http://www.shanniealvarez.com/
He is life,
A great, mystical tree,
Symbolic in nature,
Eternally free.
She is root,
Hidden, deep below,
With a foundation enduring,
She is a mystery to know.
Combined is the essence of Him.
Revealed is the depth of love Divine,
Captured, perfectly, over a history of time.
Good and bad,
Back to their own identity.
As it was in the garden,
The One tree of serenity
The second hand on my watch goes tick tick tick,
I don’t know how it works; it’s a funny trick.
The bubbles in the fish tank go glub glub glub,
I imagine that I’m in there, riding a tiny sub.
Our doggie makes a ruckus, going bark bark bark,
There may be someone out there, lurking in the dark.
Unzipping my pants makes a funny sound,
Zzzzip when it goes up and zzzzip when it goes down.
Creeeeak goes the door when I walk into the room,
Sshhh… just be quiet; it will all be over soon.
My knife through her body goes slash slash slash,
When I chop her up in pieces and put her in the trash.
So many sounds around me, and even in my head,
They’ll never never stop until I’m good and dead.
Brandon Ellrich
Writer/Author
brandonellrich.com
The steaming icicle plunges
Into a receptacle,
Explosions now implosions,
The maestro looking,
The ballerina, once again, swirling and twirling,
The seat gripped, the seat gripping the man,
Froth forming under pressure,
Lather,
Please pass me the ladder
So that I may descend
into a bottomless vale of
retrospection.
Slow-mo, but I never use it,
I want to fuse it,
To intermingle with you,
Blend,
A cherry, strawberry smoothie so piquant,
Your secrets escaping, so revealing,
Frequent lashing and blinking,
Timorous Timothy and his rigorous mysteries
Leading no one to victories.
We have returned in bolting shadows,
Ghosts stalking themselves
Because there is NO ONE left to haunt.
Humanity will have absolutely reached a point of no return:
Everyone will no longer hunt,
As no flesh will exist,
Everyone will no longer swim,
For the brimming sands will substitute the placid oceans,
Everyone will no longer love,
For hatred will govern.
Slow …
Motion …
Too many blurs,
Senseless blurbs—remember that merging
May be catastrophic
And unwieldy.
A mouthful of breathing … rapid expansion,
A wet, damp and mewling kitten
In high-traffic intersections
Late night in New York City,
Warmth exceeding,
The cold receding,
Bountiful,
Ropes and ropes of it
That scissors just kept on slicing,
Rapidity,
Initiatives of remorse,
Her hair immovable,
A baleful and divine reddened gawk,
Pelts splintering like porcelain,
Disastrously worn ceramic,
Resolute sown strands placated
As a curved streak cracked
As his were vacated,
For it was freedom to peer at her wisdom,
Freedom was to notice each rise,
To be witness to the myriad of furrows,
All with such surprise,
The sunrise
At my rear,
No cries
To be heard
From by dear,
The dancer fossilized,
The virtuoso there to forever harmonize,
As no one may improvise
Upon a stage worthy of such stately enterprise.
Blur, dearest,
Blur me,
Fertilize and criticize me,
Carbonize me,
Fantasize about me,
about you, lil’ birdie on
the ferries with the fairy,
About us—
Paralyze and stylize me.
So, wish I, to anesthetize
Your entirety,
To remove you from these floods,
To synchronize as how digits polarize,
And symbolize
A winter with end,
A winter that will not terrorize
The furry, heavy, and burnished petals of the unwilted
Encapsulated
Child
In the lake.
I’m lying in bed, and the curtains are certainly drawn. The sun is peeking through every crack, and peeling my eyes open with morning. I don’t wanna get up. I wanna fight this morning with every blanket and roll over I have. I could win with my fists full of air punches and leg kicks. I can feel this sleep haze consume me and it’s impossible to shake. I wanna curl up and ball the fuck out. I’m not feeling lazy but I’m feeling so incredibly lost that I’m nowhere. I’m in a white room drowning above water. I’m in a large crowd screaming with no voice. I can’t move. I can’t breath. I can’t live. There are no walls but I feel trapped. Where am I and how did I get to this point? Who am I anymore or ever? Is this normal? Am I normal?
Getting out of bed and dressing myself feels like an accomplishment. As I walk down the busy street the world feels muffled. It’s as if I’m underwater and people are shouting at me. All I can hear is the gargled existence that life is out there somewhere. Should I swim deeper so I can’t hear them? Would I ever need to come up for air? Do I even want air anymore? Can I just evolve into this is ness and form some sort of gill like substance to stay alive down here in the grey mute darkness…?
I snap to someone in front of me snapping their fingers telling me they want non fat milk with no foam. I blink twice and respond with a blank nod. Barista life is a hard place to work from the disposition of a rock. My entire body feels so numbly hard that if you slapped me, I couldn’t notice. Yet I feel so brittle that I could shatter into the cup I just dropped. Fuck I did it again. Pay attention. Stay here. As I look around the small coffee shop, the only thing still moving is the perpetual background tunes that you can count on. The same tunes that play at every artsy hipster haunt. Everyone is staring. Heck everything has suddenly sprouted eyes and also is staring. Can I shrink or should I just melt at this point.
Suddenly the world around me freezes. All is quiet aside from those constant background tunes. Everyone is stunted in mid action. As I walk around and wave and scream at faces, no one will wake up. No one will move. Now I️ feel truly alone…
I’M PRESS played to rave reviews at the October 2020 ROMANCE Film Festival. 1. What motivated you to make this film? The motivation behind this film was completing my thesis project for my MFA Acting program at the New York Film Academy. 2. From the idea to the finished product, how long did it take […]
Interview with Filmmaker Emmanual Fordjour (I’M PRESS) — Matthew Toffolo’s Summary
FLUSH LOU was the winner of BEST PERFORMANCES at the October 2020 COMEDY Film Festival. 1. What motivated you to make this film? When I moved to Los Angeles two years ago, my closest childhood friend lost her father. He was a true cigarette smoking, Slivo drinking, no-filter Serbian. He had the most intoxicating personality […]
Interview with Filmmaker Madison Stewart Leonard (FLUSH LOU) — Matthew Toffolo’s Summary
LAST LOOKS was the winner of BEST PERFORMANCES at the October 2020 FEEDBACK Film Festival. 1. What motivated you to make this film? This was a cathartic piece for me. After the death of my friend and my experience of taking care of her b4 she was laid to rest. I felt the need to […]
Interview with Filmmaker Renee J. Vaca (LAST LOOKS) — Matthew Toffolo’s Summary
ROCK COUNTRY was the winner of BEST FILM at the Dance & Music Festival in October 2020. 1. What motivated you to make this film? The love I feel for the rock, the rope and the Basque culture. Thanks to these elements (rock and rope), I can merge my two passions, climbing and vertical dance, […]
Interview with Filmmaker Dimegaz (ROCK COUNTRY) — Matthew Toffolo’s Summary
What is your screenplay about? HEDY is the story of my grandmother in World War 2, a strong woman who fought to survive with her children after her husband’s disappearance. It is a great and sad love story as well. 2. What genres does your screenplay fall under? drama 3. Why should this screenplay be […]
Interview with Screenwriter Natalie Alison (HEDY) — Matthew Toffolo’s Summary
DESIGNATED RIDER was the winner of BEST PERFORMANCES at the Comedy Festival in August 2020. Matthew Toffolo: What motivated you to make this film? Ilana: Jaime Lyn and I met years ago when we both were doing comedy in Chicago. I immediately fell in love and started plotting ways to trick her into working with […]
Interview with Filmmakers Ilana Gordon & Jaime Lyn Beatty (DESIGNATED RIDER) — Matthew Toffolo’s Summary
POETRY FESTIVAL. Submit to site for FREE. Submit for actor performance. Submit poem to be made into film. 