Author: poetryfest

like a pipe bomb set
to detonate in four years—
time keeps ticking on.

When we get drunk, things get worse. As always. And I’m not immune

to my part in it. First, I throw out some snide remark behind their backs

about your friend and his longtime coworker. Maybe my comments

start out rather benign, but they get progressively stinging until you say something

which causes me to turn the focus of my gibes to you. This gets the anger

boiling in you. You’re not protecting them, so much as looking for a fight.

So you say things about me that you would never say if we were still

on our first six-pack and if we hadn’t polished off what was left

of those two bottles, one cheap whiskey, one cheap rum. You start in with digs

about my attitude, which, you will remind me, doesn’t suit you.

Then your friend and his buddy tag in about my being a writer

or about what I have chosen to wear. My lack of style never avoids their insults.

But ultimately their jabs at me are only an interlude

from the shit they go back to hurling at one another, leaving us

to continue the escalation of insults to each other.

I contend that you don’t know what you’re talking about when you tell me

I’m no good at hanging out or being social, when I hint I’d rather not go to another bar

just so the guys can play pool. By now, I’m tired of hearing them brag about their skills,

especially since I know they aren’t very good.

But then I refuse to be the fourth in a game of doubles, so suddenly I’m a jackass

not worth hanging with anymore and also I’m worthless and an embarrassment. You regret

inviting me to join you, but never what you say when I actually do come along.

I spend the remainder of the night in silence at the corner of the bar

nursing a couple more drafts while the rest of you argue over the rules

about scratching and calling your shots, which takes up more time than actually playing.

For some reason, we still feel bound to share one cab home,

enduring a silence made no less tense by the driver’s half of a conversation in Farsi.

We both pass out as soon as we retreat to our bedrooms,

the final retort the echoes of each door slamming.

The last thought I have as I fall asleep is what an asshole you are.

What you think about me stings with the same venom, if it isn’t even worse.

The mutual blame lingers like the stink of everyone’s stale bedsheets.

People say that when you get drunk, you express true feelings

you normally suppress. Good thing that’s totally not true, or it would certainly be

awkward the next morning, when you will have to see me just a few hours after telling me

you dragged me along last night only out of pity but not to worry, that that

will never happen ever again, and I will have to look back at you

and wonder if you really mean it when you say that you wished we weren’t brothers.

I didn’t know if I stood beside or across my future,
Staring into the dark sea, I attempted to touch the water,
From afar, it reflected darkness:

A sky isolated from the stars above
alone, aloof, ambiguous.

However, as the droplets rolled down my wrists,
I was cleansed in purity of a long, lovely white dress:

It held nothing yet was stitched to display every inch of my curves,
Expressionless, yet it revealed the words sealed within my lips.

Spirits:
Were they a soul developed through imagination?
Or, did they haunt us within the motion of the wind?

I thought the white dress illuminated the angels of heaven,
But soon, I learned I was accompanied by the mother of Death.

crippled,cold, clouded
She displayed death as the purpose of life.

Flowers bloom so slowly
That we, the human eye,
Cannot even watch them grow.

One day, they are simply here,
Surprising us all with their beauty.

Perhaps you are the same, my love,
Simply waiting for the right time.
So treat your soul with kindness, darling,
For you are only just unfolding.

afterimages skulk across the
backs of my eyelids like
dystopian war propaganda.
american flags –
drag queens –
high schoolers huddled under
too small desks –
and an eerie smile with the whitest
veneers. did you know
the economy is going to shit? did
you know healthcare is not
your god-given right? did you
know your neighbors repost fake
quotes from an orange dictator and
they hate you.

did you know?

you better go out and
vote but only for the person
I want. you better
do your research in tiktoks and facebook
memes and fall for the reasoning of
who shouts loudest. you better
put your faith in that cardboard bolted in
your u.s. soil. you better
have some extra because it’s bound to
be stolen by maga hats and members of
the mega church.

media makes me feel
sticky like those sweet
talking fakers may have
infected my brain –
finally
I’ll repost:

“Vance defends spreading claims that Haitian migrants are eating pets”
~ npr.org

Don’t understand stupid me,
Your passion and warm embrace?
Although the wind howled, and it woke me as I felt it brush across my face, you felt it too
But as the warmth of our bodies merged we soon forgot the world outside .
A sense of peace submerged and pushed the banshee away.
Fragile is the heart and head but still a sense of darkness lurked and loomed, words said
in jest and haste hidden feelings charading wit with scorn,
Fragile is the mind assembling words into a tidal wave of cloaked anger.
Sadness engulfed me as I knew the debris of words touched only the surface.
I left with heavy heart, hoping to hear your pounding feet a breathe away, to no avail .
Fragile is love, dreams disintegrated like ashes in the wind.
From the remnants of the storm lay the shipwrecked chests filled with moments of time
all laid out for me to view like a mental crime scene filled with words and actions, not
knowing who had slayed who.
So much hurt and pain and here I am pounding on this Iron vaulted wall, my tears and
voice disappear into an abyss of void.
You said you would never hurt me
You lied
X

In the same way that people find music that complements certain films, or drinks that go with some foods, I’ve found music that accentuates my image of you. I pair the two and they exist in perfect harmony, like the tunes couldn’t have existed without you there beside them. In the same way that one might feel incomplete in a theater without popcorn, hearing some songs won’t feel the same without the thought of you.

You’re all those melodies that musicians wrote when they saw or heard something beautiful and had to express their admiration for it. You’re what frustrated me when you pointed out my qualities, but also intrigued me because I realized you were looking harder than everyone else. You’re the catchphrases reappearing in my head and in my vocabulary and the image that blends so beautifully with every melody. You’re retaliation and mixed feelings and waiting for the barrier between us to lift so I can sit down and take notes again. You’re escalation and putting everything away and going to sleep because I got a message from you that took away my vocal cords and my motor functioning skills and rebuilt me into something completely new. How symbolic that I sat down at the table of luxury to feast and was distracted by the thought of you.

Can I come with you?
The voice came low,
like a riverbed under moon-sifted dusk.
Come before the match burns down to throat and embered ash.
Forgotten mornings,
love flung like salt on open skin,
silence so dense it fogged the marrow,
I remember.

I come to dwell,
to root your wisp of mind
into the molasses pulse of flesh.
There are worlds here you have not kissed.

Each rib a library,
each scar a word.
My lungs, bellows of grief and grace.
My knees, aching altars to your resilience.
I have dreamed of you dreaming of me,
but you floated elsewhere,
a ghost riding thought.

I am not your burden.
I am your cathedral.

Can we strike the match now –
not to burn,
but to remember warmth?
Can we blow it out
while the flame still dances,
before it devours the land in a final sigh?

Can I come with you?
Stand barefoot in your own holy fire.
Re-inhabit your breath
like it’s the first one you ever took.
Can I meet you in the bones?

Another good man cries tears,
Over the crimes he’s committed.
His wife’s shoulders are wet,
And her hands are tired from holding his head.

And they’re both thinkin’
Is this what you call living?

They’ve abandoned the spring,
From blood they will rise,
A new beginning.
They chant, we chant.

We chant, you chant!

Take skin off my flesh,
Flesh off my bones,
Every inch I digress,
Soul and all I’m yours to own.

What a calling!

Take skin off my flesh,
Flesh off my bones,
Every inch I digress,
Soul and all I’m yours to own.

You have called him!

My sweet child on earth,
I feel your heart,
The aching, the quickening
Near stopping.
Crimes cannot be defined,
Is it sinning or surviving?
Either, or.

Oh baby I don’t mind!
As your soul is mine for the taking.

A little boy smashes
two trucks together,
believing they’ll
explode
and coincidentally, the boys father
The President
pins two countries together,
believing there will be no
explosion.