Author: poetryfest

Performed by Val Cole

I lay in this bed of affliction and I hear the people as they pass by.
They labeled me an outcast, my condition has made me unclean.
So I lay in this bed and I cry

I have done all that I know to do to release myself of this shame, but
I’ve been suffering with this for 12 long years that Mrs. Issue has become
My name.

I even see the women out with their children they look at me then they look away,
Is there anyone out there who can take away the burden of my pain…?

Just the other morning I heard something different in the people’s voice.
No longer where they’re conversation about me the miracle man was in town the man from
Galilee so he was there topic of choice.

There where people from all around so many faces I had never seen all crowed around this man as if he were the king.

I got down on my hands and knees so I could maneuver threw the crowd, and I knew better to be seen so I kept my face turned toward the ground.

But by the time I decided to look up I was right at the master’s feet, and I said to myself I’ve never seen a miracle before and here’s one within reach.

I know I broke the rules today the whole town knows I’m unclean but here I am with JESUS garment in hand and now he is looking down at me.

And from that day to this one I’m know throughout my town as the women who’s faith was bold.

The distance between us could not be reduced.
Words that cannot be described to describe this distance;
All this was subordinated to stop time.
Time is all we have until we start counting it down.

Yesterday I went out on the street where you recently settled.
I resisted the wind, but I left, I was in no hurry, because I felt you.

Let the angels sing in heaven about our future when we fall asleep.
Let the November wind carry the yellowed leaves through the long streets, diluting the silence.
May each of us be closer to understanding that everything passes and is born again.
Let our love cool and flare up until we are afraid to be honest with ourselves.
Now I stand in front of your house in a window that lights the light of our closeness.
Soon you will go to bed and the house will absorb the night, but I know I will come again tomorrow.

As a kid I wrote fantasy
There were no rules.
My characters went where they wanted
And I tagged along

As a student I wrote poetry
I found my own structure
I loved to weave in and out of the rhyme
or abandon it altogether.

As an adult I write lists
How to do’s/What it’s like/How it feels
And through that practice, I forgot
How to do/What it’s like/How it feels
to allow truth in stanzas
and go on fantastic journeys

—
Doriean Stevenson

Contained in murky walls, when thou not limned,
I emanated light for thee and my gullet hymned.
When thou would plummet and thy lesion bleed,
My heart would care and hands would plead.
You are my eyes and I were your cane,
That let thy way and shed thy pain.

Where thou are blue eyed, now that I am old,
Pulsating in shackled veins and unnerving in cold.
Have I naively blundered or did my love change?
Give me a final hug and take my air in exchange.
Long after I am gone, should thou remember?
Look at thy progeny and recall my sombre.

-Ehsaan Nashad

For the women butchered
with clitoridectomies
not to feel intimacy
passion or mutuality in sex
but mutilated
I grieve.

For the women forced
into loveless marriages,
custom be damned, to be
slaves to men who care little
for them or their bodies or
personhood
I grieve.

For the countless, innocent
female victims of war started
by men to advance their egos,
who have been raped, defiled,
left as untouchables
I grieve.

For the silent victims of domestic
abuse, beaten, left with broken bones,
internal injuries, splenectomies, who
cover for cruel spouses out of fear and
misplaced loyalty
I grieve.

These women do not whimper
They speak without a sound.

Barren no is the land that once flourished

through harsh and unpredictable weather.

Dusty is the floor, and deadly is the air that feels

so calm.

Oh, how the years have rearranged the

gentle landscape that I once knew so well,

now I hear wind songs in a far-off distance

it sounds like and Indian’s cry.

I pray for the scattered clouds to release

Its cleansing laughter,

I lift my hands skyward to heal all that has

been consumed.

Stand tall my crimson mountain, and the

Sun will rise again.

Have faith my little cactus, for the rains

promise new life.

Hard times are before you, but soon

they will become smooth like the face

of a pebble, hidden on the rivers bottom.

Your eyes have disguised

The pain you’ve kept inside

But I’m not blind to see

As kind as I am you are to me

Truth is what I seek and have received

I’m drowning in the deep blue waters

Masqueraded through your eyes

They’ve got me hypnotized

So I’ll dive into the shallow waters

Knowing I may not make it out alive

Though cool to the touch

You would penetrate as I burn til I’m dust

As the waves crash behind my back

And I’m washed upon your shore

I don’t know how I can stay afloat

For every breath I hold while under your spell

I pray it would last before I’d need to come up for air

I have exposed myself my soul lie bare

Yet I’m like a capsized boat that lost its sail

And it’s flooded me and I cannot bail myself out

And I cannot control the way I feel

Awake from this dream

Oh how I wish it could be real

So surreal yet I must be imagining

It doesn’t matter if I lose or win

Til I figure this out I’ll float til I learn how to swim

Like your holocaust,
We are led to the slaughter.
Food and drink at a cost,
Your milk is taken from sons and daughters.
Ribs and racks,
Straight from our backs.
But it doesn’t stop there,
For food so fine,
You put your own people through wear,
Standing at the line,
Working for the perfect rind.
In a cold fridge they labor,
8 to 12 hours a day,
Oh what a bore,
All their days just wasting away.
And for what?
A taste of my butt?!
Enjoy my meat,
But while you eat,
Just remember the sacrifices,
As you gnaw on our carcasses.

Tufts of new and old grasses
The living and the lived
Chipped and chimed and chowed
Down by new growth

Multi-colored leaves, leaving
Musty, misty, moist and mossed
Resting place of the mulched
Making mewing, mushy sounds

Sticks and stones and broken bones
Of bark and branch and briar
New flowering, ripening to the ripest
Old falls and fallen rising

Forests of forgotten fires
Black, blackened and blown
Winds that whine and winge
About the burnished breezes

Gradual, grading and growing
Light at the end of the funnel
Of roots, roomed and running
Rings around new bows and branch

Sprouting, sporting the new looks
Of leaves, leaning and lowing
To summer, suns and songs
Of the fierce, unforgiving out back