Author: poetryfest

A mountain range of desire
A tree line of lust
A series of hills and valleys or
An ocean with waves you must

Scale, climb, swim or trek.
Pursue until your ship is wrecked
Upon her shores, impulse unchecked
Solo member of her sect

If you taste that mountainside
Drink of the river stream
If you put yourself inside
Prepare to live a dream

I have ten minutes to tell you.
Ten minutes to explain
That Now is all we can hold in our hands.
All we can lick up and lap up.
All we can bite into and swallow hard
Until it hits the barrel of our souls.
This single mundane moment.
Filled with single mundane actions.
No magic in it.
Not most of the time.
Stir the rice so it doesn’t get burned.
Write an essay.
Sit in traffic.
Bite your nails.
Or don’t.
This is the stuff life is made of, you see.
Those moment to moment time passing activities,
Where we dream of a future that may hold more promise.
Or reminisce over a yesterday that brought us to tears.
Yet the commonplace moments are inevitably forgotten
When we write our own history books.
We pitch our best stories.
The ‘good stuff’.
The ‘hard stuff’.
The stuff that make us villains or heroes.
Our victories and our catastrophes.
Those markers in our lives where battles were fought.
Hearts were broken.
Where dreams were captured.
The epic stories we tell are not of me typing these words.
Not of him reading the newspaper.
Or of you doing the dishes.
Real life seeps in between the flags of moments marked.
It is the sections in between the written pages.
Of this.
Of Now.
Life is the forgotten minutes.
The delicacy of the humdrum.
The beauty of banality.
The subtle nature that breaths into the Everyday.
Into the Everyman.

—
Agam Darshi
http://www.agamdarshi.com

and Anne who rolls with her nose
noses that freeze at dawn
dawn that makes the sun grow
sun that rises and rises warm and runs the day
day that grows warm and sun that stays warm
warm starry night and Anne sleeps and dreams
dreams of Ana who says Ana
and Anne who rolls with her nose
noses that smell perfume
perfume of the fragrances of roses
red roses that open with the day
warm day
and warm sun with clear swallows of nascent spring

ileana andrea gómez gavinoser (Buenos Aires, Argentina-2022)

When a person is sure that he is good, he is nearly hopeless; he gets cruel- he believes in punishment.” – Clarence Darrow.

Eye for an eye—That anguish, Capital-one murder charge, First degree

Would you like to go by bullet or electricity?
South Carolina courts gave the outlaw Richard Moore,
Eight days to find a solution—The facts laid up. Thou shalt not kill

Eye for an eye—Out of Spartanburg, USA. Twenty-one years on death row,
Straight from the block, A stone jail—Cuffs and chains, thou shalt not kill

Eye for an eye, lived his life, cruel and blue. They said he was vicious,
Disordered like Cain. Starved with want, all he knew was— murder,
To push it further, thou shalt not kill

Eye for an eye, the electric chair has 2000 volts, wouldn’t stick it, not his fault,
For his sin he chose, firing squad, no better way to waste—The flesh, his mother bore
Nasty and cruel, thou shalt not kill.

Eye for an eye—He’d rather sit there, On his ass in front of, Three-men at the shooting range,
Butch Cassidy, Billy the kid, Jesse James. Thou shalt not kill

Eye for an eye, the mercy seat, His sullen gaze, Full of dream, but is it unconstitutional,
Is it right? Does it matter he wasn’t white—These days, Either way,
Solid and unabashed, thou shalt not kill

Eye for an eye, Greg Hembree said “The bill will likely draw lawsuits,
Probably put men in the supreme court”, But he’s a Senate Republican,
Does he really care? Capital blood-sport, Lawyers and jailers, Retribution, not repair,
Thou shalt not kill

Eye for an eye—Richard Moore the addict who needed cocaine, In a convenience store,
A crime insane, Non-Compos mentis? His fire of rage, Through heat and struggle,
Passion’s slave? But James Mahoney— dead, Stung like JFK,
Both lives thrown away, In the affray, thou shalt not kill

Eye for an eye, another small-town, cold blood killing?
Or just another African American male
In a world unforgiving? Racialised, sent for execution—Straight from the hood
No cards to play, Written in blood. By old Jim Crow

Unjust institutions, systemic violence? A chain reaction? Beneath the silence,
Misery ensigns the soul—Awaits a new dawn, thou shalt not kill

Eye for an eye. Hear their moans, Richard Moore, Brad Sigmon,
Gary Terry, Freddie Owens, And the thirty-two more—
On South Carolina’s death-row, Caged birds, desiring to be free,
Tormenting game, let it be—Abolish the death-penalty.
Thou shalt not kill.

From the Shades of Green Collection

Its a whiskey washed walk up the street
With only good intentions
An attempt to extract the hallucinogen
But, Up the stairs, we go
Talking of everything and nothing,
Other options set in.

Then with one swift motion
When lips do as hands do
The Spirit takes the night,
Sprite wings rip through
And I am in delirious flight.
Eyes full of thirst and venom
Pawing so the atoms
Don’t lose the shrouded heaven
Even in the dance breaks
Bodies listening,
A little tenderness comes in
And I am lifted
Legs wrapped flat on my back
Hands tracing every surface
Of my slender map
Alive, shaking, electric.
Then the clock shows its face
And once again he asks me
Please stay
In truth, I should have.
Car Called
Searching for a shoe, one shoe
All is found and shabbily ensemble

In an embrace farewell,
I am heaved, pressed against the door
An attempt to shut the portal
Of the reality of the outside world
One last chance to crawl back
But nature will not allow
so
Down the stairs,
goodnight, and Ciao

WHY THE WILLOW WEEPS
VALLEY DEEP,
NEATH A MOUNTAINSIDE,
LIVED THE NATIVE AMERICAN CROWFOOT TRIBE,

INDEPENDENT, INTENSE,
CORNFIELDS IMMENSE,
GREAT SPIRIT BLESSED THEM WITH ABUNDANT LIFE,

CROWFOOT SHAMAN HAD A COMELY DAUGHTER,
CREATED IN THE CORN: AND BORN BY THE WATER,
HAIR SO LONG IT COAXED THE WIND TO BLOW,

HER ALMOND EYES: BROUGHT SQUIRRELS TO HER SIDE,
SHE WAS HEIR TO THE MAGIC: AND PRIDE OF THE TRIBE,
KNOWN THROUGHOUT THE LAND AS WILLOW,

THE DAY BLUE EYED PALEFACE,
FELL AT DEATH AND HER TEEPEE’S DOOR,
SQUAS WHISPERED INTO THEIR BRAVE’S EARS AND OUT THROUGH THEIR HATE FILLED EYES,

AND YET WILLOW WAS TAKEN WITH HIM,
AND SO SHE TOOK CARE OF HIM,
AND FOR HER HEALINGS SHE WAS OSTRACIZED,
AS HIS MIND CLEARED HE FELL INTO HER SMILE,
AND AS HIS STRENGTH GREW SHE FELL INTO HIS WILD,
BUT ANGRY BEAR WANTED BLUE-EYED PALEFACE DEAD,

FOR IT WAS HE WHO HAD GROWN UP LOVING WILLOW,
AND THE MATCH MAKER HAD TOLD HIM LONG AGO,
THAT ANGRY BEAR AND WILLOW WOULD BE WED,

SHE NURSED HIM TO FULL HEALTH USING HER MAGIC,
IN HINDSIGHT NOW IT SEEMS SO TRAGIC,
HE GREW TO FULL STRENGTH ON THAT COLD, BLOODY DAY,

THE BUGLE SIGNALLED THE PALE FACE TROOPS CHARGE TO RETRIEVE THEIR FRIEND,
AND THE WAR CRY ANGRY GAVE RALLIED HIS BRAVES TO DEFEND,
THE LAND THAT NATIVE AMERICAN CROW FOOT TRIBE HAD CLAIMED,

WILLOW AND PALE FACE HAD NO TIME TO SPARE,
WILLOW SAID, ” MEET ME AT THE WATER” PALE FACE SAID “I WILL BE THERE’
BUT TELL ME WHERE WILL YOU BE THAT THEY CAN NOT SEE,

SHE SAID, “I HAVE MY MAGIC THAT WILL HELP ME TO HIDE”
I WILL GROW A MYSTICAL TREE AND THEN TAKE REFUGE INSIDE,
AND I WILL NOT MOVE UNTIL YOU COME AND RETRIEVE ME,

WELL PALE FACE WENT TO TRY TO HALT HIS SOLDIER’S ATTACKS,
BUT ANGRY BEAR KILLED HIM WITH A CROWFOOT AX,
BUT BY THAT TIME WILLOW WAS LONG GONE,

SHE HAD FOLLOWED HER ANCESTORS DOWN TO THE WATER,
SHE LOVER, HEALER, CROWFOOT DAUGHTER,
STOOD FIRM BEGINNING HER ANCIENT, MYSTICAL SONG,

FIRST HER FEET TUNNELED DEEP INTO THE GROUND,
THEN HER ARMS TURNED HARD, AND BRITTLE, AND ROUND,
AND HER COARSENED REACHING FOR THE SKY,

THEN HER ALMOND EYES: THEY TURNED INTO A SQUIRREL’S NEST,
AND HER FACE WAS HIDDEN: AND HER SPIRIT WAS AT REST,
WHILE SHE WAITED FOR A LOVE THAT HAD ALREADY DIED,

AS BRAVE SLAUGHTERED PALEFACE,
PALEFACE SHOT SQUAS AND BRAVES,
AND THEY BURIED NATIVE AMERICAN CHILDREN IN SHALLOW GRAVES,

UNTIL ONLY ANGRY BEAR WAS LEFT UNDER THE ALP,
IN HIS BLOODSTAINED HAND,
BLUE EYED PALEFACE’S SCALP,
HE JOURNEYED DOWN TO DIE BY THE LAKE,
AND HE PRAYED TO GREAT SPIRIT UNDER WILLOW THE TREE,
AND WILLOW ONLY THEN SAW WHAT HAD COME TO BE,
AND THAT WOULD BE THE FIRST TIME THE WILLOW WOULD EVER WEEP,

HER HAIR, NOW BRANCHES, WERE WEAKENED BY THE TEARS,
AND THEY BENT DOWN, ONE BY ONE, OVER HER WOODEN EARS,
SHE WAS JUST DEVASTATED BY WHAT HER LOVE HAD BROUGHT ABOUT,

AND SO SHE PRAYED TO GREAT SPIRIT ‘PLEASE SET MY SOUL FREE’
AND SHE DID RELEASE HER FROM THE TREE,
AND HER SPIRIT WENT TO COMFORT ANGRY BEAR’S SPIRIT AT THAT VERY SPOT,

NOW WILLOW SPIRIT AND ANGRY BEAR SPIRIT,
LIVE AS MARRIED SQUA AND BRAVE,
TENDING ANCIENT TRIBAL BURIAL GROUNDS,
AND PALEFACE GRAVES IN THE VALLEY NEATH THE MOUNTAIN BY THE SEA,

BUT WILLOW’S HEART STILL BELONGS TO PALEFACE SOLDIER BOY,
AND SO HER HEART WILL NEVER KNOW LOVE’S PASSIONATE JOY,
AND THAT, MY FRIEND, IS WHY THE WILLOW WEEPS.

http://www.spokenworld.xyz

I hope you and Teddy get along.
Divine creature that he is…
A plunderous, sometimes misanthropic pursuant of publicly unspeakable unmentionables,
sectional erotica and experience-proud balls-ass naked mother f-er!
Exuding irreverence not merely through lavish rodomontade, but through a rollaway lunge.
A catastrophic blessing; grace vulgas in a perpetual state of luminous.
Some find him lupine, a lure to their more momentous nature.
A right of passage to the Riviera of the mind, heart and soul…

Just what is the cost of freedom?
Just what is the freedom of cost?
Ah! Ooze… oozing…
Oodles of on-line onlookers…
As Teddy might retort…
“Ya, gotta understand.
Pain is good for pleasure”
Ooze… Oodles of ooze…

Teddy: Governor general, lover of whores, faggots and outcasts of superior nature…
Scams flimflams and those in the slammer.
Encapsulating cheap and deep circus poise.
The equipoise for the still faced nodding to the ‘Endman’, hoping he goes away…

Teddy: Free for the cost of freedom.
Free: The four letter word of the New Millennium.
A bourgeois commodity…
A hop-heads dream.
A modern day mystery…
A contemporaneous enigma…
Free: Unreliable at best, always temporary and, most likely bogus and blasphemous…
Hardly the amalgamated fun-house, roller coaster, nosegay, hot-bed, hot-rod, bang-bang, hot-
shot’s hot-spot, late night three days running hospice on a hot-blooded hot-pot gravy train, give
it up, hot line to the world, hot-house tomato and pepper on a hot plate to grease me, release
me, to please me that it should be…

Believe me. I know what I’m talking about.
So does Teddy.
He won’t diddle or dawdle to a lackluster craze.
His proscenium intact, he is left to aspire the pulpit: His end!
So he slips into pulse modulation; pulse jetting fragments of pulse-a-tile truths.
He knows puckish linguistics bombard brain diaphragms implanted by years of treachery;
Personnel and political, self-grandiose, rationalizing, ultimately fascist and instantly gratifying to
the beholder.

Teddy is no objective tool of the common good, or is he?
Oh, how good it could be, if only…
Teddy is an ethicist’s madman for all occasions.
Give him an Eton jacket and he’ll spit it out on fire.
Teddy: Very real to ethereal. Have him with your morning cereal.
Teddy: A gas! An ethnic white man…
Deification due to delinquency and delicious delirium…
Teddy: A roaming moaning taboo enclave of self-joyous romp!

Teddy: An endearing endearment.
A contra-wise continuum…
A high rolling buddy, to all who seek his court.
Those who dare smash to bits the proscenium, which separates them, instead of drudging on
and on to the drone of contrivances made of ghosts wailing in the form of fellow droopy, drowsy,
bloodshot, hacking, whacking, functional bleeding wheeling hack-em ups.
Those chasing dream justice; wanting to be Caesar, but only managing Bruté…
Teddy: A lounge class love feast high as a kite modern day Druid…
A polycentric poltergeist to the evangelical polymorphs…
Wan hypocrites; hyperventilating to the sounds of currency divine as they merchandize
Hypodermic injections of superfluous religious raunchy rhetoric anthem antics.
A-super-fix-ticket-to-heaven-can-I-afford-a first-class-fare?
Oh God I’ve got bills to pay can I be saved for maybe… ten a month?
Okay, I know I can afford more; Twenty okay?
I’ll cut down somewhere but just save me!
Release-me, grease-me, please-me…
Teddy says; “These TV evangelists are causing a spiritual rheumatism.”
The anti-fix amen!
A twenty please; You want to be saved don’t you?

Again there is Teddy: Our misanthropic anthropologist.
The anti-climax is complete.
Get dressed, get on your hog and answer them.
They’ re calling out to you.
They want and need you to bust and stomp them.

Teddy: Rosebud.
Teddy: Saint Teddy;
Size ‘em up and sell them the truth for half of what they’re paying for false praying.
Save them from they’re savings accounts.
Who’s Teddy you ask?
Maybe you’re Teddy.
I think there are a lot of Teddy’s out there pissing away in some esoteric swirl of mirth.
Or perhaps a corporate chump, or maybe even a politician could be Teddy.
Teddy is in all of us waiting to get out.
Just rub yourself the right way and Teddy will appear like a huge magic genie ready to grant you
three wishes and a kiss!

A hyphenated swelter of the best virtue: Innocence.
Teddy: A chump you say? A clown?
Ha! Remember “He who laughs last…
Yes: You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but
you can’t put one over on old Teddy!

Teddy: The key master, the muck caster, the lead in to tonight’s news.
Hear it and adhere it to something and forget about it.
You probably couldn’t afford it anyway.
But then you’d be a moose with a hat-rack if you knew the truth about Teddy.
Everyone’s Heathcliff…
A beacon to the bacon-consuming herds of tumultuous grim reapers and Dorian Grays…
Palpitating severely retroactive personalities acting out the visions of Hieronymous Bosch.

Teddy: The boy next door.
The girl down the hall, who you believe is living proof that there is a God!
Teddy: Two people balling, soaring to daring heights of ecstatic aesthetic.
Yes, and don’t you know, brutality is always knocking on Teddy’s door?
Making sure he’s home then nailing it shut?
Ten-penny nails… Finish nails; Coffin nails for crying out loud…

Yeah, a lot of people claim to be Teddy, some are, most of them aren’t.
Most Teddies don’t know who they are.
They merely wonder who everyone else is.
In fact it is my firm belief that everyone has met or at least seen Teddy.
In themselves, or in someone else but they think he’s insane.
The pulsating tincture of Teddy at play blows most people’s minds one way or the other.
Teddy is a powerful fundamental terror.
No Prima Donna either, Teddy is a full time, full blown kindred to us all, like it or not.
He’ll haunt your ass or kiss it; it’s up to you.
So, take a sincere and serious look-see.
Or make ready a make-believe normal posture in our great civilization.
As corrupt and obsolete as it is, it’s no wonder it’s crumbling.
And oozing out from its cortex is who else?
You guessed it: Teddy!
That infernal Teddy…

That happenstance slaphappy do-no-wrong hack-em up!
The milestone in our midst…
The punchy pure ‘®Punch and Judy Show.’
That scandalous scalawag…
Scapegoat of the scared and stodgy…

And me? Well, I’m no structural linguist.
If ya don’t get what I’m saying ask Teddy to translate this for you.
It’s 5:26 AM January 10, 1993.
I didn’t sleep last night cause Teddy came to visit, as he sometimes does.
I’ve seen him on TV scared and mutilated or just himself,
Tell Tale Teddy: Tete-beche on a Texas tower.

So take off your high-hat, high life, high muck-a-muck junkies and
Have a high-time, high-keyed, high-jump on the high-road or the high-seas or in a high-rise.
Give me the hi-sign or give it to Teddy.
Hit hell or high water with treason and high-tension and watch the high-toned hit the highways
on a high-wire act on some high-priced, high-proof, high-comedy high-jinks and get some
high-flown, high-falutin’ fun.

Take a hillbilly to a high level with the high livers and see a
high-pitched high-fidelity all out shoot-em up.
Complete with a high-priest speaking high-German during the high-holidays and
watch Teddy wail with mirth, as the height of the high-spirited eloquence of the divine moment
sends the high-bred high-tailing it as they unsuccessfully attempt to trick their way into the
high place where the only thing you’ll get is a handshake and a smile from Teddy himself!

and he
ragged
without teeth and leg
leaned
on his one floundering . . .
reached his hand
to her
his eyes asking not to be seen
his soul asking to be caressed
his body asking to be at rest
and she
head tilted down
peeked shyly
and gave adime
she smiledfrowned
almostcried
and he
headdown
wishing it were up
looked into her
avertedface
and said
godblessyou
and thought
godblessyou

At fourteen. I used to sneak out.

To go see Frankie. Frankie was homeless.

He was 17.

I would sneak snacks from the fridge.

To feed my boyfriend Frankie.

We would sleep in his car til 4am.

I’d get home before I got caught.

One time I got caught. I got the worst whooping ever.

And my dad took all my Christmas presents.

For two months straight, I was grounded.

I still snuck out. To see Frankie.
…………………………………………………………
My daughter is 14.

Her Dad is Frankie. We’re married.

We have a big house on the hillside.

I guess the punishment was worth it.

Sometimes I battened my talent down,
like a woman hiding a pregnancy.
But in that cold house where I could see
the breath in front of my face,
Ariel demanded to be born.
And in the blue mood of early morning
my children sleeping in another room,
I communed with my disquieting muse.
My golem,
so cunning, so full of trickery.

A volcano of poetry erupted,
and she sucked me down
into the dizzying red of creation.
My clever Thought Fox had been cheating,
eating my excellent cooking,
calling his mistress on the phone,
While I built my false Nirvana.

New baby, end of marriage.
I was losing my milk,
feared I would lose my mind.
This world made a meal of me,
but I triumphed anyway.
Cooked the books,
gave the world a bellyache.
I was a witch by then,
living on air.
30

The icy glitter of my despair,
caught the light on the way down.
Poem after poem spilling on to the page,
waiting in my study like unexploded bombs,
while I lay my head on a towel in the oven,
(so clean, so industrious, so efficient),
and the gas filled my lungs.
It was a scientific decision;
science always made me panic.
It reminded me of my father.

The moon looked down.
She gave no sign and I, myself,
had never expected help from that
quarter.
Later the Thought Fox tore some
pages out of my journals.

I should have burned them.
Eaten the ashes.

I killed the Good Girl,
in that freezing house;
left my children cups of milk.
Then I left my body and travelled down to
the sea floor,
where my crippled father lived.
The tall girl who swam out to sea
but could not drown,
was breathing water at last.
Under a shimmering, seaweed sky.