Author: poetryfest

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

Number 1

I watch him carry my mother up the stairs as if she is the thinnest piece of glass,

She is full of cracks.

I turn on the shower, a waterfall of memories.
Rubber ducks in the tub as we pretended to be mermaids.

My mother huddles in the shower, scared and unsure.

A
Wave
of
grief.

Memories of warm arms that once provided endless love now shake under waterfalls of grief.

And the rubber duck is somewhere in the endless garbage.
It mourns as it’s outgrown its usefulness.

I wrap my mother in a towel.
She shakes and shivers in the frozen tundra of Pepto-Bismol tiles.

As she dresses, I see the stomach that once created me, the body that once gave itself for my
existence.

Grief runs down my face,
silent heartache.

And she says, “Please don’t cry, I always hate it when you cry.”

Number 2

I nod,
the lump in my throat swelling like a tide that won’t break.
I press my face into her shoulder,
fragile now,
paper-thin skin wrapped around bones that once lifted me from scraped knees.

She smells of lavender soap
and something older,
something like the end of summer.

We sit in the kitchen,
her tea untouched,
hands resting on the porcelain mug as if it might fall through her fingers.
The silence isn’t empty.
It’s crowded with what we don’t say.

Outside, a bird taps the window,
confused, maybe,
or persistent in its search for light.

I remember her laughter,
not today’s tight smile,
but the belly-full, unafraid kind.
When her body was a shelter,
when her hands made magic from dough and crayons and lullabies.

Now I wipe crumbs from her lap,
a quiet reversal of time.

I whisper, “It’s okay to forget.”
But I lie.
Because every moment she forgets,
I must remember harder.

She looks at me,
not through me,
and I grasp that one solid moment
like a child clinging to a nightlight.

And when she says, “You’ve always been my brave one,”
I pretend not to break.

I carry her words like she once carried me,
a fragile weight,
sacred,
unspoken.

Number 3

In the morning,
I find her in the garden,
hands trembling over tomato vines,
the air thick with the scent of basil
and sun-warmed soil.

She plucks one, red and full,
holds it up like something sacred.
“I used to grow these for your sandwiches,” she says,
as if I could ever forget.

Back then,
her fingers were sure,
kneading dough,
flour in her hair,
the kitchen warm with rising yeast
and afternoon light.

She taught me how to wait,
how bread needs patience,
how basil bruises if you press too hard,
how tomatoes sing when you pick them ripe.

And one summer,
between sunburns and the scent of garlic,
she handed me a record,
black vinyl, sharp-edged,
Alice Cooper’s snarling grin.

I laughed,
surprised at her rebellion.
She only said,
“Even mothers need noise sometimes.”

Now, the bread rises in her absence.
I dust the counter with flour,
turn the stereo low,
his voice a time capsule,
a strange kind of lullaby.

She watches from the table,
basil leaves trembling in her palms,
her eyes wide, like she’s trying to remember
what rebellion felt like.

I bring her a slice, still warm.
She smiles,
but forgets to eat.

I eat for both of us.

Outside, the tomatoes keep growing.
Inside, I grow too,
learning how to hold what’s slipping,
how to love what is unfinished,
how to grieve with full hands

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

(Sci-Fi for Rob Halford, Written While Sitting On a Curb
Outside Steven Spielberg’s “Amblin’ Entertainment”
Universal Backlot Office, Bungalow 477)

Ravages of starlight
beat upon his head:
This battleground,
a smoking field of dread.

His body feels the pummel
of wars so vast and cold.
His mission is to “…do
as (he’s) been told.”

His only thought is to the symptom
and how he might profane the foe.
His wrists are cracked from strains
he’s brought from outland,
vanity in tow.

Dark Elder.

He crosses state and continent,
politics on full.
Three billion lives
melt quickly to his pull.

He stands, a smirking victor.
His flags dot all the earth.
He slaughters all
not of his cherished birth.

A land of locks and machinations
pulling minds apart like bones.
No more the moon
no more the spray of sunlight.
The land is dry and cold.

Performed by Val Cole

POETRY:

Uncle Ricky, a Gentle Giant
Uncle Ricky, a brilliant soul
He gave his near and dear a softer grace
With his gap-toothed smile on his face
His laugh filled a room as he told his vivid stories.
A smooth swagger, a heart in bloom
A brother, father, mentor, uncle, friend, and garden healer
When he gave advice, it felt like gold
And wasn’t afraid to be bold
Uncle Rick, sharp and fly with a thinking grace
He could light a flame with his looks and charm.
He was a plant whisperer, sunshine sower, and dream weaver
But when he felt ill, the skies grew gray
But he was finding a way
Whether it was a wink, a grin, a knowing nod, or with God’s guidance.
Now, when I work and continue to help clients heal with massage
He is a light within my legacy
Forever etched in every part
His presence reminds me of God’s power that never yields
His memory will always be my quiet and enlightening guide
His love won’t cease, his story shall forever rise, and lives
So we just don’t say goodbye, see you later
As you remain, a star eternally in the skies

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

He won his election
through lies and deception.
And it soon became known, across the nation,
that all he had claimed was a fabrication.
A web of lies he had woven,
to forge the career he had chosen.
He said he just wished to do his job,
but was hounded by the whole press mob.
He was no rogue, he wasn’t a clown,
and it was the liberal media that was doing him down.
He became a joke, a figure of fun,
his career unravelled, and he was undone.
He then stepped down, he did claim,
to fight for his honor and clear his name.
But with his reputation sunk so low,
his only option was to go.
Though those he did dupe and deceive
were all too happy to see him leave.
He said his opponents had been spiteful and unfair,
and he had merely embellished his resume, here and there.
It was tough to be in the news spotlight,
every day, and every night,
to be constantly doorstepped by the fourth estate,
and asked to set the record straight.
His career was a ruse and a con, on such an epic scale,
that now he’s ended up in jail.
Was it worth it, George, to win your election,
by such chicanery and deception?
To have your name dragged through the mud,
and to be seen as a grifter, and a dud?
To lose, would have been better by a mile,
than to win in such a wretched style.

Voice Over: Val Cole

Editor & Visual Design by Adam Bilyea

Produced by Matthew Toffolo

—-

POEM:

I crave you, but I forgot
how to want. So I panic.

Distract myself like the days
I flirted death. Like the days
before I found the right
piece of myself to kill.

I yip and dance, shoot the moon,
pop the gum; snap the rubber band
secure around the wrist
once held down.

But the relief of it
Ah. The relief of it.

That toe dip and plunge into the Styx.
I bury into her hollow, into her swell.
Not dirt, nor ash, but a riptide wrapping
of desire of breath and thrum.

Your phantom limbs wired to pull
me out. Your laugh a shimmer

a piece of tackle— and I am caught.
You pull me in and again I forget
her. I forget everything,
every thing, but you.

Voice Over: Val Cole

Editor & Visual Design by Adam Bilyea

Produced by Matthew Toffolo

—-
POEM:

In naïveté the end begins, not knowing it is the last.

When Saigon was collapsing, my parents were separating.
My father had returned from Vietnam and they tried
to make it work but not all of him made it back.
He was haunted by what he saw and had to do
as were other young men drafted to Vietnam despite
being in college, being married, being fathers.

The fall of Saigon had nothing to do with leaves,
but overripe, sweaty, stifling abandonment that
shuttered facilities, ceased resources, made hollow
urgent official broadcasts to remain calm or steadfast
even though store shelves stayed empty while streets
filled with refugees, belongings left piecemeal
in dwellings and alleys. Soldiers, civil servants, allies
clutched their solid-state transistor radios awaiting
the signal to evacuate, while on the U.S. Embassy roof
powerful men swaggered and prepared for flight.

Finally Armed Forces Radio announced
“The temperature in Saigon is 105 and rising”
followed by dead air, the scratch of static,
as the needle dropped on the record
and a beloved culmination of American nostalgia
spun out over the airwaves –

“I’m dreaming of a White Christmas…”

Evacuate like we learned in school, in a line,
hands to ourselves, no squirming, pinching, hitting.
At this point, anticipating lunch, we are our own
hungry children dreading peas from giant cans
opened with industrial equipment, barely warmed.
We are our own soldiers navigating the lunch line
with our milk, our meal, and end up with a place to sit
before dodging spitwads sent hurling through the air
by some grimy kid through his contraband straw. If fortunate,
lunchrooms and playgrounds were our first battle fields.

“Just like the ones I used to know ….”

Evacuate like we presume the words to the song flowed
from Irving Berlin’s pen, as he sat in a desert hotel,
the temperature rising, his thoughts rising
about what we grip tightest, writing the best-selling song
of all time. On the surface, a song about a blanket of snow;
underneath, a song that pounds pure primal nostalgia –
a fantasy about home and childhood that we crave
and never had. Berlin’s memory of life before five:
watching as hungry flames of hatred devoured his family’s home
during an Imperial Russia Pogrom.

“Where the treetops glisten ….”

Evacuate while Saigon collapsed; military aid ceased.
Thousands climbed iron fences; scaled concrete walls;
did things they didn’t know how to do as panic grabbed
Saigon by the neck squeezing with its red grip
and threat of hard labor. Armed Forces Radio
kept playing the song as Marines flew helicopters
back and forth, pulling people off the roof of the U.S. Embassy –
friendships and families made by war. Their eyes sting from
an aroma of certain death in the frequent wind that blows
from each chopper’s blades.

Inhabit like my father and thousands others who
still fight the Vietnam War from their own rooftops.
His line is desperate, unyielding
as sweat runs down his face, pools in his ears,
drips from his nose, soaks his soul.

“… and children listen”

Children waited to be lifted from the roof,
evacuating like they might have learned from a lifetime of war.
They keep their hands to themselves, no squirming, pinching, hitting.
They aren’t listening for sleigh bells; have no nostalgia for snow
at this point, they long to be lifted out of terror;
their thin hands straining to hold on with enough force,

leaving everything they know behind, hoping to end up
with a place to sit or stand, with family
who would look out for them.

A song that asks if we fought for something
we never quite knew.

Pourquoi, mon ami?

Because I don’t speak
it well enough.
Crying into my textbook
because I know I’m going to fail
my oral exam tomorrow, reminds me
of how I cried into my cousin’s
open coffin.

He killed himself.

And I think about how
the letter ‘r’ is jagged
and gets caught
in the back of my throat like a tack,
clogging my air on its way out.
Locking the French in my mind and
keeping me from ever speaking at all.

Pas d’anglais.

Pas de langue.

I sleep, and in my dream
I try to loosen
the bloodied chain slicing
into my neck on all sides, but I can’t
reach my arms above my waist.
They are tied down by the weight
of my dead. By the weight
of language—or lack thereof.

Demander de l’aide.

I wish I could but the words
are too heavy for me to spit
out. They burn holes
in my throat,
in my heart,
in my brain.

And Madame Bowley only allows
French in class so I can’t even begin
to ask for some extra time or
help because I don’t know how
to say any of that. I don’t know how to
tell her that I found my father dead
a while back, or that my cousin shot
himself in the head a few Tuesdays ago,
because the past tense is too advanced

A sea of people
around me, and
yet I have never
felt so alone.

Everyone keeps
surviving, as if,
my entire world
is not crumbling
before me.

How do I live
in the rubble,
where you no
longer exist?

A sea of people
around me,
and I am
drowning,

but everyone
knows I can
swim.

Air escapes
my lungs.
Water fills
within.

A weight so
heavy on my
sternum; I
am sure it
will fracture.

No one
save me.
I want to see
you again.

[About this poem: A seasonal love poem exploring bodily warmth, intimacy, and emotional quiet.]

That midsummer, we clung and rubbed close,
body heat sparked mosquitoes to a blaze—
not burned to ash, yet breathless, dazed.

This winter, rain drizzles soft and slow,
our hands entwine, you cradle my fall
in your supple warmth and tender glow.

No words are needed to span this expanse—
silence stretches, we meet in its trance.

I woke up dead today.
I woke up with
my eyes still closed,
my heart was barely beating,
my thoughts were
darker than night,
and I could not
feel my face.

I felt like a living
corpse trying to breathe
with no lungs,
because I was tired of
all the pain that had come
and chased my dreams away.
I woke up dead today.

I woke up wanting
to die today.
My blues had consumed me.
My hurt had engulfed me
in a thousand tears,
enough to fill the Black Sea.
There was a darkness
that had come over me.
I woke up wanting to scream,
but could only moan
from feeling all alone.
Depression had settled
in my chest,
right next to my heart,
and made an enemy of
the love that I had for myself.
I woke up dead today.

I barely slept the
night before, but
somehow my physical
was able to endure,
just long enough for
the moon to set and
the sun to rise.
But not without the
need to cry and
oh, how I cried.
I wailed for all the
times I stayed strong and
no one knew deep inside
I was gone.
I poured out droplets
of abandonment, disappointment abuse and broken promises.
A merry go round
of again and again.
I cried until I wanted to die.
I was on the verge
of suicide,
but then I realized

I woke up today,
without an alarm,
in a warm bed,
my household unharmed…
somehow through all the good.