Author: poetryfest

She stands with great panache, drawing the gaze
of a thousand mirrors
She probably misses caressing empyrean sunsets;
her arms, left behind in the Aegean.
I wonder how her fingers curl with the spume of the tide;
Salt caked nails mistaken for marble, and arms veined of gilded sapphire;
Her embrace, an ataraxia of emerald, turquoise, and lapis;
A métempsycose of the tide; amaranthine and azure.
Her arms, lost to us, must have been blue. So blue.

How many times have I said your name
as a preface to my thoughts,
as a thought unto itself,
as a resolution to my discourse.

You are the heart of my novel,
the spirit of my screenplay.
You are foreshadowing, mid-point,
catalyst and theme.

You are my call to adventure,
my road forward and back,
my journey and destination,
my comfort zone and challenge.

How many times have I said your name
as the end of my sentence and the beginning of the next.

The most passionate kiss
that I ever saw
–and the longest!–
happened at the wedding
when Leonard O’Neal took a wife.
The bride’s Swedish father,
stern and adamantly opposed
to the whole affair,
though provoked,
was restrained by awe
at what he saw.

The lady was man-handled
like a whore bought for the purpose,
and she was putting out
for all that she was worth.
And but for the altar
before which they dallied
and the solemnity of erotic worship,
the wedding guests all felt
like begging the groom
to get him a room!
The horny groom
prolonged the matter
until his bride and he
were happily sizzling.
I’ve not seen the like
before or since.

I was party to the like
late the night before
Leonard O’Neal
was wed. Longer.
More intense.
Leonard O’Neal
left his party
to speak to me in private.

The unexpected kiss
he kissed me with
was a desperate affair–
hot, possessive,
totally giving,
sincere and sweet.
To be shocked and overwhelmed
and overcome by a kiss,
once and only once;
to love and be loved,
to know it in a kiss,
is as good as it gets.
I remember no kiss,
no moon, no night
as full or deep
or tender as
the kiss I got
from Leonard O’Neal
on his wedding eve.

No love in my desire for you
Recollection of your body
Hopes of touch
Prophecy not meant for fulfillment

Do not look for me
I have basked in drunken cruelty
Searching for the promises of my youth

I call him-I recollect his features
Rose lips and flirtation’s anticipated kiss
Destruction in poverty, but in his kiss
I bask in his voice of ‘what if’

Sensibility points at you,
But it is him I look for across the street

I was never meant to weather
this holy place, bearing the
wings winter loved, pale like
bloodless lips–
window panes frosted with the
heat of colliding bodies,
collarbones like glass birds,
wings forever flung wide.
I was born in the icy months and
I’ve never forgotten them,
hoarding each year behind
my molars, breathing them in
with the burn of cigarette smoke,
blood at the back of my throat.
the kiss of fool’s spring,
the mad without her meds,
whipping up hurricane winds in
my wake–hunting girl, hungry
girl, dying child of the killing
season, ebb and flow of the white-
capped swell. living temple to the
empty season, nothing sacred,
nothing safe.

I was always meant to
conquer this perfect storm, ringing
around poppy fields, distorting my
faithless dreams in which I wield
lightning, lighting up my faithless
heart, bone carved from clear quartz,
lapis lazuli straight to the vein.
la strega on holy ground, casting and
cursing as I am wont to do. worldless,
but never wordless; worthless, wretched
in the eyes of our foolish God. la strega
in sacred space: burned, buried, witch-
born and witch-bred by nothing but will
and word and way.

my offerings are for
the old gods and my sacrifices are at my
own altars, flesh shrine desecrated and
reconstructed to wipe the slate clean.
I’m breaking for my own sake, and all the
chapels, the votives, the rosaries in the
world couldn’t touch what I have become,
couldn’t begin to make me pure–cyclic
futility to which even God falls victim,
the madness of bearing my cross, my
immortal mutiny.

I watch your eyes as they gaze down
to my lips
I’m waiting for your confession
at the slip of the tongue

But maybe we’ll be a classic love that never dies

In the attic
of the four-story Georgian
townhouse at 221 Baker St.,
a porcelain loo
sits hand painted
with English bluebells,
stems drooping
toward the tip inverting
delicate indigo petaled cups
said to spring up
from the blood
of a dying prince
loved by an Olympian deity
is marked “for display only.”

Concentrating in your arms, the world falls quiet,
Our souls have agreed to share all sound.
We continue to smell—our perfume of lovemaking
We continue to see—dazed at our ceiling
We continue to taste—chapped lips meeting
We continue to touch—cheek on chest resting
We continue to hear—not quite listening.
Concentrating, time becomes just breath and beat.

I saw a willow in a forest forlorn
A half-cleaved out elegance,
yet another thriving mourns
A feller snatched its scions away
Its faunas seized in doom
The leaves that knew nothing of rue
But the flowers need not learn to bloom

The feller who once a commandeer
Lost his half to a hungry bear
He limped his days through starving wild
And ceded his lot for a wife and a child

The wife who cared for their coup
She made their beds, warm loaves and soup
And yes, she seldom knew to read
Yet trained her cub for humble deeds
In a war that’s due behold your mind
The triumph is his whose heart is kind
Reciting lores all sooth and sly
She held her love a rock-a-bye

The child half blind had an emerald half
His heart twice as large he made the seasons laugh
‘Is true he couldn’t reckon the path to his stay
Yet never ceased to unsee the elegant willow’s way

His willow of grace whose scions cleaved
Its faunas snatched the Aves grieved
And leaves that breath all mortals’ blow
The leaves that knew nothing but to grow
I saw its vines in a foreign land
They whispered gently, “We Understand!”
And they do, I assure you, that is for sure,
Can’t quarrel in words they chose the birds
To chirp to cry for them they fly
And back to board the humble abode
They keep a track of bright and black
All meek and sly and the passersby
Some halt and lay unto umbra bay
And quench its thirst for strange novelettes
More carry the dreads of towering threads
Troubling to reach out lost spirits, muddle-heads
Serenely sinews dangling down
Unstained by the talking town
Yet he who greet the bleeding sun
Can feel the bliss of unison.
– Animesh Anand

It won’t make a difference
They said about my tiny garden
My pollinator garden
My few purple echinaceas
Some violet salvia
Pink penstemons
White and lavender columbines
Shaped like shooting stars
Showy milkweed for the monarchs
But now I find native bees
Great digger wasps
Jumping spiders and butterflies
Golden finches
And even a toad
Where before, only rocks lived
True, it is a small
But very beautiful difference