Author: poetryfest

Before what?
Birth…Breath…Discovery…
Love…Loss…Joy…
Pain…Awareness…Memory
Regret…Tears…Laughter
Death?
And after?
Believe the Buddhist
Believe the Christian
Believe the Muslim
Believe the Jew
Believe the Atheist
One is the other…The other is one
Unproven…Faith…Belief…
Trust…Expectation…Hope…
Failure…Success…Hype…
Arrogance…Humility…Fantasy…
Before After Before?
Maybe…Maybe not…I was born
Maybe…Maybe not…I will die
If I do…I would very much like to come back
And try it again

The storm was unexpected
New Yorkers swept inside by snow.
In 4B a woman bathes her lover
careful not to wet his broken hand.
The Egyptian newlyweds
living in the building’s only studio
give their dream children names
underneath a tent of bedsheets.
Twin sisters, designers, in Versace mules
play spin-the-bottle
on their penthouse terrace
with models from Milan.
Alone in her garden apartment
a Venezuelan widow
listens to vinyl records
she once danced to
with her husband.
And outside, on the street,
as the snow unfurls around them
like a ream of white velvet
let loose,
a girl in a scarf
the color of blood red calla lilies
says ‘yes’
to a proposal of marriage
while riding on the turned up handlebars
of her lover’s Rusty Schwinn.

“Don’t climb the mountain, it’s far too steep,” they said.
“Don’t listen to the hopes inside your head.”
“Stay in the valley and be safe instead.”

But I couldn’t stay safe, I would never be misled.
I had to listen and listen to the voice in my head.
I would climb the mountain, I would seek the trailhead.
And never listen to the lingering voice of dread.

“Dreamers never prosper, dreamers never soar,”
“Dreamers just die wanting more.”

But I never met a dream that lead to my demise,
Never met a dream that didn’t turn out a surprise.

This life is mine, it will never be yours.
You can talk and talk and you’ll still be a bore.

What do you know about me and what can you say?
What can you say to scare me away?

You can talk and talk, and all it is is just words.
You can talk and talk, but your words are yours.

Your fears are not my own, your fears are only yours.

You don’t write the story,
I’ll write my own.

Get wet.
Drench yourself
in electric love.
Rumble with the heavens
to wash away
the wilting, stale suffocation
of a life of quiet regret.

If I could make the paintbrush thistles twirl
To the shape of life and gods
I’d sit upon the seashore
And calculate the colors
Each and at their own time
As the great sun-ball churned with laughter
As I tried to make its face
And find that audience within myself.

To make the day
And make it something we should

We must start the day
With something Good

A Smile

A Good Morning

A Happy Thought

( your choice )

© 2004 – 2021 – Peter Borreggine

Forgiveth not, what comes thy way,
‘Tis but a speck, in the dawn of a day,
Thou must not begin to finally feel,
As if thy heart, is in a reel,

Thou pain, is wrought, deep inside I fear,
For to giveth its wrath, is not what I hear,
‘Twas the pain, that brings me here to show,
For I am a man, wrought with pain and sorrow,

I’ve come through my life, with toil and pain,
As one would not stand, out in the rain,
I’ve sought the peace, of the one who knows,
That life without hope, ’tis not life, but shows,

A life so filled with nothing but fear,
That where my feet tread, was not with care,
But there in my mind, was a spark of hope,
To see with your eyes, a path from the slope,

A walk I must, through the swords and rock,
Through, death and stench and things with pock,
To bring myself out, and forward I thrust,
To break through the gates to one that I trust,

For there is my hope, my peace I seek,
That strengthens my heart, from whence it was weak,
Since the Journey’s has not come to an end,
But rather a start, now I walk with a friend.

Like the agony of windows
in the fading red of a winter sun,
when free winds
sharpen boundless perspectives
of streets at dusk
and the lost Jew roves
the dismantled fairgrounds
of Coney Island:
his ample clothing
scattered in the evening…

Like an abandoned chair
in the rain of a Brooklyn dooryard,
under a beheaded tree
and a broken umbrella,
when the murky panes
of Chinese coin-op Laundromats
mirror women’s faces
between ice-crystals,
and the silence is a corpse
on the pavement of dawn…

Like a hooker’s green eyes
throwing flowers
among crashing stars
and flashing signs
in Times Square, when yellow taxis
drip blood at your doorstep
and Smyrna’s ill-fated exiles
cook octopus’ tentacles
on the fluorescent
grill of the night…

Like the clock’s hands
that stop dead
in the creaking alehouse
where you order a Budweiser —
in an intoxication of riddles —
while the wailing of a saxophone blows
from the cold chinks
of a bare Bowery garret
and the lame homeless man
lingers spellbound
listening…

Like the metropolitan angels
throwing themselves out
at the Queensboro Bridge,
before drowning in musty bookshops
or diners open 24 hours,
where disfigured Arabs fry rotten fish
in a desolation of chimneys — and you
take off your shoes
along the misty shores of Far Rockaway
and barefoot on the sand
dream
of skimming shells…

Like a darkened door
nails you to the mystery of three dumb windows
screeching — Keep Off! — at number 219
of a street with no name (and indeed
one cannot enter,
not even with a pupil’s fragment,
an iris’ drop), but you set them on fire anew
in a blaze of silver nitrate
and then fly away
free
into the Harlem sky…

Like houses splintered
corroded condemned
among the rats and cat piss
of the Bronx,
when a solitary Puerto Rican sailor
sibilates secrets
into your armpit’s hollow
and anxiety vomits glassy nails
among filthy curtains, chicken’s feet
and basements of Belmont
or Van Nest…

Like in Williamsburg
along rusty railings — your own steps,
as ever, have led you
infallibly
towards the sea — you suddenly discover
two windows in place of your eyes
and an empty laid table
in place of your heart,
while the vagabonds
spit shudders
in the nostalgia of an East River
which is no longer Canada, nor Alaska
and not even a flock
of returning birds…

Like sooty skeletons of rooms
behind the dim panes
of disused flophouses — confetti
on the floor and a green dragon’s
skin forgotten by maddened
migrants from Tangshan or Shanghai —
while suburban trains escape
towards a murmur of other oceans
leaving behind photographs out of focus
and clotted blood
on the tracks of Pennsylvania Station…

Or like a seagull’s shriek
between remote northern walls,
the diseased shadows
of a Dutch twilight
which you now remember,
remember, or the globe of fortune
at a crossroads
where no one will ever pass again,
no one — this grey crowd
and yet no one…

It remains thus unfathomable
and deserted New York
with its faces vanishing
in the night’s neon flashes:
it leaves you only with a shred of fog
and a stitch of exile,
like the gaze you have forgotten
at the window
between broken bricks
and iridescent circles
of gasoline.

My heavy heart ached as I faced the unsavory truth.
You did it again.
Did it so well. Discernible improvement.
Practice making perfection.
Surgically sophisticated. Sadistic fulfillment.
Your handiwork, sickeningly unmistakable. Styled.
Then, decampment. Precipitous. Complete.
Undoubtedly proud of your bestial performance.
Melding into the all-enveloping blackness of eventide.
A shroud bestowing sanctuary, at least ’til morn.
Your victim, now unrecognizable as human.
Naked, flayed, ultimately postured. Debased.
As others have been, post your fiendish attention.
I vowed I would seek you out. Track you down.
A human bloodhound on the scent.
Baying at a spectral full moon.
Oh, lucent orb, my silent witness.
Glowing in your borrowed illumination.
A faux sun mocking my perceived futility.
Smug, conceited, waxing, waning. Tacit.
A feckless, astral, deserted rock.
Knowing so much but proffering so little.
My disappointment in you, boundless.
But, now is the time to change tack.
Swiftly move on. Pastures anew. Reanimate.
A map has gained my attention, above all else.
A unique map, to be protected, guarded.
A spatial arrangement of ridges and valleys.
Though no cartographer’s hand was employed.
This, you left behind in your haste to withdraw.
A careless accident?
Perchance a clue?
A roadmap to your lair?
Maybe a flagrant effort to ensure capture?
Satiating the infamy you so perversely crave?
Or simple ignorance of Galton’s work?
Whatever. However. Capture you, I will.
I resolve to trace every line, every contour,
Each high and every low, until I am cognizant.
Knowing not where you hide, skulking.
For that, I will tarry until apprehension is assured.
From whence I will drag your putrid being,
To face a jury of your peers and ultimate justice.
Until that time, my sui generis bounty will provide me a name.
Your name you bastard…..
As a unique fingerprint, oft-times will.

I woke up working in the garden today
Cutting the weeds that grow
Among the good flowers
I weed out the bad
Quietly working the land

Strengthening my heart in movements
A cherry blossomed white and tulips
The machete tied to my waist
gloves against
The cruel blood drawing thorns

Flowers by the good hands of my beloved
A palm hat on my head
A bottle of water in hand
a beer
There’s mist in the foggy dark

Jumps the squirrel
a seagull suddenly flies
From there to where today we sing
My desire to touch the wind and the clouds
Alone I stand at the dawn of spring

And the long stare dominates
the forest with a river that runs through
I heal the land from the worms that dry out the plants
In the baskets soon the cocoons will form
And butterflies jump in their natural magical flight

Memories of years passed also come
Away from the motherland that I keep in the heart
There I used to wake when the rooster would sing
Even when the cool wind would softly blow

By the hinge of the doors of that one house
How the hunger eats the roots of plants
The sunrise woke me glad to carve the yard
I’m learning to cultivate squash and legumes

Under the shade of the cherry blossom basking in the sun
When the buds bloom
alder perfume shall sprout
And orange rosebuds
Daisies
Gladioli
and red Carnations
Aroma of fresh breeze comes from the south with flocks of ducks

Next door I hear someone work
and the dog barks
I hear the distant murmur of the forest within the chants of birds
I’m pleased to work wherever the wind takes me
Oh sister nature doer of life doer of death
The heavens are serene asleep the Hummingbird remains
Already the sun has collected the entirety of my shadow…

Alfonso Velis-Tobar
From: “CRYSTAL OF STONES”
(Unedited poetry 2019)