Author: poetryfest

Neither one of us like when we fuss and fight
We aren’t that type
We wanna build and be okay
Just have to get over the obstacles first that’s in our way
We haven’t been as good as we wanted to lately
We’re a team
Just blowing off some steam
I wanna make it through and so do you
Don’t wanna be this unhappy couple
Miserable
Not talking to each other
Acknowledging one another
Don’t wanna have miscommunication
Rather sit down and talk it out
Things may make us upset
But then in the end
It’s some things we say that we regret

Born a
snail
with no
shell.
Learning
to protect myself
with chemical
mist.
Blue blood
of electric
and sky pulses
as I move
with my own
path.
Solitary with
no family
I move across the
concrete
wall that
has been dusted
in pollen.
The stencil of
fern becomes
my garden
as I realize
the beauty
is in the travel.
And the travel
is in my
snail wiggle
smiling need.

Brother of mine,
I fly to you on thread wings.
Speak now with hands to chin,
clasped shut.
Waiting.
Racing against the sun.

Brother of mine,
You speak only in constellations,
Night After Night.
And although I am no astrologer
I’ll decipher the sky,
searching for your reply.

Brother of mine,
each day when the sun wakes
and the stars fade away,
I wrench the last few from my eyes.
Keeping them safe in my pillowcase.

Brother of mine,
I write to you on rainy days
with cigarette ash.
Lungs filled with pennies,
coughing copper luck.
Mapping your face in nicotine-stained clouds.

Brother of mine
You write with whispering worms
fuelled by formaldehyde.
Phantom madness escaping your cotton tied tongue,
Binding ears to earth
Nails thick with dirt
I burrow.
O’ Brother, I burrow,
Night after Night.

I could feel love slipping, as your hand didn’t find mine.
I wore your favourite dress.
Low cut, see through.
You scrolled through your phone,
Reading funny tweets.
Everything was blurry, but you.
You were always the focus.

You told me you never got jealous,
You’ve never been that way.
I was hanging out with my friends,
And you’d turn to me and say

“They really love you, don’t they?”

You ate in a taught way,
You ate like you put on clothes.
Step by step, carefully, clean.
You watched me eat like a critic,
I dropped three sizes in six months.

You were indulging, until indulgence turned into addiction.
I asked you to stop, slow down,
Stop wasn’t in your dictionary,
Neither was No,
Cheeks swollen, fainting spells, scratch marks all down my leg,
I lost you, you ran and disappeared, coming back with
Bulged eyes, and a predatory interest.

I snapped.

I hear stories of you now, stories that make me realise
That you had an illness that I couldn’t cure.
I was happy, and that annoyed you, you hated it, hated that I
Was happy.

I hope one day you snap,
And realise,
You should be happy too.

I can’t write
Nothing feels right
Can’t tell left from right
Don’t know if I’ll be alright
I see no light
Even when it’s bright
My head feels light
And I’m a sorry sight
The only thing I feel is fright
The only thing I see is night
Never been one to need a knight
But this rite of passage feels so tight

On my soul is a blight
No one knows my plight
Thoughts are floating like a kite
My mind is the white night
I’ve lost my might to fight
I’m falling from a dangerous height
In my soul is a turmoil not so slight.
If you measured my thoughts in bytes,
A terabyte would be the smallest to cite
So where’s the grim reaper and his skythe?
Come, smight me! let me see the light
Cus I’ve given my widow’s mite.

Listen now to the soundless exodus of snow, the brash belly-call of the European raven, the cemetery of minutes in the wake of a ticking hand, the Rynek Główny breathing through a thousand lungs, the market of hanging fabric and soft grease, the inheritance of change from hand to hand as I buy a floral shawl; the shawl is thin and verdigris, daubed with painted flowers, useless for the cold, or for cold like this: the air is made of ghosts, of gelid fingers invisible and desperate, desperate to touch every glimpse of exposed skin.

Dream-walking in Arcadia, I cleave from every instinct, the city holographic and parallel to this vision, headphones in my ears, reality guttering and flickering out, the Polish shawl an invisibility cloak, the buildings creatures of lumbering fantasy, the faces of strangers like arcane emissaries. The dream blooms, but reality snakes in. Now there are soldiers here, here in this fantasia of a city, this romance I fell for, with the festooned draft horses, the snow, the thirteenth-century architecture, the Polish lettering — my adopted home is shaking and curling like paper exposed to a flame.

I watch the soldiers walking together. I see one, in the ochre spill of evening, talking to a civilian. I notice an American flag on his sleeve — other soldiers have the Polish flag, red on white, blood on skin. The border is a two-hour drive from here, and Kraków is filling up with refugees. I see them in Galeria Krakowska with their luggage, faces inscrutable; I feel the atmosphere warp in real time. There is heaviness now, pooling in the street like thawed ice. People are dying. The restaurants scratch out the word ‘Russian’ from their menus; Ukrainian flags appear in windows. I want arms as big as the ocean, big enough to hold the displaced, to hold the rising dark, to hold the rage, to hold the death, to hold the wild-eyed swell. My small arms and gloved hands hold nothing, just a shawl, a souvenir, something tourists buy at the market, a token, kitsch and flimsy. Ból trwa bez końca. The snow continues to fall.

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

What Is Nature

Nature
What is nature?
All I see
Is cells and a TV
I go outside
I look up
And all I see
Is blue sky
I wish
I could fly
Be a bird
And escape jail
And go home
And chill
Kick back
And watch TV
And go to sleep whenever I want
Go outside
And play ball
Come hoop

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.