Author: poetryfest

All is fair in love and poetry
A beautiful fantasy
From my heart
To your soul
It’s my art
Makes me full

What can I give you, dear?
When you are not near
Asked for silence
So I gave it
Haven’t seen you since
You broke it

My heart is yours
A melody strummed from its cords
It sings for you
Can you hear?
It’s turning blue
Needs your touch, dear

Dying, turning grey
Come home I pray
Only you can heal it now
I only ask for your presence
You can save your vow
Bless me with your cadence

Touch me darling
Heart is starving
It craves you
Hold me
Till the sky is baby blue
I weep as I watch you flee

Like a bird set free
Come home if you need
I’m here for you
With my love in my hand
If you want me too
I’ll be your best friend

I
I loved
I loved you
I loved you since
I loved you since my first
I loved you since my first cry.
I loved you since my first
I loved you since
I loved you
I loved
I
You
You were
You were the force
You were the force that made
You were the force that made me
You were the force that made me human.
You were the force that made me
You were the force that made
You were the force
You were
You
When
When I
When I go
When I go know
When I go know I
When I go know I could
When I go know I could not
When I go know I could not go
When I go know I could not go on
When I go know I could not go on without
When I go know I could not go on without you.
When I go know I could not go on without
When I go know I could not go on
When I go know I could not
When I go know I could
When I go know I
When I go know
When I go
When I
When

Anjali A. Sarkar
July 18, 2025

Occupy my heart.
Joys of flowery summers.
Your smile are blooming.
占据我心吧，
繁花盛夏的喜悦。
你绽放笑颜。

Breeze of summer blows
Over your gown of flowers.
Lake shines, golden glow.
夏的风拂过
你点缀繁花的裙
湖水跃着金

In midsummers nights
You are my intrusive thought
Starry eyes of my love
在仲夏良夜
我止不住想念你
爱人的明眸

Spring water stirs tea
Blooming flowers of orchid
would you think of me
春泉煎新茶
正开放的是兰花
你会想我吗

Depressing morning.
Birds sing over cloudy sky.
Bring words of autumn.
郁郁的清晨。
鸟吟在阴云天际。
携秋的私语。

Busy bus platform.
Noisy whispers and whistles.
Search your silhouette.
繁忙的站台。
低语与鸣笛喧嚣。
寻你的身影。

I think of your eyes.
Storm outside the glass window.
Turns into silence.
想到你的眼。
玻璃窗外的风暴。
便转入宁静。

Your long silk-like hair.
My only desire, glows when
Jacaranda falls.
你如丝秀发。
我所独求，生辉在
蓝花飘落时。
Gently shake in breeze.
Pop from lush green leaves, a branch
Of purple flowers.
微风里轻摇。
繁茂绿荫里钻出。
一枝条紫花。

Stormy night, chilly
Morning. Think of your cruelty
That you don’t love me.
雷雨夜，风凉
的早晨。你不爱我，
想来真残酷。

Wind of summer blows,
A heart aches for once and more,
Birds sing in the heat.
夏的风吹起。
一颗心几次哀痛。
鸟鸣热风里。

the wet rainy day，
cars pass through slippery road,
Sounds of splash noises.
阴雨连绵日，
车流驶过湿马路，
泼剌噪声响。

Dragonfly dreaming,
spirals lazily in sky.
Tattoo made to mourn.

It’s a cave,
and you’re dark and hollow.
I circle the walls,
but there’s no light to swallow.
Just echoes,
and the sound of my own breath
thinning.

I trace the same paths,
bleed the same questions,
until I hit a wall
or worse, a memory.
Then I start you over
like a ritual I never agreed to.

But caves are supposed to end.
A chamber, a crack,
a way out.
And still, I stay
folded,
breaking myself smaller
than you asked for.

How do I leave it
when I know it so well?
Is it still a prison
if I shaped the bars?

I’ve screamed underground
until my throat gave out.
Clawed at stone
until bone showed through.
Is it love,
or a bad vice?

Maybe I don’t want light.
Maybe the dark feels like home
because I know it will stay.

You never held me here.
I just forgot how to open my eyes.

Flashing eruptions
burn into my mind’s
eye

inescapable
empathy,
fear,

disturbed visions
of collective fates
seen before,
and again.

Immolation.

Immolation:

Underground,
in the forests,
in the desert, too.

In between fires,
seasons, court sentences
and hidden files, breaks
for monied-money
and brutal policy for Us,

clever slavers craft
more chains to tie
down wider lies: nets
and snares, new crimes
for you and I.
They push

us until we have
no homes left to flee,
no common ground
to lie down,
to piece back together
our hearts
or our minds
our ruined bodies

(corporate realty snatched
it all up for dormitory
look-a-likes; spaces filled
with indignant smiles on tired
wage-slaves tending lingering
chain-stores in the new plazas
off new lanes on the highways

we ourselves
did not arrange,
did not build,
did not permit.

We did not ask,

for our cluttered lives
to serve sick entrepreneurial
minds forever in need
of endless abundance,

infinitely higher
production,
consumption,
generation,

which must come
from somewhere
We own).

Now,

American hearts
Ache and beat
harshly for too long,
burning too hot.
Acid rising.

People rising.
Peace forgotten
under decades’

of hunger,
disaster,
defining the line
between apocalypse
and present.

Between the burning
red meridians:

Immolation
of the self.

Immolation
of the mind.

Immolation
of the soul

in revolutionary
fire.

I sit in this dusty hiker’s lot near Bishop,
California,
in this stupid GMC rental,
unpreparedness and mosquitos having flushed me off the mountain,
spilling me past patriotic larkspur and lollipop lilies
into the manzanita grove.

I wait for my party beneath a layered sand art vista —
a swarth of sturdy pine, beneath which the spade-shaped leaves of
quaking aspen lurch and roll like whitecaps,
whispering your name in a jerky cadence.
Each syllable stabs my heart.

Thoughts of your kisses sweep down from the panorama
of toothy peaks beneath the bleached horizon.
I can almost feel your knuckles brush my cheek.
My face presses into the hollow beneath your shoulder,
a landslide of teeth-sucking, that gasp,
every time you enter me.

Outside the car, I lay myself onto a bed of sharp, burning stones,
close my eyes, and invite the sun to fry my skin
until it shimmers with heat haze.
I exhale and say, come, mosquitos. Feast
on my body. Cover me like a blanket. Penetrate me
with your knifey snouts. Wound me. Pump me full of your saliva.
Drain my blood.

And when I am a leathery, scab-riddled carcass,
like human jerky,
an empty sack of hair and skin,
I say come, buzzards. Snake your ugly, bald heads
through my torso and limbs. Feast
on my memories. Rip out strips of weekend road map,
yank yuppie coffee shop menus, liberate
the lemon twist from an artisanal cocktail.
Sail away and scatter every scrap,
til I am no more.

The first conference I went to was on fandom.
He told me that he liked my poster although it was smaller than his.
Even though my avatar was taller.
“Oh,” I responded in tandem.
Was this normal?
Let me get this straight, there was the possibility of oral!
He was flirting…
Over the internet…
Undeterred by being
Slowly turned into Nekhbet;
Eda Clawthorne.

Dance we me tonight
We may not see tomorrow
But we’re here right now.