you
In the muddy thrashing dances and the firecrackers
At midnight, the boat rides where in tandem,
We row out of time and space and
Drift into the void between the stars
Where creation slumbers.

Your hands are cold when I touch you
Your eyelids are shut
I don’t think I’ve ever felt this blue
This hits right in the gut

There is water in your coffin
That escaped from my eyes
Hopefully, you’re off in
The golden paradise

So, when you are looking down on me from above
Know that you were my truest love

Denial
You try to ignore the fact that you notice that he sometimes forgets your name, days of the week, how old he is, where he puts his phone, where his cameras are, what he was doing in the middle bedroom, to turn off the stove.

Anger
You are angry because the VA won’t get off their lazy asses. You are angry at the doctor
who misdiagnosed his strokes, at the war he still remembers, at the fact that you feel
helpless, that it’s happening and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Bargaining
You are asking the god you turned away from and the ones you turn to now for help.
You beg to become his home health care aide, you try to tell yourself that these things
happen, you secretly hope that it won’t move slowly because you can’t imagine the rest.

Depression
You know that this will feel comfortable to you. This is a place you have called home,
that you have been consumed by, that you know will come quickly, that The Fog descends, you will drink, you will smoke, you will do anything to numb more.

Acceptance
May you be granted the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference. That one day his laugh will be no longer, that you will mourn forever, that your mother will lose her husband, that your lives will be broken, that you will still love him no matter what.

They told me to watch my words, to be quiet and confined.
So, I’ll hide the truth within my verses and rhymes.
I’ll write it in where the secrets can lie.
I’ll reveal it all in between the lines.

The war inside my mind never fades.
Tangled in shadows of our darkest days.
I remember the feeling of the mask.
The grip on my wrist, their never-ending tasks.

I watched the torture, at night flashes of pain untold.
It’s something from a movie, yet it’s real.
“It’s for his job” they say, “for the greater ideal”.
They tell me as they stand so cold.

Now I stare them in the eyes.
The ones who caused you and I this pain.
They’re your friends, I see them everyday.
My smiles are a bitter disguise.

I stay at home with our children by my side.
We live in comfort with money to burn.
Every dollar I spend reminds me of the pain I’ve earned.
I’ll never forget the truth they work so hard to hide.

“Thank you for your service!” they proclaim.
While they’re doing our families a disserve, they have no shame.
Hidden behind the idea of a soldier’s fight.
Our love has come and gone, out of sight.
I watched every drip and heard every plink.
Your screams still haunt me, they broke our connecting link.

They stole you from me in their ruthless game.
How do these family’s pretend life is still the same?
Carrying on acting like nothing’s gone wrong.
I will never be that strong.
I will never forgive you or the lies they defend.
I’m at war with it all, against you and them.

The prom queen overawed
in grimacing mermaid tulle,
matching Lycra eyeshadow
ensnaring every spotlight.

The prom king accentuated
his apathetic flexible sneer
with an Armani jacquard tie,
researched darting and gliding.

The sketched principal in celadon
buttered her lips with Big Bad Betty,
dismissing the swindle of grapefruit vodka
defiling the Pottery Barn punchbowl.

The repressive DJ punishing aviator frames
devised a despotic vibe with kid pop, yacht rock,
wispy confetti starlight of Toto and Steely Dan
drowning in a geometric waterfall chandelier.

Robert Frost taught me
Of the world’s beauty
Swinging from birch trees
That’s what he taught me

Wilfred Owen taught me
Of the world’s cruelty
Pro patria mori
That’s what he taught me

William Golding taught me
Of the world’s humanity
Sucks to your asthma piggy
That’s what he taught me

George Orwell taught me
Of the world’s equality
But some are more equal than me
That’s what he taught me

E.O. Wilson taught me
Of the world’s ecology
Ants and their communities
That’s what he taught me

Steve Irwin taught me
Of the world’s ferocity
But to always love the unlovely
That’s what he taught me

CS Lewis taught me
Of the world’s divinity
From Narnia to mere Christianity
That’s what he taught me

Rachel Carson taught me
Of the world’s fragility
When songbirds fall silently
That’s what she taught me

In the heat of the summer right now
I’m surrounded by a lot of things
these things are stuck in a cycle,
broke down, and recycled,
going from green to yellow,
alive to dead.

The spider starts to spin its web:
I am one of those things,
yet the reality of the circle
bodes quite well with me.

Other objects around me bend the cycle,
they are more permanent than I.
Does it anger me that this concrete
will still be here when I’m obsolete?

No, for this concrete’s purpose is to be walked on
for five times of my lifetimes and,
I get to choose where I lay
at least.

I may not be permanent but
my mortality serves as a motivator,
a motor, churning and learning.
One day I’ll learn what it’s like to be dead,
what it’s like to leave my head.
For now I will sit, breathe the air,
and remain present.

the city is in bloom
i see everywhere the violet of
jacarandas jacarandas
like a primitive cry
a lamentation

may has finally arrived
pretty may covers the sidewalk
with violet flowers
that stick to the feet
of careless pedestrians

and my grief is violet
like those sticky flowers

i am no longer able to sing
certain songs without crying
without thinking of you of us
your impish smile
your shitty sayings
where are they? where are you?
when will may go away?

i am sick of this month
that i loved long ago

my memories about you float
like debris in the ocean
shipwrecked without anchor, not
cemented like the bricks
of dates, facts, and other random bullshit

may is in
grief is in flower
is in may is
in violet is in
you

and i want to flee from
this violet month that
this month without you where 

I know I said that shit some time ago
And I don’t entirely know what I meant
We might be able to maze our way through it
What with all the looming death when
We walk through the Macy’s furniture
Section and notice all the white and o white
And taupe and we say it all looks the same
And we know that that shit ain’t pretty
Our life together will eat time and fashions
Just as our love will devour us whole
After 50 years we’ll bloom dierently
The music of our lives will have decorated time
With the maximal and lush colors we desired
Just look at the 20 shades of eyeshadow or nail
Polish you wear, each more lustrous and beautiful
Me? Twenty pair of mismatched crazy socks
I wonder if death is the mother of beauty
Like sacrice is the deadbeat father of love
We recline in our palace of fabric and cry
At the brokeback-swanson zombie story
This poem rushes headlong into the unknown
Like the ever-ongoing present, like the beauty
You sacrice to my love or if I blink and it leaks
Out into the world and says what it means
Just as a corpse is the result of death your beauty
Is the result of you and I will kill anything
And everything dear just to keep you near